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FIR Interview: Generative Engine Optimisation with Stephanie Grober
GEO – generative engine optimisation – is suddenly everywhere. Is it the new SEO, a passing fad, or simply good communication practice in disguise?
In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson talk with Stephanie Grober, Marketing & PR Director at Horowitz Agency in New York, about why GEO matters, the competing narratives surrounding it, and how communicators should prepare for the impact of generative search.
What we discussed
About our Conversation Partner
Stephanie Grober is the Marketing & Public Relations Director at Horowitz Agency, an integrated marketing and public relations agency with offices in Los Angeles, New York City, and Vancouver (B.C.). Her team works with law firm clients ranging from BigLaw to boutiques, designing and executing content and communications strategies that generate bottom-line growth in measurable ways.
Leveraging deep relationships with the press, she delivers high-quality earned media placements for clients and utilizes her extensive marketing background to amplify these results through a multi-channel approach.
Stephanie joined Horowitz Agency in 2021 after serving as Marketing and Communications Manager for a Top 50 accounting firm in New York City.
Relevant Links
https://searchengineland.com/what-is-generative-engine-optimization-geo-444418
https://www.geekytech.co.uk/what-is-generative-engine-optimisation/
https://www.reddit.com/r/seogrowth/comments/1m6k4gx/is_anyone_actually_doing_generative_engine/
https://zapier.com/blog/generative-engine-optimization/
https://a16z.com/geo-over-seo/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/stop-trying-to-make-geo-happen/554629/
Audio Transcript
Shel Holtz (00:01.989)
Welcome everybody to a For Immediate Release interview. I’m Shel Holtz. I’m here with Neville Hobson and our guest today, Stephanie Grober, who is marketing and public relations director at Horowitz Agency. Stephanie, it is terrific to join you today.
Stephanie Grober (00:19.33)
Thank you guys very much for having me very excited to be here and chat a little bit about what we are calling GEO.
Shel Holtz (00:27.471)
We are, even though some people are disputing that particular moniker. But before we jump into this, Stephanie, I think our listeners would appreciate knowing something about your background.
Stephanie Grober (00:40.748)
Absolutely. So at Horowitz Agency, we specialize in working with law firms and select individuals. So very much rooted in legal marketing. I’ve been in professional services marketing for about six years now, and I’ve been a marketer for my entire career across several different industries. So I was fortunate to be able to continue honing my craft, focusing on communications and now communications, marketing, NPR for law firms and leading attorneys.
Shel Holtz (01:13.837)
And what got you into studying this field of AI and generative engine optimization?
Stephanie Grober (01:22.7)
Well, it’s a very exciting time for public relations professionals. When you are talking about AI and generative engine optimization, you’re going to hear the words authority and credibility, right? And authority and credibility are core principles of public relations. So that right there should signal, wow, this, this sounds like a PR play. And so as research has come out and we’re learning more about generative engine optimization and essentially the AI overviews that are populated when somebody puts a search term into a search engine, we’re finding that the AI is creating a brief summary using sources from the internet.
And what are those sources? Well, a lot of them are authoritative sources from top publications where you may have a PR professional working with you to get you quoted. So it all circles back to PR, makes it a very exciting time for PR professionals. Those who have already engaged the services of PR consultants or may have PR services happening in-house are a little bit ahead of the curve right now because they’re already going to be appearing in the authoritative sources that AI likes.
@nevillehobson (02:50.272)
Great. That’s a very good overview. We talked about this topic, actually, as you know, Stephanie, in the regular episode of this podcast, where we looked at this thinking about this interview, this conversation we’re going to have with you. And in fact, it made me think today, earlier today, my time in the UK, I was watching a video by Danny Sullivan, who as a name, you’ll know, he was a big deal, Search Engine Land magazine he was a founder of, he works at Google now. But he was giving a presentation at WordCamp in Portland just last week about SEO. And it was actually about SEO and GEO was how he pitched it. I was intrigued because he talked about essentially the same thing. And I thought, well, that’s not my understanding of it, unless I got it wrong. But that’s really what Shel and I talked about the other day.
Although to be fair, he did talk about what the, the most effective thing to do isn’t to argue about or worry about acronyms or initialisms or whatever. It’s about, building trust, creating clear, incredible content, putting it where you can, which already are. I thought, God, did he listen to our episode or maybe, but of course that was last week, not, the other day. but he did get me thinking about this. Is GEO an evolution of SEO? Is it? the same thing by another name. We talked about this and that’s not what we figured out what’s what’s your take on that?
