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Way back in the early 2010s, things were getting revved up in content marketing. Our shop had been lucky to be early in the game, and we were working with big tech, energy, pharma, and finance brands. We’d come up with a new strategy, or at least a new variation on the old concept of custom publishing. In a world defined by search, strategy really meant sharing knowledge through great articles, videos and infographics. We were experimenting and moving fast, far faster than typical agency production speeds, with fantastic results.
Sounds pretty good, right?
Even better, the most relevant pieces often ranked fast in search, driving traffic to brand websites and establishing companies as leaders on timely topics, such as the Internet of Things and the US energy portfolio.
Take a look at this classic:
After 15 years, GE’s infographic “How Loud is a Wind Turbine?” is still the top ranked image on the subject (top left). Links also still rank highly in an open search.
Of course, it was too good to be true, and we all know what happened next. An explosion of content and the growing need to boost anything published with paid support. Winning at search became a lot less straightforward.
Over the next several years, executing an effective content campaign became increasingly difficult, demanding greater frequency of publishing and consistent paid (social spend), earned (digital media pickup) and owned distribution (site, social, email). The most successful efforts often focused on niche B2B topics, such as industrial automation or or blockchain applications and employed detailed keyword strategies to optimize for search.
Fast forward to the present and it looks like everything is changing again thanks to Large Language Models (LLMs). With ChatGPT 3, everyone knows it summarizes information up to 2021, and so it’s an idiosyncratic reflection of existing content. In the newest version, ChatGPT 4, available only to paid subscribers, the LLM is now able to access nearly up-to-date information.
While its training base is still either late 2021 or early 2022 depending on the source, Chat GPT 4 surely represents the future in which the most searchable, prominent, and validated data will win the content wars, shaping the LLMs responses for indeterminate but likely lengthy periods.
Yet despite the obviousness of this trend, surprisingly few businesses, brands or people are optimizing for AI.
We call it AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization). Just as “How Loud is a Wind Turbine” became a barnacle stuck to the side of the ship of search, the right content now could become definitive parts of LLMs’ query responses. Think about your content potentially etched into stone-like summaries which rarely if ever update. That’s a game-changer for brands and businesses.
Here’s how you can get in the AIO game today:
—Take Your Temperature: algorithms rank words using Natural Language Processing (NLP). Understand what’s hot and cold around you.
—Build a Vocabulary: find the right machine-tested words to tell your story.
—Optimize Your Content: revise everything you publish with the right keywords in the right contexts.
—Read, Write and Score Like a Machine: test all future content for how AI and algorithms think, revise accordingly and track progress.
Now, for the first time in years, great content and ideas have a clearer path to rise to the top of the search process, and companies and brands can build on these results to lead the debate about issues that matter, from a sustainable energy portfolio to, well, the future of AI. Let’s start having fun again!
