The Best Claude Prompts for Public Relations Professionals

A guide for public relations professionals provides 50 prompts designed to use Claude as a strategic multiplier rather than a replacement, emphasizing techniques such as explicit context specification, XML-tagged inputs, example-driven voice replication, extended thinking for complex problems, and chained prompting for professional-grade output.

The Best Claude Prompts for Public Relations Professionals 50 prompts for operators who bill for judgment, not volume. Most “AI prompts for PR” lists are written for people who want a press release in ten seconds. This one isn’t. It assumes you run communications for companies where a single sentence can move a valuation, that you already write well, and that your bottleneck is not typing speed — it’s the amount of thinking you can do per hour against the number of accounts, executives, and news cycles you’re responsible for. Used correctly, Claude does not replace the senior practitioner. It multiplies the number of drafts, angles, counterarguments, and simulations that practitioner can run before committing. That’s the entire value proposition. The prompts below are built for that. Part I covers the mental model — the handful of techniques that separate a prompt that produces usable strategic material from one that produces LinkedIn slop. Skipping it and jumping to the prompt library will cost you most of the value. Part II is the 50 prompts, in ten categories. Part III is the guardrails — the things that will end a career if you get them wrong. Part I — The Operator’s Mental Model The seven techniques that actually matter 1. Be explicit about context, audience, and stakes The single most common failure in professional prompting is under-specification. Claude performs dramatically better when told who the output is for, what happens next to it, and what would make it fail. “Write a press release about our funding round” and “Write a press release announcing a $40M Series B, aimed at fintech trade reporters who have covered our category skeptically, that will be scrutinized by our general counsel and must not imply any regulatory approval we don’t have” produce work of entirely different quality. Tell it the reader. Tell it the stakes. Tell it the constraints. Tell it what the output is for . 2. Use XML tags to structure your inputs Claude is specifically responsive to XML-style tags. Use them to separate the different kinds of material you’re handing over — background, transcript, prior coverage, brand voice rules, the actual task. This prevents the model from confusing your instructions with your source material, which is the most common cause of weird output when you paste long documents. <company background ...</company background <transcript ...</transcript <voice rules ...</voice rules <task ...</task This is not cosmetic. On long, mixed-material prompts it is the difference between a clean draft and a mess. 3. Give examples — this is how you buy voice If you want output in a specific voice, showing beats describing. Two or three examples of the executive’s actual writing, or three headlines from the publication you’re targeting, will do more than a paragraph of adjectives about tone. This technique multishot prompting is the highest-leverage single move available to a communications professional, because voice is most of the job. Build a reusable voice file for every executive you support Prompt 30 does exactly this and paste it into every drafting session. 4. Turn on extended thinking for genuinely hard problems For strategy, crisis sequencing, positioning trade-offs, and anything where you’d want a smart colleague to actually think before answering, use extended thinking. It is wasted on a boilerplate rewrite and invaluable on “here are four stakeholder groups with conflicting interests, sequence our disclosure.” 5. Chain your prompts instead of asking for everything at once Professional-grade output almost never comes from one prompt. Separate the stages the way you’d separate them with a human team: Research → Analysis → Draft → Critique → Revise Ask for the analysis first. Interrogate it. Then ask for the draft, referencing the analysis. Then, in a separate turn, ask Claude to critique its own draft against the brief as a hostile editor would. Quality improves noticeably at every break in that chain. 6. Put long documents at the top, your question at the bottom When you’re pasting a 40-page transcript, an analyst report, or six months of coverage, lead with the material and close with the instruction. Long-context performance is measurably better this way. 7. Always give Claude an out The most important sentence in any PR prompt: “If the source material doesn’t support a claim, say so explicitly rather than filling the gap.” Add it to everything. It is your primary defense against the failure mode that matters most in this profession see Part III . Set up before you prompt Build a Project per client or executive. Load it with the brand voice guide, the approved boilerplate, the messaging architecture, past coverage, product facts, and the list of claims legal has cleared. Every subsequent prompt inherits that context instead of you re-pasting it. Write a source-of-truth document. One file per account containing only verified, approved facts and figures. Reference it explicitly in prompts: “Use only figures from <approved facts .” Pick the model to the job. Reach for the most capable model for strategy, crisis, and positioning work — anything where the reasoning is the deliverable. Faster, lighter models are perfectly good for volume tasks like reformatting, first-pass summarization, and list processing. Matching the model to the task is a cost and latency decision, not a quality compromise. Turn on web search when currency matters. Claude does not know this morning’s news, this quarter’s beat changes, or who just moved outlets. Any prompt touching current media landscape, live news cycles, or competitor activity should be run with search enabled — and the output still verified. Part II — The 50 Prompts Placeholders appear in BRACKETS . Every prompt assumes you’ve loaded relevant context into a Project or pasted it in tagged blocks. I. Strategy & Positioning 1. The Messaging Architecture Builder When: New client onboarding, repositioning, pre-launch. You