30 Copilot Prompts for PR and Comms That Actually Work, and 10 That Do Not

Most Copilot prompt lists were written by somebody who has never run a press office. They are generic, relentlessly positive, and a fair few of them describe things the tool cannot actually do.

These thirty I have pulled together are organised around the jobs a comms team does, and they follow the prompt structure Microsoft itself publishes. The ten at the end are the ones to stop trying, with the documented reason each fails.

How to write a Copilot prompt that actually works

Microsoft sets out four parts in its guidance on writing a great prompt. Goal, context, source and expectations.

Goal is what you want. Context is why, and who reads it. Source is the material it should work from. Expectations is the shape of the answer, so length, format and tone.

Leave out the source and you get invention. Leave out the expectations, and you get five hundred words when you wanted eighty. Nearly every disappointing output I have seen is missing one of those four. I love context personally – that is the winner.

Two smaller things from the same page. Typing a forward slash lets you reference a specific file, meeting, email or Teams conversation, which is how the source gets in. And Copilot is limited to your current conversation, so nothing you carefully explained last Tuesday has survived.

First, check which Copilot you are actually using

Microsoft renamed the tiers, and the new names have left a lot of people unsure what they bought. The current overview lists three.

Only Premium reaches your SharePoint, your inbox and your meeting history. On the Basic tiers you can still upload a file into the conversation by hand, and the slash reference will find files but not people, meetings or emails.

The first three lists assume Premium. On Basic, paste the source material in instead.

10 prompts for the press office

1. Release first draft. “Using /[project brief], draft a 350 word press release for UK trade media announcing [thing]. Inverted pyramid. Leave a gap marked QUOTE for the spokesperson comment. No adjectives in the opening paragraph.”
2. Angle stress test. “Read /[draft release]. List the three weakest claims a sceptical trade journalist would challenge, and what evidence each would need.”
3. The so what test. “Summarise /[draft release] in one sentence a busy news editor would read. Then say honestly whether that sentence is a story.”
4. Regional rewrite. “Rewrite /[release] for the Yorkshire Post. Lead on the local employment angle. Keep to 250 words and British English.”
5. Media Q and A. “From /[release] and /[background note], write the twelve questions a journalist is most likely to ask, hardest first. Answers in no more than 40 words each.”
6. Pitch email. “Draft a 90 word pitch email to a technology reporter offering /[release] as an exclusive. Subject line under nine words. No pleasantries.”
7. Thread catch up. “Summarise this email thread. Give me the decision made, who owns each action, and anything still unresolved.” Run it in Outlook on the thread itself.
8. Spokesperson brief. “Using /[release] and /[Q and A], write a one page briefing for our chief executive before a broadcast interview. Three key messages, three questions to avoid being drawn on, one bridging phrase each.”
9. Tone check. Open Coaching by Copilot on a drafted reply in Outlook and ask it to flag anything that reads defensive. It reviews tone, sentiment and clarity.
10. Embargo note. “Draft the covering note for a release under embargo until 00:01 on [date]. Two sentences. Firm without being rude.”

8 prompts for reporting and measurement

11. Coverage summary. “From /[coverage spreadsheet], summarise the month in 150 words for a client who reads the first paragraph only.”
12. Message pull through. “Check /[coverage log] against the three key messages in /[campaign plan]. Which message appeared least, and in which titles.”
13. Report skeleton. “Using /[coverage log] and /[last month’s report], draft this month’s report in the same structure. Mark every figure you took from the log with the row number.”
14. Client email. “Turn /[monthly report] into a 120 word email to the client. Lead with the single best result. No bullet points.” Sarah Townsend put the rule behind this one better than I can when she was on the podcast: your audience is busy, respect their time and tell them what they need to know. Her episode is a short, useful listen for anyone who writes to clients.
15. Meeting recap. “What did the client ask us to change, and what did we commit to.” Ask this in the Teams recap after a call. Transcription or recording has to have been on.
16. Action chase. “From /[meeting recap], list every action with an owner and a date. Flag any action with no owner.”
17. Board summary. “Rewrite /[quarterly report] for a board that does not know PR terminology. Explain reach in one sentence.”
18. Year in review. “From /[twelve monthly reports], list the five results worth repeating and the two things that stopped working.”

