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This Week in AI — 🤖 Can AI optimization improve your brand’s visibility?
AI

This Week in AI — 🤖 Can AI optimization improve your brand’s visibility?

September 10, 2024 | By: Dave Isaac

Each week we’ll gather headlines and tips to keep you current with how generative AI affects PR and the world at large. If you have ideas on how to improve the newsletter, let us know!

What You Should Know

 

Can AI Optimization Improve Your Brand’s Visibility?

Before we dive in, let’s give a short answer to the headline: We don’t know for sure just yet. 

The theory is that it’s possible to attract AI language models just like brands have with Google’s search algorithm. Search engine optimization (SEO) has long been a priority for content so brands can attract web traffic and appear before their target audiences. As AI tools grow more popular for search, some are betting on AI as the preferred search method of the future. 

Rethinking SEO in the realm of AI is so in its infancy that there’s no standard for what to call it — artificial intelligence optimization (AIO), generative artificial intelligence optimization (GAIO), generative engine optimization (GEO), and language model optimization (LMO) have all been offered up by various institutions. The jury is still out on which of these gets to be the next great tech acronym.

So, what methods are people using to try and game AI tools? New York Times columnist Kevin Roose wrote that he had success amending the bio on his website, hiding text in small font the same color as the background, and using a “strategic text sequence,” essentially code developed by researchers who wrote about manipulating large language models. Another approach is to try the opposite strategy of publications trying to block web crawlers — make your site easily accessible and indexable. The movement is gaining steam and while there is no catch-all tool for AI optimization, last month, HubSpot launched a free AI Search Grader to help marketers understand their brand awareness and sentiment in AI tools. 

Communications professionals eager to explore AI optimization can start by experimenting with AI-friendly content that is clear, concise, and rich in relevant language (think conversational language instead of keyword stuffing). You should also regularly monitor how AI tools represent your brand or clients to identify areas of improvement in your content strategy. As this concept evolves, early adopters could gain a significant competitive advantage in brand visibility and perception.

Elsewhere …

Tips and Tricks

📝 Tracking AI edits

What’s happening: Let’s face it, we could all use an extra set of eyes before hitting “publish,” “submit,” or “send.” AI does this through tools like Grammarly, but most of the suggestions are purely grammatical and sometimes they’re flat-out wrong. 

Why it matters: Tools like Claude or ChatGPT can go beyond copy editing to offer broader suggestions like making a story flow better or adding context. It can also provide tracked changes. Sorta. 

How it works: After you get the broad suggestions from an AI tool’s feedback, ask how it would revise the content. To get it to offer in-line edits, you need an extra bit of prompting. I usually say “Use bold font to show what you’re adding and strikethrough text to show what you’re removing,” but you could change those formatting requests to whatever works best for you. 

Asking your AI tool of choice to provide feedback on a piece of content — even something as short as a social media post — can unlock ideas you hadn’t considered or call out elements you may have overlooked.

Quote of the Week

“The main issue I want to try and impart is that we have agency right now, especially about how we’re using AI in our jobs. I’m worried if the behavior is to ban it or not talk about it, that only we’re going to only see bad use cases appear and none of the good ones.”

— Ethan Mollick, Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, in a TIME100 AI profile

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