Norwegian student welfare organisation, SiO, were early to jump on the AI train – especially using the many tools offered by Mynewsdesk. By adopting this new way of working, SiO now spends considerably less time on the creation and distribution process – while still receiving great coverage.
SiO is a Norwegian student welfare organisation with the goal to enhance the everyday life of its members. The organisation, which has over 75 000 registered students from 27 educational institutions in the Oslo region, offers services such as housing, healthcare and even kindergartens to promote overall well-being.
As a student welfare organisation, SiO has an important role to play when it comes to topics such as housing, but we also focus on preventing loneliness and mental illness. That’s why it’s important for us to showcase how we work with these challenges and create visibility around them, says Nina Langeland, Communications Director at SiO.
Letting Go of the Conventional
Covering a large scope of topics with a relatively small workforce, efficiency has always been a priority for SiO. It is also one of the main reasons why they started working with Mynewsdesk back in 2016. When SiO heard that Mynewsdesk was releasing a new AI feature earlier this year, it quickly caught their attention. By typing in short instructions, they would now be able to receive a draft of an entire press release. Seeing that this could streamline their work even further, SiO were eager to try it out.
We have been working with Mynewsdesk for several years now and are very satisfied with how easy it is to publish and monitor our results. We are always looking for ways to improve our work, so when I heard that there was a new function to help generate press releases, I contacted Mynewsdesk and asked if we could be part of the pilot. I thought it would be a good opportunity to try it out early and get to know the possibilities. With a small staff, we have to prioritise resources in order to reach our goals, says Nina Langeland.
A New Member of the Team
Working with AI as part of its communication and PR process has become a game changer for SiO. Adopting the many tools provided by Mynewsdesk, such as finding relevant journalists and receiving media reports, has been an important part of that journey. Creating press releases with the help of the platform’s generative AI has helped SiO save a great amount of time. It also provides them with new ways of expressing themselves while receiving the same results as when they did all of the work manually.
Of course you still have to do a lot of editing and rewriting to ensure quality, as well as keeping the company’s tone of voice, but there’s a big difference when you have a draft to work from. When publishing AI-generated press releases we still get the expected amount of coverage, and I don’t think the response would have been very different if they hadn’t been partly made by AI, says Nina Langeland before concluding:
Although AI is really exciting, it also raises questions about ethics and security and we feel that the tools provided by Mynewsdesk help us navigate these uncertainties. It’s the latest example of how we adopt new ways of working to develop our PR – now AI is like a new member of the team.
