Wil's Key Takeaways
1. Visibility Isn't Trust, and Trust Drives the Sale
Wil's perspective: Wil mentions that a brand can be everywhere and still never be chosen, using Coors Light as a reference. Seer's global consumer study found that while most people say they trust LLM recommendations, only 7% act on those recommendations without additional validation. Visibility is part of the journey, but not the full job.
What your brand can do: Aim to turn people who see your brand into fans and believers, even knowing it's more difficult to track than visibility metrics. Get leadership on board by showing them real evidence of whether people are choosing and believing your brand (such as comparing GEO metrics to site traffic, conversions, and pipeline).
2. Audit What AI Is Saying About Your Brand
Wil's perspective: It's not worth your effort to obsess over non-brand prompts right away. Instead, focus on branded prompts and what AI is already saying about you in responses. Seer found ChatGPT repeating a claim about high account manager turnover that the team traced back to a single review from years ago. Wil and the team then published new content and metrics to refute that claim, and were able to change what AI was saying about Seer.
What your brand can do: Test "your brand vs. competitor" prompts and other branded searches that people use like "brand X vs. brand Y" to track what's being said. Does the narrative match what you believe about your business? If not, publish content with the narrative you want AI to adopt, making sure to ground claims with proof. Work through those before touching non-brand prompts.
3. Be Radically Transparent (AI and Humans Both Reward It)
Wil's perspective: Earning trust means being honest even when numbers aren't flattering or reviews are critical. AI will dig through sources to find "cons" that can balance out "pros," so hiding your weaknesses won't work.
What your brand can do: Be open about more of your business data. Seer put its 97% client retention rate in the site footer and ChatGPT picked it up within 36 hours. When retention slipped to 92%, the team updated the footer to reflect the new number. That honesty helps build trust with people, and AI picks up the signal as a side effect.
4. Don't Let AI Write for You; Use It As a Thought Partner
Wil's perspective: AI has no perspective of its own. If you use it to write for you, your writing will sound generic. Wil also worries that overreliance on AI for writing is atrophying marketers' judgment.
What your brand can do: Do your own writing, and use AI to challenge your ideas. Ask it where you're wrong, what your blind spots are, and how someone in another role might disagree. Apply a simple test to every piece of content: would you put your name and reputation on it when sharing with a colleague?
5. Lean on Subject Matter Experts to Create Content
Wil's perspective: Readers can tell when content is written by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about (think a "top restaurants" listicle in a city the author has never visited). That type of content is easy to spot and rarely shared - and even if AI cites it at one point, it will eventually learn better.
What your brand can do: Set up workflows to interview SMEs and build content around their perspectives rather than just doing keyword research. Let the experts guide the content, and you'll end up with more interesting takes than a writer with no subject matter expertise could manage.
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