Transcript:

Speaker 7: 00:00
What’s up, small business heroes? It’s your host, Gloria Chao, and you’re listening to “Small Business PR” podcast. So the last episode, I didn’t wanna be all like doom and gloom. It– I talked a little bit about why is it that people are just no longer going on your website or not finding you like they used to. In this episode, I wanna tell you the actionable steps that you can actually take so that you can be found not only online, but also in AI search, which we know for a fact is where people are going. We know that AI-referred traffic converts four times even higher than any organic platform, and there’s never been a platform that refers better, more converting traffic than AI. I always say people scroll to browse, but they ask AI to decide, So again, I’m gonna give you some actionable steps, so I’m not leaving you, again, with a cliffhanger, but I want to clear something up, which is that a lot of people are saying they’re doing the work, “I’m working so hard. Why am I not getting eyeballs?” And I don’t think it’s about doing more work or harder work, it’s just being strategic and knowing where it’s going, how people are deciding, and how you can be in those conversations at the point when they’re making a decision. So if you look at Instagram, people are browsing. Maybe they are browsing for something else. Maybe they don’t have an intent to buy from you, but something piques their interest, But you don’t know what the buying intent of that person is. But if people are asking ChatGPT, “Hey, what’s the best, vegan XYZ,” “for baking?” Or, “What’s the best beauty product for melanin-rich skin?” They probably have a very high intent to buy. And so that’s why for that reason, getting PR features, getting into those gift guides directly feeds into those AI citations. And so the real game is not just how do I get more eyeballs, how do I get more likes? You wanna ask better questions if you have, if you wanna have a better business. And the better question to ask is, “How do I get AI to choose me? How do I get AI to recommend me?” And so that’s what we’re gonna talk about. And so a lot of people ask me, “Well, what about traditional SEO and tinkering around with my website and hiring an SEO firm?” And SEO is not dead, It’s still there. It’s just the share of audience is gonna be a lot less. So when we talk about old SEO, it’s about the things that you’re doing with your website, so adding the tags, adding the descriptions, tinkering around with it. But really AI visibility is about referrals, like the friend who’s referring you, and that is always gonna be more credible, more trustworthy, and leads to higher conversions, period. Because anyone can tinker around with their website, keyword stuff, do all the things, but getting s- other people to talk about you, getting cited in a gift guide article or getting cited somewhere else on the internet, that’s really the highest trust signal that AI is looking for when deciding who to recommend. And if you are not in those conversations when AI is recommending you, when people are asking, you’re just absolutely invisible to this generation of shoppers. So let’s get into it. The five things that you can actually do today to make sure that you are in those conversations, And there are some of them that move the needle a little bit, some of them that move the needle a lot. And we’re gonna start with the first one, which you all know because I am a PR coach, which is getting other people to talk about you. Again, that’s really the most Like epic thing that you can do that’s going to signal to AI, yes, pick this brand. And again, getting people to talk about you. And this is really not just about like reviews. A lot of people are like, “Well, what about reviews and influencers and on Instagram?” and me being on the podcast, All those things, outside voices that are saying your name across platforms, that is really what’s going to help you get chosen and get found and recommended. That’s what we want. And the data is really not subtle, We know for a fact that when you are being cited, AI directly pulls from that 81% of the time. So AI citations, they are surfacing you being cited on other people’s platforms, so PR 81% of the time, but your ads and social media is less than 1%. And so if I were to be really smart about my time and how I spend it, I will play the long game all day, every day, which is how do I get featured in the media? How do I get cited so that AI picks me up? And also traditional SEO as well, and so that’s really it is. So you can publish more of your own pages, but that doesn’t move the needle as much as being talked about by other people. And so everything is basically not as important on this list as this first one. If you only do one thing this year, is get other people to talk about you on an authoritative platform, which is mostly a website with a high domain authority, and to do it often. So we know that PR, the way that it affects AI is not just if you get that one Forbes feature four years ago, but how can you get cited consistently? And we know that AI traffic, AI citations is pulling from recent features up to 11 months