Who’s reading my posts?

Who’s reading my posts? Besides the author, that number will be pretty small initially. But it’s not just humans. Today Large Language Models, LLMs, are the AI driven programs that scan website and online content. But if your content isn’t delivered  in the format those LLMs are looking for, then most people who don’t know who you are will never come across your content. In the heyday of SEO, websites relevant to your search query would rank above others in part because the content was updated often. But today, relevant content is being crawled in real time. So if you really want to catch the “eye” of Chat GPT etc., you need to be posting optimized content daily. Too often, executives including those in emerging tech companies and even companies with AI models, don’t see the value of content marketing because they don’t feel that decision makers are reading the content. And they might be right. But Google, Meta, Microsoft, ChatGPT etc., are “reading” it in real time, or they will be shortly. The fact is that LLMs are still looking for “authority” in content in order to organically rank that content. In other words, your content, including your posts, website pages, images, and video all need to be optimized for AI search. Who’s reading my posts? Beyond the LLMs, the people who see links to your content when they do a search are the ones who will click through to your content. Too often, traditional public relations firms and the companies they represent try very hard to protect the brand. And too often, publishing relevant content bears the brunt of that approach. So when no content gets published then no one reads it. Not the executives, not the employees, not the investors, not the media, not the future prospects, and not even your existing customers let alone the LLMs. And it’s not just blog posts that need to be optimized for AI search. Your website pages need to be optimized as well. And not with branding statements but instead with optimized content. For instance, Coca-Cola once had a branding statement, “It’s the real thing.” Now if you are Coca-Cola and you post “it’s the real thing” all over your website then the LLMs will get confused because it’s not a search term like “cola” or “soda” or “carbonated cola beverage”. In other words, unless your target audience searched for “it’s the real thing”, and frankly even if they did, your cola website would not appear. Too often, executives and traditional marketing/PR professionals get hung up on “branding” and “positioning” and therefore, by committee, nothing gets approved and no content is published. So without a steady flow of well-coded content the answer to “who’s reading my posts?” is no one including LLMs.

Taft Moore is a veteran digital marketing professional with training from Google, Meta, and Linked In.