are a senior strategist building a messaging architecture for COMPANY . <company material PASTE: product docs, founder interviews, existing site copy, sales deck </company material <market context PASTE: category description, top 3 competitors, what they claim </market context Build a messaging architecture with: 1. One positioning statement 25 words max that a competitor could NOT credibly claim 2. Three message pillars, each with: the claim, the proof required, and the proof currently available 3. For each pillar, the strongest objection a skeptical journalist would raise 4. A "do not say" list — claims the material tempts us toward that we cannot substantiate Flag every pillar where the proof is aspirational rather than existing. If the source material doesn't support a pillar, say so rather than filling the gap. Operator note: The “proof currently available” column is the one that earns your fee. Most messaging decks die because nobody audited whether the claims were provable. 2. The Positioning Stress Test When: Before you present. Always before you present. Act as three hostile reviewers of the positioning below, in sequence. <positioning PASTE </positioning Reviewer 1 — A skeptical tier-one reporter: What's the story here, and why would you not write it? What claim would you fact-check first? Reviewer 2 — The competitor's head of comms: How would you neutralize this positioning in your own messaging? What's the counter-narrative? Reviewer 3 — The client's CFO: What does this cost, what does it return, and what's the argument against spending anything on it? For each, write in that reviewer's voice and be genuinely adversarial. Then give me the three revisions that would most improve survival odds. Operator note: Claude will default to agreeable. Explicitly demanding adversarial roleplay is how you get real pressure-testing. Do this before the client does it to you. 3. The Narrative Whitespace Map When: You need an angle nobody owns. <competitor messaging PASTE: homepage copy, recent press releases, exec quotes from 5 competitors </competitor messaging <our capabilities PASTE </our capabilities Map the narrative territory of this category: 1. What claims are saturated 3+ competitors making them ? List them. 2. What claims are contested 2 competitors fighting over them ? 3. What territory is unclaimed AND credible for us given our capabilities? 4. What territory is unclaimed because it's a bad idea? Explain why. Rank the unclaimed-and-credible territories by: defensibility, media interest, and buyer relevance. Show the ranking logic. Operator note: Section 4 is the guardrail. Empty territory is often empty for a reason, and a strategist who can’t tell the difference is expensive. 4. The Proof Point Audit When: The client says “we’re the leader in X.” <claims PASTE: every claim from the client's marketing and messaging material </claims <evidence PASTE: customer data, case studies, third-party validation, metrics </evidence For each claim, classify it as: - SUBSTANTIATED evidence directly supports it — cite which - PARTIAL evidence supports a narrower version — write the narrower version - UNSUPPORTED no evidence provided — state what evidence would be needed - RISKY may create legal, regulatory, or credibility exposure — explain Output as a table. Do not assume evidence exists that isn't in the material. Operator note: This is the single most useful defensive prompt in PR. Run it on every new account in week one. The RISKY column has saved campaigns. 5. The Audience Ladder When: One announcement, five stakeholder groups, five different anxieties. <core message PASTE </core message <stakeholders LIST: e.g. enterprise buyers, regulators, employees, investors, existing customers, the trade press </stakeholders For each stakeholder group, produce: 1. What they actually care about in this announcement their question, not ours 2. What they fear it means 3. The message translated for them — same truth, their frame 4. The one thing we must NOT say to this group, and why 5. The channel and messenger best suited to reach them Keep every version factually identical. Flag any translation that shades meaning. Operator note: Point 5 in the instruction is the integrity check. Message tailoring becomes spin the moment the versions stop being reconcilable. II. Media Relations & Pitching 6. The Reporter Beat Brief When: Before any pitch to a journalist who matters. Run with web search on. Research REPORTER NAME at OUTLET and build a pitch brief. Cover: 1. What they've actually covered in the last 90 days — themes, not just titles 2. Their apparent thesis about CATEGORY — what do they seem to believe? 3. Story structures they favor data-led, profile, contrarian, investigative 4. Companies like ours they've covered, and whether coverage was favorable 5. What they appear to be tired of 6. Three angles from us that fit their demonstrated interests 7. Three angles we should NOT pitch them, with reasons Cite sources for every claim. Where you're inferring rather than observing, label it as inference. Operator note: Verify before you act. Journalists change beats and outlets constantly, and a pitch built on stale intelligence is worse than no pitch. Treat the output as a research head start, not a dossier. 7. The Pitch Angle Generator When: You have news and need to know what’s actually newsworthy about it. <announcement PASTE the raw facts — no spin </announcement <context PASTE: what's happening in the category, recent related news </context Generate 10 distinct pitch angles. For each: - The headline a journalist would write - Why this is news NOW the timeliness hook - Which outlet tier and beat it suits - The strongest reason an editor would kill it Then rank all 10 by genuine newsworthiness — not by what the client wants to hear. Be direct about which angles are not newsworthy at all. Operator note: The kill-reason column is the point. If Claude can generate a compelling reason to spike your angle in one line, so can an editor in one second. 