ago. Anything beyond that, we know is not really gonna be a huge factor in how they decide whether or not you are mentioned. So inside of our accelerator, we help people do this all day, every day, and it’s, not just the big features like Oprah and, and Vogue, which we have helped people get into, but also the smaller blogs, and so the more consistent you are, the higher and higher the chances of you being featured and found when people are making those decisions. the second one is maintain a continuity when you describe yourself everywhere. So not only on your website, but when you introduce yourself, when a podcast host introduce yourself, when you give your bio to somebody, when you’re a product and you’re mentioning your product. So be consistent. That’s really gonna help AI put, connect the dots in this interconnected web of you being mentioned on other people’s platforms, So again, AI has to decide what box you go in, who are you, who you serve, and the more clear and consistent that is repeated across the internet when people are mentioning you on YouTube, on podcasts, on a gift guide feature, it’s easier for AI to then decide and to surface your name. So if your Instagram bio says one thing, your website says another, your press page says another, your YouTube, if the podcast host is introducing you as something else, it’s kind of mixed up, and it just kind of makes it more confusing, And that’s what we want is consistency. So pick your words, pick a clear description of your title, of what you wanna be known for, and use that language everywhere you show up, And so again, it’s all about consistency, and that’s really a good way to make sure that AI is absolutely clear without a shadow of a doubt who you are. And again, AI doesn’t wanna recommend a business it’s not sure about, because if you’re not sure about yourself, it’s not gonna recommend you. So that’s the second one is be consistent in how you are talking about yourself across platforms. The third– And a next few. So again, these things that I’m gonna talk about are on your website, and I’m not saying that your website doesn’t matter. In the previous episode, I talked about how your website is just not getting as much traffic because, again, people are going to ChatGPT and Claude and Perplexity. But your website still matters for traditional SEO, So it’s still going to be there, but it just doesn’t matter as much as AI. And what we want is to have everything optimized. So we want to have the citations and features for AI to refer people to then maybe browse on your website. And so your website does matter, so I don’t want you to think it’s like one or the other. But your website doesn’t matter as much now than the PR citations, and we know that for a fact. So you can fiddle around and do SEO all you want, but SEO really rewards people who got in on the game early, like 10, 20 years ago, and it’s really hard now to do those things. But if you are to tinker around on your website, here are a couple things that can make it much easier for people to find you, and one thing is to add an FAQ. So that’s number three is the add an FAQ to your blog sections that is phrased in a way that people naturally ask. For example, what is the best pet shampoo for dogs with allergies? Or what is the best vegan ice cream that’s low calorie, Like what are people asking, and how can you put that on the FAQ to really match those inquiries? And those are also the prompts that people are putting into ChatGPT anyways. So it helps AI read you clearly. It helps them create a bridge, a perfect web of connecting that, just like the one before about you mentioning your name. Here, it’s about matching the prompts or what people are saying, and you want to match that way that people are asking these days. So again, be consistent, You want to have an FAQ section on your website that then gives like five or six questions that people are naturally asking, and so it just makes it easier for people and AI to find you. The fourth thing is put up a press page. The people in our accelerator have gotten so many features across mediums, whether it’s local radio, TV print, digital, and I always say put a press page. And the reason why a press page is so good is that, again, you, wanna get found by having an interconnected web of people talking about you, linking back to your website. And what better way to make that web even more strong than having your own press page linking out to your press features and your citations? So on my press page, I have some of my, top features, whether it’s, digital, places that I’ve been featured, and also the top podcasts that have the, most listeners. now I think I’ve been on over 150 or so podcasts. Obviously, I’m not gonna put 150 links. That’s really gonna make the page really complex and difficult. But I’m probably gonna put, a sizable number that are from the highest ranking podcasts as well. So again Create a press page, link out to the places that you’ve been cited, which absolutely helps AI find you, read you clearly, and know exactly what you stand for. And it doesn’t have to be a fancy, crazy press page. We have people pouring candles, selling on Etsy