Stephanie Grober (04:26.786)
Well, I loved what Shel said in the episode from earlier this week that there is no magic bullet, right? Necessarily. That is the approach I take to marketing. I, you know, working in very traditional industries, professional services, often B2B, highly regulated spaces. So understanding that, which informs our approach to marketing and may be different than a direct to consumer play, for example, you know, some brands have a much younger demographic audience, B2C needs while we are, you know, working with highly distinguished attorneys, professionals in a very traditional space. But I agree with Shel. There may not be a magic bullet here. And as for the distinction between SEO and GEO, I do see GEO as complimentary to SEO. You could say that it’s an evolution.
I wouldn’t say that they are exactly the same thing, but they are very parallel to each other. I think that if you have successfully been employing SEO strategies as a part of your overall marketing efforts, then you are probably ahead of the curve, as far as GEO. And that would be because you’ve been consistently adding optimized content to your website. You know, which keywords you want to appear in search.
You may have been structuring your content in smart ways that already are answering questions. And that would be all on your own website, right? But now when we’re talking, GEO, we’re talking about getting that content out to external sources and reinforcing many of the same things. So SEO, could say it’s about keywords. GEO is about credibility, but the LLMs, they still have to learn.
So those keywords are gonna be important for them even in your external sources. And overall, what we’re looking for with GEO is mentions and visibility, whether it’s you as an individual or your brand.
Shel Holtz (06:34.097)
One of those magic bullets that people have jumped on in the last few weeks is some research that found that Reddit is the source of a lot of the content that is turning up in AI results. And Professor Malik just a couple of days ago, Ethan Malik at the Wharton School said essentially, nope, he said what they did was look at how often the sites come up in the answers at least once in the web search function of some AI agents when they do a web search for more information in response to a keyword search. He points out that the company searched for a bunch of keywords using Google AI mode and ChatGPT web search and perplexity, and then said they measured how many times those sites were included in the reply.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that if you’re doing research or if you’re just in one of the LLMs doing your job, that Reddit or Quora for that matter will be the dominant source of the information that you get. And yet this chart is everywhere and everybody’s talking about it. I confess, I went to our leadership in the organization I work and I said, we need to be in Reddit. And now…
It appears I was just chasing a shiny object or a magic bullet. How do you stay on top of what is working in this generative EO space?
Stephanie Grober (08:16.376)
So as a marketer, always have to think about which channels make the most sense for your brand or your individual brand, whoever you’re representing. Like I said, we work in legal with law firms. So Reddit is not exactly the space. There are some very famous attorneys who’ve done ask me any things on Reddit, and I’m sure that is helping them. I do believe that user generated content sites are coming up in GEO.
AI overviews simply because of how the content is structured in a very human questioning way, but it’s not going to be the right place for everybody. So when we take a look at that at Horowitz agency as PR professionals working with law firms or other other business professionals, there’s some other interesting stats. I think that stood out. So Muckrack put out a great report recently also analyzing which sites are read by AI.
And I believe it was almost 30 % of the sources are journalistic outlets with prominence and attention paid to outlets like Reuters, AP, Axios, for example. So those are sort of your tier one media. So that is a strategy you can employ for your credibility. If you don’t think that Reddit is the right place for you, okay, then let’s go after the tier one media
Now I will caveat that by saying, niche outlets are also very important to AI. So don’t think that you have to be an AP or Reuters. If you ask a niche question, it is very likely that the AI is going to read a niche or trade press outlet. So those are very valuable as well. But overall journalistic sources are a very valuable way to start appearing in GEO results. That’s where from a PR perspective, we can start maximizing our approach and our strategies, tailoring them there to support GEO.
@nevillehobson (10:21.792)
You emphasised the importance of securing tier one coverage, all those publications you mentioned, the idea being that being visible in such places can influence how generative engines surface content. But coverage like that takes time, doesn’t it? And it isn’t always immediate. So how do you advise professional services firms to balance the longer term credibility building with the short term pressure to be visible in generative search results?