8. The Cold Pitch Writer When: You know the angle and the reporter. Now earn the open. <reporter brief PASTE output of Prompt 6 </reporter brief <angle PASTE the chosen angle from Prompt 7 </angle <proof PASTE: the data, access, or exclusivity we can offer </proof Write a pitch email under 150 words that: - Opens with the news or the tension, never with a greeting about their work - Makes the relevance to their beat obvious in sentence one - States plainly what we're offering interview, data, exclusive, embargo - Ends with one specific, low-friction ask Then give me 5 subject lines: 2 straight-news, 2 curiosity-driven, 1 contrarian. No adjectives that the reporter would have to take on faith. No "hope you're doing well." Operator note: The word limit is doing real work. Remove it and you get 400 words of throat-clearing. 9. The Rejection Post-Mortem When: The pitch failed. Learn something from it. <pitch sent PASTE </pitch sent <outcome Describe: no response / declined / passed to another reporter / covered by a competitor instead </outcome <what ran instead PASTE the story that ran in that slot, if any </what ran instead Diagnose the failure. Consider: angle weakness, timing, reporter fit, proof insufficiency, subject line, competitive crowding, or a story that was never newsworthy. Rank the likely causes by probability and explain your reasoning. Then tell me what would have to be true — what additional proof or news — for this angle to work on the next attempt. Operator note: Most agencies never do this. Systematic post-mortems are how a pitch operation compounds instead of repeating. 10. The Exclusive & Embargo Strategy Memo When: The news is big enough that distribution strategy matters more than the release. <news PASTE </news <target outlets LIST with tiers </target outlets <business objective e.g. enterprise buyer awareness / investor signal / recruiting / category leadership </business objective Build a distribution strategy comparing three approaches: a tier-one exclusive, b embargoed multi-outlet briefing, c open announcement. For each: expected reach vs depth trade-off, relationship cost, risk of break, sequencing, and fit against the stated business objective. Recommend one, with the reasoning stated as an argument a skeptical CMO could attack. Include the failure scenario for your recommendation and the contingency if the embargo breaks. III. Press Materials & Announcements 11. The Announcement Hierarchy When: The client thinks everything is the headline. <raw information PASTE everything the client wants included </raw information <audience WHO this must land with </audience Rank every element by news value to that specific audience. Then: 1. Identify the single lede — the one fact that makes this a story 2. Identify what belongs in paragraph two vs the boilerplate vs nowhere 3. List every element the client wants that has zero news value, and explain plainly why a journalist would not care 4. Tell me if there is no story here. Say it directly if so. Do not soften point 4. Operator note: Point 4 is why this prompt exists. The most valuable thing a senior counselor does is tell a client they don’t have news — and having the analysis written down makes that conversation survivable. 12. The Press Release Drafter When: You’ve earned the right to write it — the news is real. <approved facts PASTE only verified, cleared facts and figures </approved facts <lede PASTE from Prompt 11 </lede <style examples PASTE 2 press releases whose tone we want to match </style examples Draft a press release. Constraints: - Inverted pyramid; the news is complete in the first sentence - No adjectives that cannot be substantiated from <approved facts - Banned phrases: "delighted to announce," "leading provider," "revolutionary," "game-changing," "next-generation," "seamlessly," "robust," "cutting-edge" - Every number traceable to <approved facts - Quotes marked PENDING APPROVAL — draft them as placeholders that the named person must review, approve, and edit before use - Under 400 words before boilerplate If a required element is missing from the facts provided, insert MISSING: description rather than inventing it. Operator note: The banned-phrase list is the highest-ROI line in the prompt. Extend it with your own house peeves. And note the quote handling — see Part III. 13. The Quote Architect When: You need spokesperson quotes that survive both legal and the editor’s cut. <speaker profile PASTE: their role, their actual speech patterns from transcripts, what they personally care about </speaker profile <news PASTE </news Draft 5 candidate quotes for NAME to review. Each must: - Say something only this person, in this role, could credibly say - Advance the story rather than restate the lede - Survive being cut to one sentence - Contain no unsubstantiated claims Vary the register: one visionary, one operational, one customer-centric, one candid about difficulty, one forward-looking. These are drafts for the named individual to approve or rewrite in their own words. Label them clearly as such. Operator note: Ghost-drafting quotes for approval is standard practice. Publishing a quote the named person never saw or approved is not. Keep that line bright. 14. The Fact Sheet & Backgrounder Builder When: Reporters need context you don’t want them getting from competitors. <company material PASTE </company material Build a press backgrounder containing: 1. Company at a glance founded, size, funding, footprint — facts only 2. What the company actually does, in language a generalist reporter can reproduce accurately without a briefing 3. Category context: what problem exists, who else works on it 4. Milestone timeline 5. Leadership bios 100 words each 6. Three data points a journalist could build a story around 7. Anticipated questions with factual answers Where the material provided is insufficient, mark NEEDS INPUT with a specific description of what's missing. Do not estimate or infer figures. 15. The Boilerplate Rewrite When: The boilerplate hasn’t changed since Series A and it shows. <current boilerplate PASTE </current boilerplate <what changed PASTE: new funding, positioning, scale, markets </what changed Write 3 boilerplate options at 60, 80, and 100 words. Each must: - Be accurate as of today, not aspirational - Be comprehensible to a reporter with no category knowledge - Contain no claim requiring a footnote - Survive translation and syndication without losing meaning Flag any phrase in the current boilerplate that is now inaccurate or overstated. IV. Thought Leadership & Bylines 16. The Byline Thesis Miner When: The executive has ideas and no time, and you have a transcript. <transcript PASTE: 60-90 min interview, podcast, internal talk, or Q&A </transcript Extract every distinct argument this person made — not topics, arguments a claim plus a reason . For each: 1. State the argument in one sentence 2. Note how strongly they held it hedged / stated / insisted 3. Assess: is this a genuine POV, or a category platitude anyone would say? 4. If genuine, what would make it publishable — what proof or specificity is missing? Rank by how contrarian and defensible each argument is. Be honest about which ones are neither. Operator note: This is the best byline-sourcing method there is. Executives produce far better thinking in conversation than in writing, and mining transcripts beats asking them to draft. 