and Shopify, and they can have a very simple press page. But you wanna have the right link, you wanna link it out, and again, it’s about recency. So, again, your Forbes feature four years ago, yes, you can put it on your press page, but what AI is looking for is, do you have any recent things, more recent than 11 months? And so sometimes that’ll be a smaller blog, sometimes it’ll be a medium blog. So don’t say that, you’re only going for the Vogue and the Oprahs and the huge top 1%. Those are great to have, and we have a lot of people getting featured on those, but the smart ones know that because AI wants consistency and recency, they’re also going after the mid-tier blogs too. So again, so many different buckets of media, not just the huge ones that you see on the magazine stands. and another thing is that when you put up a press page, it not only helps with AI search traditional SEO to quickly make sense of who you are, what you serve, and how to recommend you, but also it helps with partnerships. It helps with speaking collabs, it helps with credibility boosting, thought leadership, things that maybe a potential investor is looking for, or someone who wants to partner with you, or an affiliate, or someone who wants to work with you. So having a press page is really great. And if you have a press release, which is really great because again, a press release is your structured announcement you put out into the newswire, and I’ve done this with so many startups who are raising hundreds of millions of dollars or who are just launching their beauty brand, a press release is great because it also is press. It gets syndicated across the internet. Even though you wrote it, it still is PR. And so a lot of times when I do a VIP press release day for my clients, by the way, so rich in keywords, so rich in, the description, the headline, the sub-headline, and it instantly boosts their SEO and AI visibility. I have them put the press release onto their press page as well, and that press release will then get picked up by a Yahoo Finance or AP News, and then we can start linking more. So one way for you to immediately to have press traction and to have PR is to issue a press release. And if you wanna know how to work with me on that, you can go to gloriachaoPR.com/VIP and schedule a call. But this is I wanna call like a SEO and PR on steroids. So it gives a really quick boost. I had people who I worked with who are coaches or who are product makers, and I wrote a press release for them, and two weeks later they were being found on Claude. And the reason why is because a press release is such structured data that AI likes to skim and can easily make sense of, The headline, the sub-headline, all of those things formatted. that’s really what I mean. Put up a press page, issue a press release, and the last one of how you can get ChatGPT to find you, because again, your customers are discovering things in a very different way than they used to, is to, again, don’t discount the smaller mentions. Again, not just the big ones, So get into five gift guides or get into five smaller podcasts while you’re pitching for the big one. Again, AI wants recency, they want consistency, and that will always beat that one Forbes feature you got three or four years ago. and the thing is that you wanna keep feeding the AI machines, recent data, like recent citations. And I think that’s really the advantage because there’s so many now, so many blogs, there’s so many podcasts, and people who are only going after the top 1%, they are basically missing out on a huge chunk of the strategy. Because if you can get featured multiple times in medium tier and lower tier blogs and podcasts, you are doing the work to get yourself featured in AI much more than just the companies who are looking at the top 1%. So inside the accelerator, we help people get featured in not just the top 1%, but also the mid-tier ones as well. Also local, don’t discount local. Again, it’s about recency and consistency. So Hopefully these five things have helped you make sense of not only what’s happening, but things that you can absolutely do to position yourself to be found, in this era of AI search where people are going, and another thing is just quick warnings. It– That I don’t wanna waste your time because a lot of times people are, seeing these things and it gets misconstrued. So the thing is that, internal linking, And cleaning up your site. There are so many SEO agencies who are like, you know, yes, there are very technical, complex SEO things, but honestly now with Claude and ChatGPT, you can use it as a thought partner, and there are skills that you can download on Claude that can audit your site, so you don’t need to spend a ton of money to hire an SEO agency to do something, very complex and very technical at an earlier stage of business. So unless you have, an Apple Computers or something, or if you have like a legacy brand with like hundreds of different new products, you have different pages. But for most people who are listening to this, if you can just use like a Claude or a ChatGPT, and you can connect your Google Analytics, to, to Claude Cowork, it automatically