Redefining how brand stories get discovered and how we should be sharing them.
Brand discovery online and on social platforms is no longer based solely on keywords or hashtags. Natural language queries served up as prompts to LLMs like ChatGPT and others are growing in the way we humans get the information we’re searching for today.
Businesses that view AI search as a top-of-funnel awareness and a middle-of-funnel relationship-building tool are the ones winning the optimization game.
If you’re still stuffing your web pages with keywords and unhelpful, watered-down content, hoping to grab the attention of search engines, it’s time for a new strategy.
If Your Brand or Business Feels Invisible, AI Search May Be to Blame
Before you scramble to change your content, it can help to understand how AI is changing the search game. You may have noticed these three key challenges when trying to get eyes on your content.
Declining Organic Traffic
Users can now scan an AI snippet and get the answer to their question without ever needing to click through the original web source. The result: you provided helpful content but received no web traffic in the process.
Difficulty Standing Out
AI makes creating content easier than ever, but also saturates the web. This makes it more challenging to ensure that shared information does not create duplicative content and gets noticed by the new search rules. When ten articles start to sound the same in slightly different words, none are memorable.
We unpack this exact problem in our recent article, Should You Use AI to Create Stories for Your Brand. The bottom line: information that sounds generic disappears.
Greater Scrutiny of Credibility and Trust
How helpful your content is to your audience continues to grow as a key factor in whether your brand shows up in your audience’s search. Publishing a blog on “The Top 3 Tips” without including any insight or helpful information is viewed as noise, not original authorship.
Trust is the New Distribution Engine
AI search results now go beyond asking, “Does this information answer the search query?” It also asks, “Is this trustworthy information?”
To make sure LLMs view your content as trustworthy, evaluate each story you craft against these four factors.
Experience. Are you showing you have real experience with the topic rather than recycling other brand insights?
Expertise. Are you demonstrating knowledge of the subject matter?
Consistent. Is your brand showing up with the same position or POV across all channels? Distinctive brands reinforce themselves. Repetition builds trust and recognition. Your unique perspective is an automatic differentiator.
Proof of Human. Bring a human touch and weave in emotionall-resonant where possible. Originality through the sharing of human voices and real stories can’t be easily replicated.
Focus on what you know and continue to share your message intentionally.
Stories Travel Further Than Facts
AI can summarize facts and reference numbers, but it cannot duplicate a lived experience. These unique moments are remembered and retold, showing the human impact and connection to a brand.
Here are some examples of ways to showcase or highlight your brand’s lived experiences.
- Share your founder story, including quotes from the founder and leadership team.
- Share a unique, impactful moment that changed your business.
- Share a video soundbite as the main reference point of the story.
- Tell a client success story, showing how they benefited from your organization.
- Highlight your organization’s positive impact on the community.
- Share a before-and-after story of growth following implementation of a new strategy, system, or goal.
Humans Still Decide What Matters
Robots may be the ones scanning your content, but humans still need to believe in what they’re seeing and reading.
Technology will keep evolving, and platforms will continue to change, but establishing human trust and originality will remain irreplaceable.
If you’d like help determining your own storytelling approach to build trust with your audience, Let’s Chat. We’re always here to help.