Transcript:

Gloria Chou: [00:00:00] What’s up, small business heroes? Welcome back to Small Business PR. I’m your host, Gloria Chao. I wanna talk about something that has been quietly happening to small business owners, and most of us don’t even know it yet. Well, obviously, if you listen to this podcast or if you’re in my PR accelerator, you might have known that the search, the future of search and how people are discovering brands has forever changed.

I hear all the time that people say traditional SEO is dead, and I would say it’s not about traditional SEO is dead, it’s just that it’s no longer the storefront. Your website, your Instagram is no longer the storefront that people trust and convert from the highest. That’s right. So think about it this way.

I had a friend who just moved, and I asked her, “Oh, where did you get this amazing dishware?” She got some new plates. And she said, “Oh, on ChatGPT.” And I said, “Wow, so you literally typed in best dishware under X amount of dollars without even clicking on a single site, without clicking on a single link?” And she said, “Yep, I checked out right there in app.”

And I have been warning people about this for quite some time now because we know that ChatGPT has now integrated with Shopify, PayPal, Amazon, and so many things, and that AI [00:01:00] shopping has happened to all of the platforms. You know for a fact that here on this channel, I’m all about giving you the next and best, most accessible ways to make your business survive in any economy, in any change, and we know that Now it’s here, right?

People are shopping on ChatGPT, and so you might have seen what’s happening with your website traffic going down or the Google search bar happening. Uh, Google search bar is forever changed, and that speed that we’re feeling, which is, “Oh my God, things are changing so fast. What’s gonna happen next?” That has affected every single part of our lives, and yes, you betcha, it’s happening with AI visibility, how consumers trust, decide, and add things to cart and buy.

So I wanna talk about basically what’s been happening behind the scenes that a lot of people don’t talk about or enough, know enough of because we don’t control the algorithms. They’re doing so many updates, but we do know that search and discovery and shopping has forever changed. So I just wanna get into kind of the five things that are different.

The first thing is how your website is quietly not sending [00:02:00] as many website visitors to you as before. So what does that mean? It means that your website has basically stopped sending as many people as before because now it’s losing its share to AI traffic. So people can type in, like my friend, “best dishware” and check out an app without ever going to your website.

Now, does that mean that your website doesn’t matter? Of course it does, right? Because for traditional SEO, it’s mainly about what you do on your own website. So you can put an FAQ section, you can put in, uh, tags, uh, headings, things like that. SEO is still here. It’s not going away, but the share of voice of how people are finding it is gonna be weaker and weaker and weaker.

And the thing about SEO, traditional SEO, is that it kind of r- just rewards the people who have already been ranked high. I have people who have really hit it, like, big time in the 2000s blogging. They have so much SEO that they’re still riding on the wave of that. But now it’s really hard to use traditional SEO methods alone and tinker around with your website and optimize and do all these things, which by the way, now [00:03:00] you can do with AI tools, to get customers to notice you.

And so I think that is really the biggest change. So, we have people noticing that, you know, even if you have a Shopify website, um, or an Etsy store, you have decreased in just pure number of visitors because, again, people are going to ChatGPT. It doesn’t mean that they’re not buying as much, right?

Consumer behavior is, is, is people are still looking for things to buy. It just means that where they’re buying has fundamentally changed. So you’re not the only person who is experiencing a drop in traffic. This is happening all around for me as well, and so the game is not so much how can I get more eyeballs on my website or my Instagram, but how can I get AI to recommend me?

Because we know that AI search and people who are asking AI convert four times higher than any other organic platform. There’s never been a higher referral source than maybe your best friend telling you in your ear what you should buy. So in terms of where people are going to make decisions and how fast they actually buy And make that decision, it’s AI search all day, every day, right?

And also, you might have noticed that, you know, Google has AI mode. [00:04:00] So basically, when you do a search in Google, there are not really any links anymore, and you basically get an answer and start chatting with it without looking at a single person’s website. And that absolutely is happening across the board.

Google just announced that, you know, it has changed the search bar, and so we’re actually living, living in that now, right? This is, this is really number one of, like, how people are changing in the way that they find you. So the second thing, um, other than, you know, search basically stopped sending people to your website, which is the first one, the second one is that your website and your pretty Instagram and your TikTok and your blog, um, you know, it’s just not what AI reads as a focus.

Now, does it matter? Can it give some lift? A little bit. But again, traditional SEO is about you talking about you, you fixing things on your website, doing the FAQs, all the schema, all of that thing, all of that stuff. But now, what AI is looking for is, are you being referred? Are people talking about you? So it really goes from you talking about you to referrals, and that really literally is the definition of PR, right?

I always say marketing is you talking about you all day, every day But [00:05:00] PR is other people talking about you, and AI is reading your referral sources. So how many times have you been mentioned across platforms? And again, not those pay-to-play platforms where you can, you know, pay someone and get like a scammy 40 under 40.