Stephanie Grober (10:51.534)
Absolutely. It does not happen overnight. That’s something we tell our clients and probably any PR professional or communications professional in-house is going to share with stakeholders. You know, we don’t wake up, decide to do PR and land a New York Times article the next day
So the best approach today is to make sure that as part of your overall marketing plan, PR is included and you have a comprehensive… hopefully you already have that, but if you don’t have that and you’re thinking, I want to make sure that we’re doing GEO right, don’t neglect PR. There’s a few parts of the PR process. First one is just having your sources become media trained and responsive. And again, that takes time to be comfortable speaking to the press, to identify what they want to comment on, to give good sound bites.
That all takes some practice. So somebody who’s just starting out in PR might not be comfortable if the Wall Street Journal calls them on day one and they’re like, this is my first rodeo. So you wanna have some practice working with smaller outlets. Again, working with those trade publications which are still going to be very valuable.
So we don’t only wanna prioritize tier one, but just having a variety of PR opportunities, seeing what works best, that’s something that takes some time. So if you’re not already doing that as part of your PR strategies, the time to start is now, it’s all going to benefit your GEO. And then another key part of this is making sure the messaging is consistent. And that is down to the way you are cited in the press, for example
So, you know, as one example that comes to mind is if you’re somebody who is always referred to in the press as a celebrity criminal defense attorney over and over, that’s going to train the LLMs. When somebody is searching for a celebrity criminal defense attorney, you’re gonna come up in that AI overview because the reporters have referred to you that way in interviews. So how you present yourself to the media and how they cite you is important. It’s important to be consistent.
And then of course, you know, what you’re saying in each opportunity matters too, but I think down to the way that you are cited is, very key.
@nevillehobson (13:24.213)
I’ve got just a quick follow up on that tier one element before we kind of move on from that. But I’m just curious, actually, Stephanie, because you mentioned earlier the names of a couple of the new media, if I can call that, people like Axios. Isn’t the landscape evolving so fast, generally speaking, the media landscape that trying to kind of give labels or pigeonhole a media property as this is tier one and it’s
based on those old definitions back from print media days, I suspect. We’ve got, know, Exhaust is one of the new ones, but there are any number of I’ve never heard of you type of outlet by influencers, quote unquote, who have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of followers. And I’m wondering, Shel, I’ve talked quite a bit about nano influences and others who are kind of disrupting the traditional ways in which things are structured.
So where does this fit in that case? And probably the example you gave is someone brand new to this to PR just starting out suddenly is immersed in all this. What, how do you deal with this in this changing environment?
Stephanie Grober (14:36.91)
So the media landscape has changed drastically. Reporters in newsrooms, there’s been mass layoffs. What I think is interesting about GEO is as we’re saying GEO is so important, journalists are struggling. Newsrooms are letting people go. They’re restructuring at the same time. So how does GEO exist without journalism? And I hope that it demonstrates the… need and necessity of great journalism.
They can’t exist without each other because otherwise, you know, what has authority, what do we trust, right, to build a response from the AI. So like you said, Nebel, the landscape is changing. There’s new outlets every day. That continues to happen to myself and my team. We’re constantly discovering new outlets.
There’s journalists who have left major newsrooms, who have started their own newsletters, they’re on Substack, they’re podcasting. All of this is important, is the good news when we’re talking GEO, because GEO assesses a very wide variety of sources, including video, including podcasts. So I recommend that anyone who is wading into PR take as many opportunities as they’re comfortable with.
And again, don’t only hold out for Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Take a variety because you never know what is going to give you the most bang for your buck or where somebody is going to discover you. This is all about discoverability. This is about mentions. And the more you can do it, the better. All of the LLMs have their own way of reviewing sources at this point. They are not consistent.
There is not one formula that they’re using, whether it’s chat GPT or Claude or perplexity. Some of them use journalistic sources at a higher rate than others. Some of them use smaller outlets. Some of them have partnerships with major newsrooms like Financial Times to train the AI. So we’re in the very early stages.
That’s why, again, I don’t think that there is a one size fits all formula. I don’t think that there is a magic bullet today where it’s do it this way or you’re going to fail. It’s be prepared to be flexible, but be everywhere that you can. So as things shift, you’re still ahead of the curve. And anyone who has been a marketer through the rise of digital marketing, I think is probably familiar with that, and anyone who has been on the internet since the beginning of the internet is probably familiar with that, right?
When I grew up, it was the dawn of Wikipedia and things have really changed. We just got Google. I remember the first time a librarian told me about Google. So this is all gonna change. It’s gonna change very rapidly. It could go away. It could be the most important part of marketing I don’t think we know yet.