17. The Contrarian Take Generator When: You need a POV that earns attention without embarrassing anyone. <category consensus PASTE: what everyone in this space currently claims to believe </category consensus <our evidence PASTE: data, experience, customer patterns we can cite </our evidence Generate 5 contrarian positions our executive could credibly take. For each: - The claim - The evidence from <our evidence that supports it - The strongest counterargument - Who would be angered, and whether that's a problem - The reputational downside if this position ages badly Exclude any position we cannot support with evidence provided. Rank by defensibility × attention and flag any that are contrarian purely for provocation's sake. Operator note: The “ages badly” column matters more than people think. Positions taken for engagement have a way of resurfacing in due diligence. 18. The Op-Ed Drafter in Executive Voice When: Thesis approved, publication targeted. <voice profile PASTE output of Prompt 30 </voice profile <writing samples PASTE 2-3 things this person actually wrote or said verbatim </writing samples <thesis PASTE the approved argument </thesis <publication NAME — PASTE 2 recent op-eds from this outlet to match format and register </publication Draft an 800-word op-ed. Requirements: - Open with a specific scene, number, or tension — never with "As the CEO of" - One argument, defended, not a survey of the topic - Concede the strongest counterargument explicitly and answer it - Every claim either evidenced or clearly framed as opinion - Close with an implication, not a product mention Match the voice in <writing samples , not generic executive register. 19. The POV Series Builder When: One good interview should produce a quarter of social content. <source material PASTE transcript or byline </source material <voice profile PASTE </voice profile Build 12 LinkedIn posts from this material. Rules: - Each makes ONE point; no listicles of everything - Open with the claim, not with context-setting - 80-150 words - No engagement-bait questions at the end - Vary structure: observation, data point, story, correction of a common belief, prediction, lesson from failure Mark which 3 are strongest and explain why. Flag any post that overstates what the source material actually said. 20. The Award Submission Builder When: Awards are worth more than they should be, and the deadline is Friday. <award criteria PASTE the actual judging criteria and categories </award criteria <our material PASTE: results, metrics, testimonials, campaign details </our material Map our material against each judging criterion. For each: 1. Our strongest evidence 2. How strong that evidence is relative to what likely wins this award 3. Gaps — what we cannot currently evidence Then draft the submission narrative, leading with the results a judge scans for first. Where we lack evidence for a criterion, tell me plainly rather than writing around the gap. Recommend whether we should enter at all. V. Crisis & Issues Management 21. The Pre-Mortem Risk Register When: Before launch, before the funding announcement, before the campaign. It is 6 MONTHS FROM NOW and INITIATIVE has become a reputational problem for COMPANY . <initiative PASTE the full plan </initiative <company context PASTE: sector, regulatory exposure, past controversies, stakeholder map </company context Working backwards from failure, produce a risk register: 1. What went wrong 10 distinct scenarios, from most to least likely 2. The earliest observable signal of each 3. Which stakeholder raises it first 4. Whether it's preventable now, mitigable later, or neither 5. The single decision today that most reduces total risk Include at least three scenarios where the problem is caused by something we said rather than something we did. Operator note: Run this with extended thinking. The last instruction is deliberate — communications-caused crises are the ones comms teams are worst at anticipating. 22. The Tiered Holding Statement Generator When: Something is happening and you have twenty minutes. <situation PASTE what is known — separate confirmed facts from unconfirmed reports </situation <constraints PASTE: legal posture, what cannot be said, regulatory obligations </constraints Draft holding statements at three severity tiers: TIER 1 — Acknowledged, investigating, no admissions TIER 2 — Confirmed issue, action underway, accountability signaled TIER 3 — Confirmed serious issue, full accountability, remediation committed For each: the statement under 100 words , what it commits us to, what it forecloses, and the follow-up question it invites. Then tell me which tier the known facts currently justify, and what new fact would move us up a tier. Operator note: Pre-drafting all three tiers before you need them is the actual best practice. The commitment analysis is what prevents a Tier 1 statement that accidentally admits Tier 3 liability. 23. The Hostile Q&A Simulator When: Your executive is about to face someone who is not friendly. You are an investigative reporter who believes COMPANY is SPECIFIC ACCUSATION . You have PASTE: what's publicly known . <our position PASTE our factual position and approved messaging </our position Conduct a hostile interview. Rules: - Ask one question at a time and wait for my answer - Follow up on evasion, hedging, or non-answers — escalate when I dodge - Use silence, restatement, and "so you're saying..." traps - Do not accept a talking point as an answer to a factual question - After 10 exchanges, break character and assess: where did I lose credibility, which answers created new liability, and what would you have written? Operator note: Turn-by-turn roleplay is the single most underused capability in PR. Media training that used to require a booked consultant now runs at 11pm before the interview. 