AI SEO & Business Automation Podcast

James Dooley: Why Be The Brand AI Recommends.com uses digital PR? Today, I'm joined with the co-founders Paul David Truscott and Peter Victor Jones, and we're joined today with Ben Nicholls, the founder of JamPrime and Jam Press, who's been doing some amazing digital PR campaigns, which has been getting a lot of our clients some amazing AI visibility and traction within ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews. It's been getting seen everywhere. So first and foremost, I want to say thank you, Ben, for getting the exposure on the digital PR campaigns. So I'm going to start to you with regards to AI visibility. Obviously, we're ordering more than we ever have been doing. I've been using you for many years. I've known you for a long time and you've always done good profile PR and good digital PR for a lot of my different companies that I own. But we've raised the bar this year when it comes to AI visibility because these trusted sources of what you're getting us is defining the entity. It's helping us get a Google Knowledge Panel, which is then helping us be the brand AI recommends, which is why we chose that name of the company that's been co-founded with Paul and Peter. But my question to you is, do you feel the entrepreneurs and business owners have caught up yet just with how much digital PR is influencing the large language models? Because I, I personally feel that people aren't using digital PR. And I think they've jumped on the bandwagon of third-party corroborative sources of guest posts and press releases, but I still feel they're falling behind and they're not using digital PR as much as they should be for increased AI visibility. But I might be wrong, so I'd like to hear from yourself what your thoughts are on it.

Ben Nicholls: I mean, I, I think it's something that people are learning more and more. But, you know, these technologies, they're, they're still quite young, and a lot of people, um, don't know how to get recommended in them yet. And, you know, what we've found and what you guys have found over the last, last period of time is that, you know, these articles are really sort of, like, paramount to, to helping you get referenced in those LLMs. So, yeah, it's been... It's been interesting watching sort of, like, you know, the knowledge sort of surface and, and, you know, working with you guys over time to, to see how impactful it can be. I think, um, you know, a lot of people initially thought that sort of, like, yeah, getting surfaced in LLMs was going to be similar to, to doing good SEO work and, and stuff like that, which, which it is, but there's obviously a lot more to it. Those LLMs are taking in a lot more information from a lot more places. But, you know, what we've learned and what we've learned together is that, you know, it's grounded in those trusted sources. So, I don't think the knowledge is widespread yet. I think people are still learning a lot, but that's our goal, is, is to sort of, like, you know, um, educate people on that fact.

James Dooley: So, expanding upon that with regards to being grounded in its data for the large language models, Paul, can you expand a little bit about that? About how these trusted sources are the seed set of sites and why that is important as part of the training data for large language models?

Paul David Truscott: Yeah, the large language models, much like Google, don't want to embarrass themselves by presenting information that is either incorrect or is perhaps of lower quality. Um, and so if they use a trusted source, there's a lot... It doesn't mean it's infallible, but it's much less likely to be problematic. And so they have a list of trusted, uh, sources that they're going to prefer to cite. Um, we touched on as well earlier in another video about the corroborative sources. The one thing about PR is that it is truly a third-party source. A lot of people use press releases, for example, and call them third-party, but they're not in the strictest sense because you determine, to a great degree, what goes on that press release, and all of the LLMs understand that. So those press releases can have a quite a good effect in certain, um, less competitive fields, but if you're in a really competitive market, you're not going to find a press release is going to do an awful lot for you. Uh, this is where you're going to need the heavy hitters like Ben to come in and actually present a proper PR campaign that is going to give you that genuine third-party corroboration.

James Dooley: Peter, I want to touch on Be The Brand AI Recommends, right? So obviously we're doing it... It's an AEO service. It helps businesses to increase AI visibility. However, it's not just about increasing AI visibility. It's about changing it potentially from a negative sentiment to a positive sentiment, changing it from just being cited to actually being recommended by the large language models. And my question to you is, if someone came through to Be The Brand AI Recommends and they didn't have the budget to be doing things like digital PR campaigns, what would you be saying to those people that don't yet have the budget? Because they need to be doing digital PR. They need to be defining the entity. So what, what happens in those scenarios? Do they need to just go off, wait till they have the budget, save up until they've got it to then be able to spend it? Like, what's, what's your thoughts on that?

Peter Victor Jones: I'd say for a business that can't afford yet to pay us to do it for them, then they need to, um, do everything they can to make sure their business is recommended in a positive light online. So make sure they're working with their customers to get reviews published, um, share those reviews on social media, um, use the cheap, cheaper newswires, like Paul said, um, to spread that, and try and raise their brand profile themselves, um, and then come back once they've got the budget to, to go full scale.