reads your data. You can put it into ChatGPT or Claude to make sense of the data. You can tell it, “Hey, scan my website and see how you would help do an SEO audit and then make those changes.” AI absolutely can do that, and we live in a time where it’s never been more accessible for small businesses to leverage these tools that are free or low cost to be able to have the SEO knowledge that honestly small businesses didn’t have before because it was gate kept and you had to hire an agency. So definitely do just start a conversation with Claude, ChatGPT, upload your info, connect your Google Analytics, connect those things and start chatting with it, Tell it your goals. Tell it, “Here’s my business.” “Here are some competitors. How can I increase my AI visibility and SEO?” And just do some, general site cleanup so that things are consistent. and again, I’m not telling you to get all these fancy tools. I always say that we don’t wanna get caught up in the shiny tool syndrome because what happens is that there’s so many tools that are basically built on the LLMs that we know, which is Claude, Perplexity, ChatGPT, and they just put a different packaging around it. But basically the, the foundation of it is still what you can get with Claude and ChatGPT, which are here to stay, Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. And a lot of times we get sold on all of these like, ooh, here’s another shiny new, app, or here’s a new plugin that I need to pay for. This is gonna do that. And I would say, be cautious of that, not only because you’re gonna start piling on all these tools that adds complexity, they can break, and a lot of times ChatGPT and Claude can do this already, but that a lot of these businesses might go out of business because people are gonna find out sooner or later that these LLMs that are foundational to what we do today, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, have all the capabilities already. So that’s one thing that I’ve been doing is that with AI and with the fact that we train our Claude so well, ChatGPT so We use it for so many things across business functions that we don’t require… It doesn’t require me to yet buy another software, I just chat with Claude and I create a skill or I make a custom GPT. So just think about how you can build something that is an asset that grows on your stored knowledge instead of you buying 50 different plugins and tools and apps. So that’s it for today. Hopefully, I left you with something to think about. we are always here trying to not gatekeep and keeping the, what’s happening in the future to make it accessible for small businesses. And I always say we really want small business to win and thrive because that’s what makes us human, So I’m here as a champion of small businesses. Everything that I see, everything that I learn, I’m giving this information to you. And if you wanna learn more about how to get featured in the media and how to get websites to cite you so that you can absolutely be picked and be the chosen brand when ChatGPT, when people are asking ChatGPT,

Speaker 5: 15:21
asking better questions, another good question is not, “Oh, how do I, get more popular, but how do I make more sales?” Is, “How many sales am I losing by just being invisible and not in those answers,” And here’s the thing, before you spiral, I wanna leave you with a couple things that are free and doable, not just like a cliffhanger of “Ugh, what do I do now?” But literally open up ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude and ask it to recommend a business like yours, like a way that a real customer would ask. What comes up, I want to know your competitors and see what it’s happening, and run it a few times in different ways that people might phrase it, and so you can see what it’s currently recommending and whether or not you’re in those conversations. And again, PR will help you get into those conversations. And that way you can see what is already happening, what they’re pulling from, and just have an honest look at where you are right now, and then also like outside of your own website, reflect on is your business mentioned anywhere else? Because again, if you don’t have citations, if the AI machines are not seeing an interconnected web of people mentioning you, then it’s really hard for them to surface you, because it’s all about trust and authority. So yes, you can tinker all you want with your website, but if you’re not in other people’s websites, if you’re not being cited, it’s really hard for you to be in those answers. And so if you’re not in any of those answers, it’s not a failure, it’s just a place to start. And so hopefully this episode and the rest of my episodes and my masterclass have given you a way to think about it. So you can watch it now at gloriachowpr.com/masterclass. That’s www.gloriac-H-O-U-P-R.com/masterclass. I show you step-by-step screen share, no, like literally no gatekeeping. People have watched it and gotten featured, so gloriachowpr.com/masterclass and see how you can use these simple prompts, these free AI tools to know exactly what people are covering and how you can get in those conversations. Until next time.