Shel Holtz (17:50.39)
How do you measure all of this? The success metrics for traditional SEO are pretty clear and not that difficult, but what should PR people be paying attention to in GEO? I’ve seen things like share of answers, citation rate, sentiment and model responses. What’s genuinely measurable that’s meaningful today?
Stephanie Grober (18:16.046)
So there are definitely some tools that are purporting to provide AI analytics, GEO analytics, which are available. I think the best way to measure today is simply through your own experimentation. Enter the questions you think your clients are asking in search, read the overviews, do you come up? Are your competitors coming up? And use that as a guide to see where you need to focus your efforts.
And again, it might be certain keywords, certain questions that you want to prioritize, but that’s the easiest way just to be the end user and see how you come up, ask, ask the LLMs to describe you, to describe your brand, your company and see what comes back to you. so again, it’s not going to be perfect. We see a lot of errors or mistakes or misassignments of names and things when we do this.
So, you know, this is not the be all and end all to being successful. And I will say that, you know, AI search accounts today for, I think less than 30 % of search traffic. So, fortunately it’s not the only driver of traffic and, you know, discoverability, so we have a little time to iron out those kinks.
@nevillehobson (19:35.906)
That’s really interesting. In episode 479 of this podcast, the one I mentioned earlier that we did, knowing we’re going to talk to you today, we talked about companies spinning up standalone, community driven content brands that become credible in their own right. When does that approach do you think makes sense? And what safeguards keep it authentic, rather than just a thin GEO play?
Stephanie Grober (20:03.592)
Unique content is incredibly smart. So if that is something that is sustainable for your company and your brand, I think it’s a brilliant idea. Content is king everywhere and in every industry, I think some more than others, but content is really king. So it just needs to be something that is sustainable. If you have users generating content, that’s excellent.
in working with attorneys thought leadership is huge. Attorneys are always writing. They’re speaking. can repurpose their content. So there’s always fresh content going up, on websites and things like that. one thing I wanted to mention too, as, as we’re discussing this, whether it’s a brand that builds their own content platform, or a company working with content in another way is that the LLMs prefer recent and fresh content.
So, you if you were writing or speaking or quoted in the press five, six, seven years ago, that’s not gonna help you today. It’s time to get back out there. In the past 12 months or so is ideal with ongoing fresh content. So just something to keep in mind because I know, you know, time passes quickly and we’re like, when was I quoted? No, it was like five years ago.
Anyway, back to the content. I think that’s a very smart and strategic play if it can be supported. We know that marketers only have so much time in their day. There’s a lot of things that demand attention. So you have to choose to prioritize what makes the most sense and is a sustainable effort for your team.
Shel Holtz (21:43.063)
In that episode that we recorded this week and in a previous episode, in fact, that we dedicated to this topic, we discussed the argument that press releases need to be reformulated for algorithms. I’m skeptical of that. How do you adapt or should you adapt everyday PR assets, whether it’s press releases, content that goes on your company’s website newsroom? Thought leadership pieces from your executives on LinkedIn or wherever? How do you adapt those so they’re more likely to be used and cited by LLMs but still useful for the human readers they were originally designed for?
Stephanie Grober (22:32.75)
Absolutely. And when I listen to that art that that episode rather, you know, one thing that crosses my mind is, is, you know, part of me wants to say the press release is dead. Can we say that? I’m not sure. It feels like it might be dead, but there is also a school of thought that GEO is reviving the press release.
Now, if you put out press release across the wire, meaning in most cases you’re paying to put it out across the wire, that might be something that hits an LLM and is used to train on a certain topic. So in some ways, a press release still can have influence in that way. Other than that, the typical press release is not going far these days. It’s very difficult to maximize a press release.
We are competing for attention in the media landscape. There are less journalists. There is more news. The news cycle is shortened. It’s not even 24 hours. It’s about 24 minutes, it feels like most times. So just your standard press release, not put across the wire, not going far for most companies, you know, unless you are a enterprise corporation or, you know, very exciting in some other way.
@nevillehobson (23:58.229)
Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s interesting. Is the press release dead? It’s a topic that pops up frequently. I think Shel and I have talked about this, the press release is dead, at least six times in the last six years. It could be more.
Shel Holtz (24:12.945)
By the way, I do like to remind people that for compliance purposes in the U.S., they still have some value, regulatory compliance.
Stephanie Grober (24:20.301)
Yes.