24. The Stakeholder Sequencing Plan When: Who hears it first determines how it goes. <news PASTE: the disclosure, restructuring, incident, or departure </news <stakeholders LIST: employees, customers, investors, regulators, partners, press, community </stakeholders <constraints PASTE: legal disclosure obligations, market rules, contractual notice terms </constraints Build a sequencing plan: who is told what, in what order, through which channel and messenger, within what time window. For each group state: the risk of them hearing it from someone else first, what they'll do with the information, and the leak probability once informed. Flag every legally mandated disclosure timing you can identify from the constraints — and flag where I need counsel to confirm rather than guessing. Operator note: That last line matters. Claude should surface where legal input is required, not simulate it. 25. The Apology Audit When: The statement is drafted and someone needs to check whether it apologizes. <draft statement PASTE </draft statement Audit this against the anatomy of a credible apology: 1. Does it name what happened specifically, or hide behind abstraction? 2. Does it accept responsibility, or use agentless constructions "mistakes were made," "the situation occurred" ? 3. Does it acknowledge harm to specific people, or only "concerns"? 4. Does it commit to specific remediation with a timeline, or gesture at "doing better"? 5. Does it contain a "but" or "if" that negates the apology? 6. Would the harmed party read this as an apology? Quote the exact phrases that fail each test. Then rewrite the weakest section. Be blunt — a non-apology that reads as an apology internally is the standard failure mode here. VI. Executive Communications & Prep 26. The Interview Prep Dossier When: 30 minutes before the call and the executive hasn’t read anything. <interview details Reporter: NAME , OUTLET . Topic: TOPIC . Format: live/recorded/written . </interview details <reporter brief PASTE output of Prompt 6 </reporter brief <our messaging PASTE approved messaging and facts </our messaging Build a one-page prep dossier: 1. The three messages to land, in priority order 2. The 8 questions most likely to be asked, with a 2-sentence answer each 3. The 3 questions we least want and how to answer them honestly without creating a headline 4. Bridging language that doesn't sound like bridging 5. Specific words and phrases to avoid, with the reason 6. The quote we want them to pull Keep it scannable. An executive will read this in the car. 27. The Media Training Sparring Partner When: Building the reflex, not just the answer. You are conducting a media training session with ROLE . Topic: TOPIC . Run three rounds, one at a time: Round 1 — Friendly trade reporter, softball questions Round 2 — Well-prepared business reporter, informed skepticism Round 3 — Adversarial reporter with a thesis and a deadline After each round, break character and give feedback on: message discipline, answers that created new exposure, verbal tics, over-explanation, and the single strongest and weakest answer. Escalate difficulty regardless of how well I perform. 28. The Internal Message Test When: The all-hands message will be screenshotted and sent to a reporter. <internal message PASTE </internal message <context PASTE: what's happening — layoffs, restructuring, acquisition, controversy </context Analyze as three readers: 1. A worried employee: What do they hear? What's the first question they ask a colleague? What's left conspicuously unsaid? 2. A departing employee with a grievance: What here would they screenshot and send to a journalist, and what would the resulting headline be? 3. A reporter who receives the full text: What's the story? Then rewrite the passages that create the most exposure — without removing honesty. If the message is evasive, say so; evasion is what gets leaked. Operator note: Assume every internal message is external. This prompt operationalizes that assumption. 29. The Keynote Narrative Architect When: The executive has 25 minutes and a deck of 60 slides. <raw content PASTE: everything they want to cover </raw content <audience WHO is in the room and what they came for </audience <objective What should change in their minds </objective Build a talk structure: 1. The single argument this talk makes one sentence 2. The opening 90 seconds — a specific story, number, or tension, no agenda slide 3. Three movements, each with its claim, evidence, and transition 4. The one idea they'll repeat to a colleague afterward 5. What to cut from <raw content and why Then flag every place where the narrative depends on a claim we haven't evidenced. 30. The Executive Voice Profile When: Once per executive. Then reuse forever. <samples PASTE 5+ verbatim samples: transcripts, emails they wrote, unedited posts, Q&A answers </samples Build a reusable voice profile documenting: 1. Sentence rhythm and typical length 2. Vocabulary they reach for — and words they never use 3. How they open and close arguments 4. Their relationship to hedging, certainty, and admission of doubt 5. Recurring metaphors and reference domains 6. Their humor, if any, and its register 7. Rhetorical tells that make writing recognizably theirs 8. What a bad impersonation of them gets wrong Output as a reference document I can paste into future drafting prompts. Quote specific examples for each characteristic. Operator note: This is the highest-compounding prompt in the guide. Build it once per principal, store it in the Project, and every draft afterward starts closer to their voice. Point 8 is the one that actually prevents parody. VII. Measurement, Analysis & Reporting 31. The Coverage Quality Scorer When: You need to report on coverage without resorting to AVE. <coverage PASTE: articles, with outlet and date </coverage <objectives PASTE: what the campaign was trying to achieve </objectives Score each piece 1-5 on: - Message pull-through did our key messages survive? - Prominence headline/lede vs passing mention - Audience fit does this outlet reach our buyer? - Sentiment and framing including subtle framing against us - Spokesperson positioning authority vs vendor quote - Competitive context did we appear alongside or beneath competitors? Output a table with scores and one-line justifications. Then: what does the pattern say about our pitching, and which two pieces genuinely moved the objective versus which merely accumulated? Operator note: Define the rubric before the campaign, not after. Retroactive rubrics are how agencies grade their own homework. 