Managing a local business in the digital revolution: How to Thrive in a Changing Landscape
Experts at a leading digital PR agency reveal how to make technology work for you
The technological age has revolutionised every industry, speeding up process, saving business time and turning once dreaded jobs into a simple click of a button.
In the age of AI generated social media captions and software offering next level reporting, many have been left unsure about their place in the industry now that technology is rapidly helping us complete tasks.
But there is nothing to fear. Whilst rapid technical updates bring about fast changes this doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact, it can be a chance for your business to re-group, let the tech do the heavy lifting and focus on the things that matter most.
With over two decades of experience our experts at digital PR agency, Holyrood PR have witnessed technology revolutionise the communications industry, but we’re not scared of it. Instead, we’ve found incredible ways to make this technology work for us – not against us.
That’s why our experts have broken down their top tips to help your business embrace technology and make it work for you.
- Get rid of the heavy lifting
Long winded admin tasks have been the Achilles heel for countless people in the communications industry.
Crucial, yet boring tasks such as logging the coverage that a campaign has achieved, running monthly reports on staff performance or analysing the key messages of a release often send shivers down spines of staff in the communications industry, which predominantly is made up of people who much prefer writing to data analysis.
That’s where AI tools like chatGPT come in, taking the boring admin work out of staff hands and allowing them to get on with the stuff they really care about – creating human-led content.
Large language models (LLMs) are excellent at assessing information and can be easily trained how to analyse your company’s data in the style you require. You can even create custom AI models which are trained to routinely provide you with excellent, accurate reports in seconds.
UK government trials have even highlighted AI’s ability to free up staff’s time finding that AI could save civil servants nearly two weeks a year on routine tasks.
The crucial point here is routine tasks, those long-winded tasks that members of staff have long resented. By giving these jobs to AI, you will find happier, more motivated staff who have free time to focus on the jobs they love.
2) Become an expert in seconds with deep research
With over 20 years of experience executing award-winning campaigns, we’ve found that extensive research is the crucial foundation for every media win.
Traditionally, gathering that intel meant hours spent trawling through whitepapers, competitor insights, and industry reports, a time-consuming process that drained resources.
Now, thanks to AI-powered tools like Gemini and ChatGPT, deep research is faster, smarter, and more accessible than ever. What once took hours can now be achieved in minutes.
With the right prompts, these tools can generate comprehensive, highly targeted reports that pull together vast amounts of data, giving you everything you need to craft high-impact campaigns.
Even better, they don’t just collect information, they can help you analyse it and suggest the best ways to put it into action.
By letting AI handle the heavy lifting of deep research, you free up valuable hours that can be reinvested where they matter most – in creative thinking. Instead of getting bogged down in data collection, your team can focus on crafting standout ideas, developing compelling narratives, and building campaigns that truly cut through the noise.
3) Don’t just copy and paste
With AI now capable of producing content that rivals even the most eloquent human writers, it’s no surprise that concerns are growing around how much space remains for those who write for a living.
But you have something AI doesn’t: the ability to build human connections and craft emotion-led stories that truly resonate with people.
That’s why the rise of AI-generated copy shouldn’t be feared, but embraced strategically. Instead of asking AI to write your entire media release, try using it to generate a starting template or spark new ideas.
This approach saves valuable time by providing quick frameworks, while still leaving the actual writing – the part that connects with readers – in human hands.
There’s also a powerful SEO advantage to this technique. While AI is smart, so is Google. Certainly, the search engine is smart enough to detect content that’s been fully written by machines, and to penalise it accordingly.
By using AI creatively to assist rather than replace your writing, you get the best of both worlds: all the time-saving benefits without sacrificing authenticity, or your search rankings.
4) Optimise Your Local SEO
In today’s digital-first world, posters in shop windows won’t cut it. Google is where customers go to find what they need. And if your business isn’t showing up in those search results, you’re invisible.
For many traditional business owners, search engine optimisation (SEO) can feel overwhelming, a maze of algorithms, keywords, and technical jargon. But at its core, local SEO is simply about making sure your business appears when people in your area are searching for services like yours.
This is where digital PR comes in achieving credible backlinks through earned online media coverage. By sharing high-quality human led content with journalists and achieving coverage in local media publications your business will start to climb up Google rankings.
Local SEO might seem like a tech challenge, but with the help of an experienced PR agency, it can be as simple as sharing your story with the local media and letting the customer come to you.
Conclusion
The digital revolution doesn’t mean replacing people, it means empowering them. By embracing the right tools, your business can spend less time on the repetitive tasks that drain energy and more time on the creative work that drives results.
From AI-driven research to smarter reporting, and from time-saving templates to local SEO wins, technology can do the heavy lifting. But it’s your voice, your ideas, and your human connection that turn good campaigns into great ones.
With the right strategy – and the right digital PR agency by your side – the future isn’t something to fear. It’s something to shape.
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