@nevillehobson (24:20.936)
Yeah, I’m sure that’s the same here in the UK too, although it may not be specifically a press release, a device you need to have as a compliance record. But I mean, it’s a thorny question because I see people commenting on this here and there on social networks particularly now and again that, yes, this is dead and B, no, it’s not.
But this notion of repurposing press releases to take into account the audience change, i.e. it’s not people, it’s the algorithm. I’m not using the word machine. I see people talk about it’s the machines. It’s not the machines. It’s the algorithm, right? So I think that is a credible view.
I disagree with you there, Shel. I think that is something that we are seeing that you need to prepare your content to publish it online with two audiences in mind, which are the humans and the algorithms. And the example Shel mentioned that we discussed specifically in an episode was somebody who has thought this through, it’s a really good visual explainers on the differences between them. They made a lot of sense to me, I have to say.
But is it going to be like the press release, the social media press release from 2006 to 2010, that was a template of the things you should include for social media to take advantage of it generated quite a lot of excitement, a lot of buzz, lot of hype and ultimately just kind of faded away. It didn’t really, you know, attract a lot of attention.
Is this likely to be the same case? I wonder. So I think this does this is important this change along with all the other things that we’ve been discussing. And I just wonder where this is going to fit if people are going to be creating press releases where the prime audience they’re thinking of is an algorithm. Where does that fit into the picture?
Stephanie Grober (26:19.436)
Well, there’s the algorithm, there’s the machines, but ultimately humans are still engaging with the content, right? So if the AI is gonna feed it back to us, it has to appeal to the human audience. So I think that there’s only so many differences between them. I personally have not seen a huge variation in the style of a great press release myself. And I think most communications professionals… I hope that most of them have a great sense of what it takes to have a really effective press release. I would say again, in the industries that I’ve worked in, that’s not changed very much regardless of whatever flashy marketing terms and strategies are in use at the time. But as far as getting it to hit,
The LLMs, the algorithm, it has to address the human at the end user who has a question and is seeking information and it has to answer that question.
Shel Holtz (27:23.025)
Yeah, that’s interesting because one of the very first arguments that I heard about what you need to do for your brand or your content to show up in the LLM results is to get away from saying what and get more into saying how. More explanations, more details. This leads me to believe that content marketing is probably a strong contributor to what LLMs get trained on.
I’m thinking of the great content marketing that comes out of Microsoft where they’ll have a lengthy feature, but it contains some short videos. It contains some short audio clips. It has infographics and photos and text. And it’s all there in that format so that whoever wants to use it can just grab that audio file and maybe use it in a radio broadcast or just grab that video clip and use it in a TV news report. Does that make sense? Should we be focused more on content marketing and less on more traditional forms of communication?
Stephanie Grober (28:34.432)
I think so. And I think how we are content marketing is important. The variety, the structuring of your content, exploring some Q and A type pieces is a great idea. And hopefully folks are already doing this because of SEO, right? It shouldn’t be such a surprise where your headings and the structuring of your content pieces were important. We see that in, in journalistic content too, right? There’s, there’s headings because news outlets want their articles to come up in search rankings as well.
So this shouldn’t be groundbreaking to anybody, but think about variety in your content. Think about making sure it’s answering questions, play with the format, use various types of multimedia to support your content. I think that is absolutely a sound approach today.
@nevillehobson (29:35.04)
So I’ve got a question about, you mentioned it actually, AI overviews earlier on in this conversation. Quite a simple question, really. Less and less people are clicking through. They’re gonna get their search results using Google and they’ll have then a summary on the right-hand side of the screen. And that gives them all they need and they do not proceed any further.
What impact is that having, do you think, and will continue to have on search generally and how you measure search, whether it’s GEO or SEO, how big of a concern should that be that people are not clicking through? And by the way, I’ve seen some reports in the last few days, which I haven’t bookmarked, frankly, but they’re talking about, you know, this is not what’s happening. People are clicking through. That doesn’t seem to fit what I see.
I don’t know, respectable search results being produced or data being produced showing that that is not the case. What’s your thought on that, Stephanie?
Stephanie Grober (30:36.482)
I think it’s so early still that we don’t know yet, right? Because AI, no, GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, the generative search results still make up a very low percentage of the overall engagement with our search engines. What I did see some reports of is that the click-throughs may not be to a brand’s homepage anymore but some of their internal blog pages or specific content pages. So I think it’s smart to make sure that those are optimized.