12 prompts for internal comms, leadership and social

19. All staff announcement. “Using /[decision note], draft a 200 word all staff email announcing [change]. Say what changes, when, and what people should do. No motivational language.”
20. The difficult version. “Rewrite the announcement for the team most affected by it. Acknowledge the disruption in the first sentence.”
21. Manager cascade. “From /[announcement], write eight questions managers will be asked in the next 48 hours, with short honest answers.”
22. Intranet cut down. “Reduce /[policy document] to 300 words an employee will actually read. Keep every deadline.”
23. Leadership post. “Draft three opening lines for a LinkedIn post by our managing director about /[report]. Each one a different angle. First person, no rhetorical questions.”
24. Ghostwriting brief. “Read /[three previous posts by this person]. List ten rules describing how they write, as instructions rather than adjectives.”
25. Comment reply. “Draft a reply to this comment that answers the question and does not sound defensive. Under 40 words.”
26. Campaign content plan. “Using /[campaign plan], draft a four week social calendar. Three posts a week. State the objective for each post in five words.”
27. Repurpose. “Turn /[blog post] into six LinkedIn posts. Each must make one point and stand alone.”
28. Long copy to short. “Cut /[case study] to 100 words for a carousel. Keep the client name and the number.”
29. Holding statement. “Using /[incident note], draft a holding statement of no more than 60 words. State what we know, what we are doing, and when we will say more. No apology unless the note confirms fault.”
30. Crisis Q and A. “From /[holding statement], write the fifteen hardest questions a journalist could ask, and mark which ones we cannot answer yet.” Worth remembering that the crisis itself may now be AI made. I cloned my own voice in about two minutes for a webinar with Will and left him a fake voicemail asking him to pay a supplier. The deepfake episode covers what that means for your plan.

The 10 prompts that will waste your time

These fail for documented reasons rather than because you phrased them badly.

1. “Analyse this coverage spreadsheet and tell me what it means.” The Department for Business and Trade ran observed sessions on exactly this. In its M365 Copilot evaluation, Copilot users scored 1.5 out of 5 on accuracy against 2.7 for people working without it, and took longer. Only eleven sessions, so treat it carefully, but do not hand it the analysis.
2. “Build me a deck from this brief.” Same evaluation, PowerPoint: faster, and rated 1.5 out of 5 for accuracy against 5 for the control group. Fine for a first structure, not for anything a client sees.
3. “Write it in our tone of voice.” There is no stored house style. The prompting guidance is explicit that Copilot is limited to the current conversation, so you have to supply examples every time.
4. “Summarise the press coverage from this morning.” No documented integration exists with Cision, Roxhill or any media database, and the Basic tiers cannot see your files at all.
5. “Check whether this statistic is right.” Microsoft’s own Word FAQ states that Copilot cannot understand meaning or evaluate accuracy. It is not a fact checker and it will confidently invent figures.
6. “Summarise what came into the press inbox.” Copilot in Outlook works on primary mailboxes only. Shared, delegate, group and archive mailboxes are out, which rules out most agency press inboxes.
7. “Recap the meeting I did not record.” Transcription does not start on its own. Without transcription or recording, the recap is generally not there afterwards.
8. “Move that logo and fix the layout.” In PowerPoint it works on textbox content and cannot modify shapes or other objects.
9. “Read the file on my desktop.” Files have to be in SharePoint or OneDrive, or uploaded into the conversation. A checked out file will error until it is checked back in.
10. “Pull the sensitive HR detail from the encrypted thread.” It cannot open S/MIME or Double Key Encryption mail, and it never sees anything you personally lack permission for.

The pattern across all ten is the same. Copilot is good at reshaping material you have given it and poor at finding, judging or verifying material you have not.

That is a training problem more than a product one, which is why the HMRC evaluation named practical training as the gap in its own findings. If you want your team working from prompts like these on your own campaign documents, that is what a day of Microsoft Copilot training for marketing teams covers.