Those are not editorial, they’re just ads. I’m talking about you being featured on a podcast or a gift guide, um, or, you know, mentioned in, in a Business Insider. We have so many people mentioned in like BuzzFeed and Marie Claire. That’s what I’m talking about, and that’s what AI is reading, is out of all the places on the internet, how many times have you been mentioned?

Are those sources credible? Are those sources authoritative? And so that’s really what they’re looking for. And so when AI is looking, and by the way, all the machines are different. Nobody knows exactly the formula, but we know from a, from like without a shadow of a doubt, that overwhelming majority of what AI is using to determine whether or not your brand is featured, your name, whatever, is whether or not you have been cited on other people’s platforms, right?

So one study found that, um, AI, what AI cites, 84% is based on citations, based on if [00:06:00] you’ve been featured elsewhere. And paid content is literally almost nothing, around 0.3%. So if I have limited amount of time, energy, bandwidth as a founder, and I wanna be found when people are looking for something to buy, I am not going to be spending my time on something that only drives less than 1% of traffic for what AI is determining, right?

I want to be right there in the decision-making spot when AI is deciding who to recommend, and that is PR all day, every day. So that could be press releases, that could be being on a podcast, um, being interviewed on a podcast. Um, it could be, you know, you, you being on a editorial, whether it’s a gift guide or if you’re not a product founder, it could be you, um, being featured on a, on a story about yourself.

So that’s, that’s really the second way that it’s changing, is that your website and your Instagram aren’t really what AI reads, and we want to be chosen and recommended. I always say it’s no longer enough to be seen and liked, right? That doesn’t really do much. You want to be chosen and you wanna be what AI chooses, because that is absolutely where people are going.

I see people scroll to browse, but they ask AI to decide, and I want to be absolutely right there when people are [00:07:00] deciding. And in fact, I get so many students now in our Get Featured Accelerator who have gotten featured so many times. They’re not really running ads. They have a very small business. They have, you know, not the fanciest website.

They don’t have a ton of revenue or budget, but they tell me all the time, “Somebody found me on Claude. Somebody found me on ChatGPT.” And it’s just amazing to see how our members are getting ahead of the curve in the early stages of this, which is really the biggest change happening to search for, for decades.

And I just wanna tell you now that if you’re listening to this, you are already ahead of so many other product owners who are still spinning their wheels on Instagram, on a platform they don’t own, that can be shut down or banned one day, right? Um, and so you’re playing the long game. You’re playing the smarter game.

Um- And look, you can have the most beautiful website in the industry, spend so much money on animations, graphics, and still not exist a single time in any of those answers, right? And so that, and that carousel that you did, you know, with the influencer, the Instagram Live, like it doesn’t really reach anyone outside of the [00:08:00] machine, right?

So like it, it doesn’t reach the machine is what I mean. It, it reaches maybe like 5% to 8% of your followers, but not the AI machines that are, that are, that are determining. So that’s not me telling you to run away from Instagram. It’s just telling you, knowing all these things with your limited time, what is your strategy?

How are you going to spend your time and energy? And that’s really something, something to reconsider, right? We ha- just have to be honest about what Instagram and your website does and what it doesn’t do. The third thing is that one good feature, one amazing even Forbes feature is not gonna hold you forever.

Now, I’m a PR coach. We have people getting featured all the time. My job is to get fe- people featured, but What AI is, is actually pulling from its recent data. So you getting into one Forbes feature three years ago is not as important as you consistently being in a smaller gift guide, a medium tier, or a smaller podcast.

I think a lot of times people are like, “I only wanna be in Vogue,” or, “I only wanna be in Oprah’s Favorite Things.” And we’ve had a lot of accelerator members get featured in those places, but AI is looking at f- at [00:09:00] recency. And so we know from fact, from research, that roughly half of what AI is, AI answers are, um, being used, like what AI is pulling from is recent, like in the last 10, 11 months.

So the fresher something is, the more likely that it’s gonna get pulled in for you to be recommended, right? So that’s really number three, is that just having one epic great feature maybe 10 years ago is not gonna be as important as you having a consistent method to get featured all the time, and that’s what we do inside of the PR accelerator, right?

It’s not just about one and done. It’s about creating a system where I’m constantly bringing you the PR opportunities of, “Hey, here’s a writer writing about this. All you have to do is press send.” And so that cadence, that consistency will constantly bring you to the top of AI search results. That’s really the game that we’re playing all day, every day.

Um, and the fourth thing is that, um, this is probably the most mic drop moment, is that there’s no more page two or page one. Um, if you’re either in the AI answer or not, and so bringing back, bringing me back to the Google search bar change, which is the biggest change they’ve [00:10:00] ever made in search, how they are changing fundamentally how searches are, and you have probably experienced it.