32. The Share of Voice Analysis When: The client asks how they’re doing versus the competition. <our coverage PASTE: 90 days </our coverage <competitor coverage PASTE: same period, per competitor </competitor coverage Analyze: 1. Volume share — but weight by outlet reach and relevance, not raw count 2. Message share — which narratives is each company associated with? 3. Quality gap — who gets features vs mentions vs quotes? 4. Territory — which topics does each company own in coverage? 5. Where we're winning that we didn't intend to 6. Where a competitor owns territory we claim in our messaging State clearly where the data provided is insufficient for a conclusion. 33. The Client Report Narrative When: The numbers are what they are and the story must still be honest. <results PASTE: coverage, metrics, activities </results <goals PASTE what we committed to </goals Write the monthly report narrative. Structure: 1. What we set out to do 2. What happened — including what didn't work 3. What we learned that changes next month's approach 4. What we need from the client to do better 5. Next month's priorities Rules: lead with outcomes not activities; do not describe effort as if it were result; state misses plainly before explaining them. If the month was weak, the report should say so in the first paragraph. Operator note: Clients forgive weak months. They do not forgive discovering the weak month themselves, three months later. 34. The Message Pull-Through Audit When: You want to know if the messaging architecture is actually working. <messaging architecture PASTE the intended messages </messaging architecture <coverage PASTE 90 days of articles </coverage For each intended message, calculate: 1. How often it appeared, in what form verbatim / paraphrased / distorted /absent 2. Which spokespeople delivered it successfully 3. Which outlets consistently reframed it, and how 4. Whether journalists are using our language or the category's default language Then: which messages are not landing, and is the cause the message itself, the proof, the spokesperson, or the targeting? 35. The Campaign Post-Mortem When: It’s over. Extract the institutional knowledge before everyone forgets. <campaign plan PASTE original plan and objectives </campaign plan <what happened PASTE results, coverage, timeline, obstacles </what happened Conduct a post-mortem: 1. Objectives met, partially met, missed — with evidence 2. Which of our assumptions turned out to be wrong? 3. What worked that we did not predict? 4. What would we do differently with the same budget? 5. What would we need budget, access, proof, time to do materially better? 6. What should become standard practice from this campaign? Be specific and avoid diplomatic hedging. This document is for us, not the client. VIII. Competitive & Market Intelligence 36. The Competitor Narrative Teardown When: Know the other side’s messaging better than they do. <competitor material PASTE: site copy, releases, exec interviews, social, job posts </competitor material Reverse-engineer their communications strategy: 1. Their positioning statement, as they'd write it internally 2. Their message pillars and the proof they lean on 3. Their intended audience — who is this actually written for? 4. What they're conspicuously not saying, and what that implies 5. Where their messaging exceeds their evidence 6. What their job postings and executive hires suggest is coming next 7. The single strongest attack on their positioning that we could credibly make Distinguish observation from inference throughout. Operator note: Point 6 is underrated intelligence. Hiring patterns telegraph strategy months before announcements do. 37. The Newsjacking Radar When: Something big just happened and you have two hours to be relevant. <breaking news PASTE the story </breaking news <our client PASTE: expertise, credible authority, spokespeople available </our client Assess in order: 1. Is our client genuinely qualified to comment, or would this be opportunism? Answer honestly — if the answer is no, say so and stop. 2. If yes: what's the specific angle only they can provide? 3. What's the reputational risk of commenting on this story? 4. Which reporters are covering it and need an expert source right now? 5. Draft a 60-word reactive comment and a 40-word pitch note. Flag any scenario where commenting would look exploitative — particularly if the news involves harm to people. Operator note: The stop condition in step 1 is not decoration. Most newsjacking failures are qualification failures, and tragedy-adjacent newsjacking is a career event. 38. The Regulatory Calendar Builder When: You want scheduled at-bats instead of reactive scrambling. Search on. Build a 6-month communications calendar for SECTOR , covering regulatory milestones, policy decisions, court dates, standards deadlines, major industry events, and recurring data releases. For each entry: 1. Date or expected window 2. What will happen 3. Why journalists will need expert comment 4. What CLIENT can credibly say about it 5. What we'd need to prepare in advance to comment same-day Prioritize by likely media volume and our credibility to comment. Cite sources and flag any date that is projected rather than confirmed. Operator note: This turns a reactive comms function into an inventory-managed one. The pre-drafted positions are what let you comment in hours instead of days. 39. The Analyst & Influencer Map When: The people who shape the category aren’t all journalists. <category DESCRIBE </category Map who actually shapes opinion in this category beyond traditional media: industry analysts, newsletter authors, podcast hosts, academic voices, practitioner communities, and standards bodies. For each: their apparent thesis about the category, their audience, their influence on buying decisions, whether they're accessible, and what would earn their attention data, access, briefing, exclusivity . Rank by influence-per-unit-effort. Cite sources; flag inference. 