And again, it comes back to the content marketing that we were just talking about. Folks land somewhere else now in your website environment. I think it varies very much brand to brand, company to company, depends on what type of answer the end user was seeking.
And then again, we have to think, is everybody trusting AI? Personally today, I don’t fully trust the answers AI is giving me. I’m always going to go back and research them. Now that might change individual to individual, generation to generation, but it’s not perfect yet. So, you know, I don’t think we’re at a place where somebody is just going to solely get their questions answered by AI and go about their day.
Maybe we will get there and we will see a real sea change in the way web traffic works, but I don’t think this is going to completely break the system. And I don’t think it’s going to end search traffic as we know it. and you know, if folks are answering a question where they need something, they’re still going to have to click through to get it. AI can’t procure something for you. perhaps it can answer a question, but most likely you’re going to want to click through to read further and do your own research if the AI is just producing relevant sources for you.
Shel Holtz (32:38.473)
Your agency, Horowitz Agency, has to deal with an additional wrinkle with all of this, given the nature of the market sectors that you serve. Law firms, financial services, accuracy and compliance really aren’t negotiable in those industries. So how do you balance making content citable for AI, while staying inside the lines on confidentiality, disclaimers and regulatory restrictions?
Stephanie Grober (33:08.174)
I think what I love about legal marketing is that it is so professional and it tends to err more towards the traditional side of things and value just great marketing. So law firms don’t always go for flash in the pan. Law firms weren’t racing to be on TikTok, although there’s some lawyers who are very successful, but the new hot thing isn’t always what a law firm or a professional services firm is looking to do.
Rather, they embrace the fundamentals of great marketing and then make sure that everything that is put out adheres, complies, represents the brand consistently and correctly. There’s a lot of layers of approval. Anyone working in corporate marketing is probably very accustomed to that. And I think that that’s a great thing. We are not trying to utilize any gimmicks.
We are not trying to trick the AI because we have to stand behind what is put out on behalf of our clients. And when you’re talking about professional services, that’s really guidance and counsel to folks with very important personal or business questions.
Shel Holtz (34:24.593)
And let me ask you a quick follow-up question on that, as long as we’re talking about law firms and financial services. Those are pretty close to the top of the list of professions at risk from AI. Have you seen any movement among your clients in that direction? Are they starting to replace maybe paralegals or customer support people with AI?
Stephanie Grober (34:49.132)
Law firms are embracing AI, much like every industry, industry agnostic, think companies are embracing AI. They’re spending a lot of money on ways to incorporate AI into their processes. But I think it’s too early to say if any humans have been replaced. So what I get this sense from some major law firms is that they at the very lowest levels are taking away some of the hours of intensive research that might need to be done.
But then they are prioritizing the value giving advice that their professionals can provide. So it might not take as many billable hours on research, but you might get more value in the conversation with your attorney or advisor. Of course, marketers are using AI in very interesting ways.
But again, it’s not perfect. So I think it’s still very early stages. Certainly it’s not replacing anyone in these industries yet today. And we’ll see if we get to a point where it will. Now, the same can be said for communications professionals. Is AI going to take our jobs? I personally think if AI is writing all the content, then… wouldn’t we reach a point where human written content is actually at a premium and bespoke and in demand? Because how can you stand out in a sea of AI written content, right? That doesn’t sound appealing at all. I mean, that’s not what I wanna read. hopefully we’ll still be here in five years.
Shel Holtz (36:36.049)
Yeah, I just saw yesterday that Mark Benioff at Salesforce announced that they are letting 4,000 customer support people go and replacing them with AI. I was thinking on the financial services side that might be a similar trend at some point.
Stephanie Grober (36:54.516)
Mm-hmm. Perhaps, but I think it’s very risky in, you know, legal services, accounting, when you’re talking about that. you know, these industries are waiting in very carefully.
@nevillehobson (37:11.518)
We could do a whole episode just on this topic. So sticking with GEO looking ahead as I tend to do, there’s the horizon. Where do you see GEO going and evolving over the next year or so? And traditionally that question might be over the next five years. No, the next year or so. Do you think it will mature in that timeframe or will it need longer, becoming maybe a reliable discipline like SEO eventually did? Or is it more likely to, I guess, remain a contentious topic? People not agreeing on what it’s for, but there’s good practices that we’ll see emerging amongst all the hype. How do you see it, Stephanie?