Yesterday, I was having a chat with Google, and I didn’t see any websites. I was just chatting with it. It gave me answers, and I started typing, and it kind of is all within that one box without me scrolling on page one or page two. So the game before was, “I wanna rank on page one,” right? That’s really your traditional SEO, but people aren’t even looking at that anymore.

People aren’t even going and browsing. They’re getting their answers from Google right in the agentic AI chat feature. So you’re either in the AI answer or you’re not. That’s it. And so that’s really the, the, the game. So when people are asking for the best housewarming gift or a candle that has XYZ or pet products for whatever prompt they have, are you in that, right?

So in your old search, maybe you were optimizing and spending a lot of money to maybe get on like page two even, and Not to say that it doesn’t matter as much, but it matters a lot less these days because again, it’s not about being on page one or page two. It’s either you’re in the answers or you’re not.

Because in AI, [00:11:00] there’s no page two. There’s just no page two. You’re either in the answer or you’re nowhere. And the fifth thing is that most of the time people don’t even see this happening, right? I have so many people who are like, “Oh, well, you know, like that’s, this is something that’s gonna happen later,” or, “I’m not quite ready yet.

I’m still like revamping my website or doing something on Instagram.” And I say, “Okay, well, you can wait, but AI is absolutely picking the winners and losers right now, and the brands who understand this, who understand to, to know how to feed AI exactly what they’re looking for, which is citations, relevant PR features, they’re the ones that are gonna stick around.”

Because right now it’s kind of up for grabs. It’s kind of this window of opportunity, kind of like getting on TikTok when it just started. It was so easy to go viral. Now good luck, right? And so I wanna give you this information because I don’t want you to listen to this a year from now and be like, “Oh my God, like now everyone’s optimizing for this.

I wish I did this early on.” So what you do in the very early stages, first comer’s advantage, people who are there earlier, you have such an incredible leg up than anyone else, right? You know this in [00:12:00] business as well. A lot of times the businesses that make millions or are unicorns, they were just there early at the right time, at the right place before everyone knew that it became a thing.

So how can you do something earlier? How can you adopt something earlier and really be ahead of the curve? Because it gets so much easier when AI is picking you right now for you to stick as opposed to trying to penetrate that when all the other big brands have rushed in. And right now is the best time because you can’t really buy your way to the top of all these AI searches.

You know, um, Claude even said they’re not gonna do ads, and ChatGPT said they’re debuting ads, but it’s still very early on. If you look at any other platform in the history of commerce, Pinterest, Platform X, Twitter, you know, LinkedIn, Instagram, who are the ones that get seen? It’s the people who are most, quote-unquote, “popular” with the most followers or the people who pay the most.

And AI doesn’t play that game, and so it feels like meritocracy is back. We as small businesses have a way to get featured, but we just have to shift our mindset from just doing what we’ve been always told, which is Instagram, Instagram, which honestly How many times have you [00:13:00] found out a front has been hacked, banned, or restricted, right?

It’s just like a ticking time bomb versus building something that’s really gonna put you in front of those conversations at the moment when people are deciding to buy. And so not to say that Instagram doesn’t work, I think Instagram is no longer a discovery tool. It actually even said that itself, right?

It’s no longer for people to discover you because your content may or may not even be shown, and if so, we don’t know who it’s being shown to. It’s a lot less linear. It’s more of a nurture tool, so it’s where you go to have follow-up conversations, to nurture and engage. I use it as a nurture tool, so I’m constantly in the DMs with all of our members cheering them on, but it’s no longer a tool for discovery.

And if I were to rely on Instagram for discovery, my business would not succeed. It just, it just wouldn’t because I have no control of who it shows it to. Maybe one day, um, you know, uh, I’m a shadow banned or one day the algorithm is in my favor or not, and I just have no freaking clue. But with AI, if people are literally typing best candle or best, you know, children’s product for something, their buying intent is 100 times higher.

I know that they’re close to buying. They’re probably ready to whip out their credit card, [00:14:00] and there’s no better, most trustworthy way than to be in those answers. So that’s the game I will play all day, every day. I always say if you want a more successful business, ask better questions, right? If you want a better life, if you want a better business, ask better questions.

And instead of asking, “How do I get more eyeballs or how do I get more followers?” The question really is, how do I get chosen to be the one that AI recommends? So if you want to know more about how you can get featured using these free AI tools, even though you’re not a tech person, I’m certainly not, you can watch my free masterclass at gloriachoupr.com/masterclass for free to see the exact prompts to know exactly what editors are looking for, how to contact them, and what to say so that you can get featured.

Because editors absolutely are looking for brand new voices, not just big box brands, and if you’re not gonna put your name in the hat, they’re gonna feature someone else. So I always say, why have it not be you? So go to Gloria Chou, C-H… That’s gloriachoupr.com/masterclass. I walk you through all the ways that AI is changing how you can get featured in search, and the actual prompts that I use with these free tools to tell me exactly what to pitch and [00:15:00] when.

Until next time