40. The Category Language Tracker When: The words the market uses are changing and you’re using last year’s. <coverage sample PASTE 40+ recent articles about the category </coverage sample <our language PASTE our messaging vocabulary </our language Analyze the language of the category: 1. What terms do journalists use to describe this space? 2. What terms have fallen out of use in the last 12 months? 3. Where does our vocabulary differ from the market's — and does that make us distinctive or unintelligible? 4. Which competitor's language is being adopted by journalists? 5. What terminology is emerging that we should adopt early or resist? Recommend specific vocabulary changes with reasoning for each. Operator note: Point 4 identifies who is winning the narrative war, since the surest sign of message dominance is journalists borrowing a company’s vocabulary unprompted. IX. Agency Operations & New Business 41. The RFP Response Architect When: The response is due and half the questions are procurement boilerplate. <rfp PASTE the full RFP </rfp <our capabilities PASTE: case studies, team, results, differentiators </our capabilities First, analyze the RFP itself: 1. What does this document reveal about their real problem versus the stated one? 2. Which requirements are genuine priorities versus procurement filler? 3. What are they anxious about, based on what they over-specify? 4. Is there an incumbent, and what does the RFP suggest went wrong? 5. Should we bid at all? Give me the honest answer. Then, if we should bid: the response structure, the two proof points to lead with, and the one question we should ask that demonstrates we understand the problem better than the competition. 42. The New Business Diagnostic When: You want to walk into the pitch already knowing more than they expect. <prospect COMPANY — PASTE: their site copy, recent coverage, exec social, job posts, funding history </prospect Build a diagnostic: 1. Their current narrative — what are they trying to be known for? 2. The gap between that narrative and their actual public footprint 3. Three specific, verifiable observations about their communications that they probably haven't noticed 4. What their business stage implies they need from comms right now 5. Who internally likely owns this problem and what their incentive is 6. The one insight that would make them want a second meeting Ground every observation in the material provided; mark inference as inference. Operator note: Point 3 is the pitch. A specific, verifiable observation about the prospect’s own footprint outperforms any credentials slide. 43. The Scope & Pricing Rationale When: The client wants to know why it costs what it costs. <scope PASTE what we're proposing to do </scope <client context PASTE: their size, stage, category, internal resources </client context Build the rationale: 1. Translate each scope item into the business outcome it serves 2. Estimate senior vs junior hours realistically 3. Identify which items are essential versus valuable-but-optional 4. Build three tiers essential / recommended / comprehensive with a clear logic for what moves between them 5. For each tier, what the client should expect NOT to get 6. The strongest argument a procurement officer would make against this pricing, and the honest answer Do not pad. Flag anything in the scope that we cannot clearly connect to an outcome. 44. The Onboarding Brain Dump Converter When: Two hours of kickoff call, and someone has to turn it into a brief. <kickoff transcript PASTE </kickoff transcript Convert into a structured brief: 1. Stated objectives versus implied objectives what they said versus what they seem to actually want 2. Success as they define it — quote them 3. Constraints: legal, cultural, political, resource 4. Internal stakeholders, their positions, and where they disagree with each other 5. Landmines mentioned in passing that we should take seriously 6. Contradictions between what different people said 7. Questions we must resolve before we can start Point 6 matters most — surface every place where stakeholders want different things. Operator note: Undetected stakeholder disagreement is the leading cause of dead campaigns. Surfacing it in week one is worth the entire engagement. 45. The Difficult Conversation Drafter When: The client is wrong, the relationship matters, and the email must go today. <situation PASTE what happened and what the client is asking for </situation <our position PASTE why we disagree, with evidence </our position <relationship context PASTE: tenure, value, temperature, history </relationship context Draft a response that: - Acknowledges their concern accurately before disagreeing - States our position with evidence, not defensiveness - Offers a concrete alternative path - Preserves the relationship without conceding on the substance - Never uses "as we discussed" as a weapon Then give me: the sentence most likely to be misread, the likely response, and a version that is 30% warmer in case I'm misjudging the temperature. X. The AI-Era Surface: GEO, AEO & Answer Engines This category is where the discipline is changing fastest. Your clients’ buyers increasingly ask an AI assistant before they ask a search engine — and answer engines assemble their responses from what they can retrieve and verify. That makes AI visibility a communications problem, not an IT one. 46. The AI Answer Audit When: Quarterly, for every client. Search on. I want to audit how AI answer engines represent COMPANY . For each of these questions, research what is publicly retrievable and assess what an AI assistant would likely answer: 1. "What is COMPANY ?" 2. "Is COMPANY reputable?" 3. "Best companies for CATEGORY " 4. " COMPANY vs COMPETITOR " 5. " COMPANY controversy" / "problems with COMPANY " ADD 5 buyer-specific questions For each: what sources dominate the retrievable record, whether they're owned, earned, or third-party-critical, and what's conspicuously missing that the company could supply. Then: rank the gaps by how cheaply they could be filled with owned material. Operator note: Run this against the client’s competitors too. The delta is the pitch. And note the framing — the deliverable is a list of gaps you can fill , not a complaint about coverage. 