James Dooley: On that, I completely agree with what you just said, by the way. But on that, how important is it for them, truthfully, to try to raise the money to get... If, if they're serious about growing the business. Obviously, if they don't have it, but if they're serious about wanting to grow the business because it's fine getting the newswires and it's fine doing the social media. But if they realistically want to grow, how important is it for them to understand that digital PR and these trusted sources are the foundations to define the entity, to get that trust, to set those foundations? Because for me, I'm a, a big, big believer. I'm fine with wasting money, right? But I'm not fine with wasting time. And what these are going to be doing... Like, they might not be wasting the money, but they're going to be wasting time. If they genuinely want to grow their business, they need to get them foundations put into place. What would you say to those? Like, because surely some... I mean, some of these people say they don't have the budgets. Realistically, they do. They're just not understanding the importance and they think they're wasting the money, but actually they're wasting the time as well as not... They're being too frugal, in my opinion. But I'm maybe... I'm a little bit more extreme and you're trying to be nice, Peter. Normally the way.

Peter Victor Jones: Um, but yeah, no, they need... They need... They need to find it, is the bottom line. If they're, if they're serious about their growth of their business and they want to be the brand that AI recommends, then if they're in any type of competitive space, then they're going to need to use digital PR. It's, you know, they're not going to... They're not going to get recommended if they're not being, um, published in the sources that Ben can get you into.

James Dooley: Yeah, and then on there, um, Ben, I want to ask you a couple of questions on. So, with regards to Be The Brand AI Recommends, it helps not only businesses to be recommended within the large language models like Claude, Perplexity, Grok, ChatGPT, um, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews, but we also do it for entrepreneurs and business owners. And we're trying to get them to have a positive spin, to have a positive sentiment. It's part of online reputation management. It's going to help them get a Google Knowledge Panel. There's lots of benefits, not just from increased AI visibility. If someone was to come to somebody like yourself and say, this is my corporate brand and I'm the founder of it, could they run some sort of co-branded campaign that is, like, say a case study or let's say an award or something where it's James Dooley wins an award on behalf of FatRank, and this is the... This is what the award was or the thing. Can you do co-branding so it's partly about the entrepreneur and the business owner and integrates the, the business name as well?

Ben Nicholls: You, you can. You can. It's probably... Trying to squeeze it all in, you know, can be difficult. I think, I think you'd probably try to run different stories that have very different, um, different mechanisms behind them. So, you know, if you're, if you're talking about an award win or something like that, obviously the, you know, the, the, the, the founder's going to get a mention. The business is going to get a mention. The award that they won is going to get a mention. Perhaps even their competitors or the others that, that, that were competing against them, um, are going to get a mention. I think, you know, journalists are going to try and tell stories in a way that makes sense. So trying to pack stories full of too much stuff that, that might take away from the point, you know, it's going to be probably more detrimental. I would always recommend that, you know, if you're running a, uh, campaign, a case study campaign, you know, you focus a lot on, on the benefits that you've given your case study. Your business will get a mention and you can always include an expert comment from the founder as well. So there are ways to pack these things in. But ultimately you want to produce a really nice article that a journalist is going to want to publish. And, and just packing it full of facts for the sake of it might not be the best, the best way to do it. And I would always just prioritise just writing the best stories you can get that's extremely relevant, to the point, makes a lot of sense and, and does the trick. And I think that's the way you're going to have the strongest sort of campaigns.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I think internally within Be The Brand AI Recommends, we are saying the same thing. The creativity and the ideation of the stories needs to matter more. We want more exposure. So we want to get the story to be the best it can be, that the journalists like it and it's getting picked up and getting more sources being done than trying to pack one single campaign. So a lot of the times within Be The Brand AI Recommends, we've got an entrepreneurship kind of digital PR campaign, and then we've got the business, and we run them separately as two different lanes. There is ways, and I just wanted to touch upon, which you have done with regards to the expert commentary of a case study, which can mention the... And connect the business owner with the brand and the case study. However, we, we always see it's better to run them as being different campaigns. Get that investment. You're never going to change your own name. Hopefully, that you are the entrepreneur, that you are going to take the business onto the next level, maybe investment in other businesses. So you want to have the best Knowledge Panel you can. But, and also then once you've got the Knowledge Panel, it then starts to help you get cited within the large language models. But Be The Brand AI Recommends, we're helping both entrepreneurs but also businesses. We're teaming up quite a lot with Ben at JamPrime to get these digital PR campaigns out there. And again, I just want to repeat, thanks a lot, Ben, for the campaigns you do. And it's working wonders for our clients to get AI visibility increases. But also the big one, the big... Not just being cited. They're actually now starting to, to be recommended within the large language models, which we think is key. Cheers, guys.

Ben Nicholls: Thanks, James. Cheers, James.