The internet keeps rewriting my career. Its latest twist? PR is back.
When I graduated as a journalist in 2000, we all used to giggle at the ones who'd chosen "online media" as their career path. I'd gone for broadcast, and soon found myself at Signal One in Stoke-on-Trent, and later Saga 105.7FM in Birmingham. But within four or five short years, the internet shifted the ground beneath my feet.
A new search engine called Google was taking a lot of the advertising budgets, forcing radio stations to downsize and – in many cases – close down entirely. My editor advised me to consider public relations as a next step, and I listened to him. In hindsight, I realise he was partly trying to save on redundancy costs… but I think he was genuinely trying to help, too. His own decades-long career had clearly suffered its share of setbacks. He could read the writing on the wall: radio was dying.
So in late 2005, I moved into PR and marketing. I landed a job at a reputable agency in Manchester, where I cut my teeth writing press releases, selling stories to journalists, and getting creative with campaigns across fashion, retail, and property. I loved it… until I realised I didn't want to work for anyone else, and went freelance a couple of years later.
But I chose the worst possible time to go solo. The global financial crisis hit the following year, and I lost all my clients overnight. They all happened to be in the housebuilding sector. Unlucky, but it taught me a lesson: I had to adapt.
SEO was the shiny new thing back then – a way for you and your clients to be found online, through something magical called organic search. And we journalists were in the perfect position to provide it.
Google always favoured a more human approach. It strove to reward people who wrote for readers, and to punish those reaching for more devious tactics – the black-hat tricks that worked brilliantly, right up until the moment they didn't. I had faith that well-researched writing and a refusal to stoop to clickbait would serve me well in the long run. It did.
I was easily found for keywords like "PR agency Manchester". And my clients benefited enormously from having a team of journalists write their blogs to ensure people found them, by asking the internet a wealth of curious questions.
It did us proud for years, alongside landing media coverage and quality backlinks from reputable sites, and making sure our clients were talked about online.
Until, of course, Google started pushing harder for paid ads, and SEO grew ever more difficult to work the same magic. And then, just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, along came AI. Story of my life. Only this time, it pushed organic search off a cliff, as people ditched Google for LLMs.
Here's where I can't keep up. Because if the game is now about getting Claude and ChatGPT to point people to your brand, the thing we all suddenly have to think about is… media relations. Yes, that's right. The PR industry is having a moment again. It's come full circle.
Getting featured in a magazine or newspaper online will make you more important in the eyes of the robots. You'll be deemed worthy of recommendation. A podcast guest appearance. A news article. An event where you're part of a panel. There are many ways to get your name out there. And now it should be the focus of your marketing. There's even a name for it: GEO, or generative engine optimisation – the practice of getting your brand, work, and content to show up in the answers the AIs give.
Yes, it might feel like all those years of blogging were for nothing. They weren't – your own content is still what gets quoted; it just needs the earned coverage around it now to get noticed. But really, it's just the reality of new technology and its impact on various industries. We had to adapt in the 2000s; we're having to pull our socks up again.
There is some comfort, though. The tool might keep changing – radio, search, social, now AI – but the job underneath never does: earn the kind of reputation people pass on. Do good work, be generous, be the person others want to quote, and you'll be found. The robots have just made that the whole game again. No bad thing, if you ask me.
So no, I can't quite keep up with the acronyms. But I don't need to. The strategy hasn't changed in 25 years: be worth talking about. GEO just made it official.
As for those kids we mocked after uni? The ones who could see what was happening? I can only apologise. I'm just glad I turned out to be the sort of person who could quickly adapt.
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