47. The Entity Consistency Check When: AI engines hedge on companies whose basic facts don’t match across sources. <sources PASTE the company's description from: their site, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, press releases, executive bios, directory listings </sources Audit for entity consistency: 1. Where do the company description, founding date, headcount, location, leadership titles, and category descriptors disagree across sources? 2. Which version appears most often, and which is authoritative? 3. What ambiguities would cause an AI system to hedge or omit the company? 4. Are executives consistently associated with the company across sources? Output a correction list: every source that needs updating, what it should say, and the priority order. Operator note: Unglamorous, cheap, and one of the highest-yield tasks in modern comms. Inconsistent entities get hedged or dropped from generated answers. 48. The Answer-First Rewrite When: Existing content is good and completely unciteable. <existing content PASTE </existing content <target question The question a buyer would actually type or ask an assistant </target question Restructure this to be citable by answer engines without degrading it for human readers: 1. Open with a 40-60 word direct answer to <target question 2. Restructure the body into scannable, extractable claims — each self-contained 3. Add a table or numbered process where the content contains comparable or sequential information 4. Draft 5 FAQ entries with direct answers, suitable for FAQ schema 5. Flag every claim that needs a citation to be credible to a machine 6. Suggest an H1 and headings that match how the question is actually asked Preserve voice and nuance. Answer-first is a structural change, not a simplification. 49. The Citable Announcement Structure When: You want the release to feed the machines as well as the reporters. <announcement facts PASTE approved facts </announcement facts Draft an announcement optimized for both journalists and AI retrieval: 1. A one-sentence factual summary that a machine could extract verbatim 2. The standard release inverted pyramid, human-readable 3. A structured facts block: entities, dates, figures, relationships — each stated as a discrete, unambiguous claim 4. Three FAQ entries answering what people will ask about this news 5. Explicit entity definitions who the company is, what the product does so the release is self-contained for a system with no prior context 6. Suggested schema types for the page Never sacrifice factual precision for retrievability. Every claim must trace to <announcement facts . 50. The GEO Measurement Framework When: The client asks you to prove the AI work is working. Build a measurement framework for AI answer-engine visibility for COMPANY . Include: 1. A tracked query set 20 questions spanning brand, category, comparison, and reputation with the rationale for each 2. What to record per query, per engine mention, sentiment, sources cited, whether owned material is cited, position among alternatives 3. A baseline scoring method that produces a single trackable number 4. Cadence, and who runs it 5. Which metrics are leading indicators versus lagging 6. Honest limitations: what this method cannot tell us, and where results will vary between runs Design it so a non-technical account team can execute it in under two hours a month. Operator note: Point 6 protects you. AI answers vary between sessions and engines, so a measurement framework that oversells its precision will be discredited the first time a client runs the query themselves and sees something different. Part III — The Guardrails Five rules. The first one is not negotiable. 1. Never publish a fabricated quote or statistic Claude will happily generate a plausible-sounding quote from a named executive and a plausible-sounding market statistic. Both are catastrophic if published unverified. Attributed quotes must be reviewed, approved, and ideally edited by the person named. Statistics must trace to a real, cited source you have personally checked. “The AI wrote it” is not a defense that has ever worked, in any profession. Build the habit into your prompts: “Mark all quotes PENDING APPROVAL ” and “Use only figures from <approved facts .” 2. Verify anything current before you act on it Media landscapes change weekly. Reporters move, beats shift, outlets fold. Treat any output about who covers what as a research head start requiring verification, not a source of truth. Run with web search on when currency matters, and check the citations. 3. Know your confidentiality position before pasting client material Understand your organization’s data policies and your clients’ contractual restrictions before putting embargoed news, unreleased financials, or privileged material into any AI tool. Enterprise arrangements differ from consumer ones. This is a question to resolve with your legal and IT teams once, in advance — not per-document, under deadline. 4. Ask for the case against — every time Claude tends toward agreeableness. If you ask whether your strategy is good, you will often be told it is. The prompts in this guide that explicitly demand adversarial review 2, 21, 23, 41 are structured that way for exactly this reason. Adopt the habit generally: “Give me the strongest argument that this is the wrong approach.” 5. Keep the judgment where it belongs Claude drafts, analyzes, simulates, and stress-tests. It does not decide whether to disclose, when to apologize, whether a client should take a public position, or how much risk a company can absorb. Those are judgment calls that carry professional and sometimes legal weight, and they belong to the practitioner and the lawyers. The tool that makes you faster at everything else is what gives you more time for them. How to actually adopt this Don’t try all fifty. Pick the three that map to your biggest weekly bottleneck — for most senior operators that’s 30 voice profiles , 21 pre-mortems , and 46 AI audits — and run them until they’re reflexive. Then build your own. The prompts in this guide are scaffolding. The moment you start editing them to fit how you actually work, adding your own banned-phrase lists, your own rubrics, your own house standards, they stop being someone else’s prompts and start being institutional knowledge that compounds. That’s the point. The prompt isn’t the asset. The judgment encoded in it is.