Is your brand PR ready? 5 steps for the AI era

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In this episode, Slava Balykov joins host Jason Mudd to discuss how you can assess your brand's public relations readiness before a crisis or AI tool exposes your gaps. Slava shares his five-step framework, explains how to respond when AI gets your brand wrong, and reveals what executives really want from PR reporting.

Tune in to learn more!

Five things you’ll learn from this episode:

1. How to assess your brand's PR readiness in the AI era
2. Five steps to PR readiness
3. Why you should understand your information environment before investing in AI optimization
4. How to check what AI says about your organization and what to do when it’s wrong
5. What executives want from PR reporting and why coverage volume rarely delivers it 

Quotables

• "Before optimizing anything, organizations need to understand the information environment that already exists around them." — Slava Balykov
• "Critical doesn't mean incorrect." — Slava Balykov
• "Treat readiness as an ongoing diagnostic, not a one-off exercise." — Slava Balykov
• "Quality is much more important than quantity." — Slava Balykov
• "Measuring impressions or the number of appearances feels like what people call vanity metrics, as opposed to true business impact." — Jason Mudd

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Guest’s contact info and resources:

• Slava Balykov on LinkedIn
• Slava's five steps to PR readiness in the AI era:
  1. Establish your baseline. 
     Understand what information about your organization is currently discoverable and identify important gaps, contradictions, or outdated information.
  2. Review owned information. 
     Make sure your website, corporate pages, leadership profiles, and other controlled touchpoints clearly and accurately explain who you are and what you do.
  3. Look beyond owned channels. 
     Examine credible third-party sources, including media, industry publications, and other independent references, to understand the wider information environment around your organization.
  4. Diagnose the gaps. 
     Compare owned and external information. Investigate where they materially differ and determine whether the issue is outdated information, factual inconsistency, legitimate criticism, or a broader positioning gap.
  5. Monitor over time. 
     Information environments continually change. Regularly review important sources and AI-generated answers to identify new gaps and keep your communications foundation current.

Additional Resources:

• Reputation management for AI search: Monitoring and response framework
• Rethinking reputation management in public relations for the AI era
• AI search is the new front page
• How do you measure PR? A guide to meaningful metrics
• Listen to more episodes of the On Top of PR with Jason Mudd podcast.
• Find out more about Axia Public Relations.
  
  

If you like this episode, you're going to love this:

• AI and PR with Microsoft's CCO Frank Shaw
• The PR playbook for getting recommended by AI with Unusual
• How to prepare for any communication crisis with Tom Ciuba
• Crisis lessons learned from Southwest Airlines
  
  
  

Recorded: September 2026

Support the show

• On Top of PR is produced by Axia Public Relations, named by Forbes as one of America’s Best PR Agencies. Axia is an expert PR firm for national brands.
• On Top of PR is sponsored by ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.