Stephanie Grober (37:58.167)
It’s very hard for me to predict. At this point, there’s not an easy way for all of us to opt out of AI search results with every search engine. If that were to become an option, would folks just simply turn it off? And would we not even need to have this conversation if it simply falls from sort of the consciousness? Or is it going to be continued to be sort of forced upon us as search engine users?
Of course there was the Google antitrust case decision this week where, know, they’re keeping chrome and Gemini is going to be, feeding us its results. So I don’t see that going anywhere in the next year. I will be watching to see if AI search gets smarter and gets more accurate. and how our clients or those I work with appear in the search. So it will be sort of testing for us.
Of course, we’ll be looking out for more case studies of it leading to work. Anecdotally, there are folks in legal who are saying, yes, I’ve gotten clients from chat GPT searches, which is great. I personally know that there are some attorneys I’ve worked with in corporate law, for example, who after a great streak of appearing in outlets like Wall Street Journal, CFO.com, know, AI will tell me about them if I say who is a great &A attorney in Los Angeles. That’s what I want to see. That’s what I’ll be looking for in the next year. I can’t say that definitively we’re going to see a sweeping change more than that.
Shel Holtz (39:44.634)
In the episode that we recorded earlier this week, I mentioned that I had read an article about, I think it was a LinkedIn article from somebody who said he had tripled the volume of output in order to have more content out there that could be hoovered up by the models in the hopes that the volume would lead to more visibility in results.
I’m not sure that’s the answer, but certainly budgets aren’t keeping up with volume. The point was made that this individual did not get more budget to help create all that content. So if your firm were hired by a communications leader and asked you to adjust their content strategy for GEO, what process changes would you recommend, say, over the first 90 days?
Stephanie Grober (40:42.35)
Absolutely great question. One thing I wanted to mention too, when we’re talking about important content right now is rankings, reviews. So whether it’s professional rankings for an individual or best of lists, I would make sure that a client is incorporating those into their strategy. Because what better way to train an LLM than by appearing on a best of list from the last six to eight months, right? That’s exactly what you want to come up for most likely in a search.
We do probably over 500 nominations for our clients each year. So that is always a part of our strategy, but very important. I’d be looking at online reviews, whether for a company, could be your Google My Business reviews. It could be Yelp, Facebook, wherever you might get reviewed, in whatever way you might get reviewed. And then making sure that the client is out there, mentioned and visible again.
Each month, fresh mentions in journalistic outlets, whether they are prestige media or trade press, they still have value. Multimedia, getting them on video, getting them in podcasts anywhere we can. And then from a content strategy as a marketer, hopefully at this point you are repurposing, but use AI and let it help you repurpose.
There’s so many tips and tricks that marketers can use when it comes to AI. And that includes taking what you already have and making it new, repurposing it into different formats to make your job a little bit easier. So that today is one of the biggest benefits of having AI available to us as a tool to make content production easier.
@nevillehobson (42:30.014)
You make a good case for that, Stephanie. That’s exactly what I say to people. If you don’t use it or you’re skeptical, this is one thing you could do, you’ll benefit from doing this. That’s been great, this conversation. I think we’ve reached a point now for that famous question, Shel mentioned at the very beginning, which is, what didn’t we ask you that you really wish we had?
Stephanie Grober (42:53.998)
You know, I think a great question would be what is going to be the greatest impact that AI has on PR, public relations, and communication? I think those industries are still inherently human. I think they are relationship driven. I don’t think that we’re ever going to take humans out of the equation.
So even as we are working to boost GEO results, doing public relations, getting media mentions, we’re working with people. You have a PR professional, you have a client source, you have a journalist who’s a person, and that is still very valuable. AI can’t do that for us, it’s relationship driven. So make sure people are doing your PR, not AI.
@nevillehobson (43:43.818)
To kind of add add to that topic, Shel and I have talked about a few times on the podcast during this year. And it’s in the kind of area of AI agents, but it’s looking at I think, Shel’s phrase for it is ‘synthetic employees,’ where you have you have a situation that isn’t too far fetched in the near future, whether that means two years, five or 10, I don’t know where think about your team and your organization, where you’ve got maybe 15 people in that team of which three perhaps might be AIs effectively. So this isn’t like, you know, some of the illustrations you see on posts where you’ve got people and there’s like a robot in there. It’s not like that. I don’t know what it’ll be like. It might be like that actually
But is that kind of like a serious disruptive element suddenly appearing on the horizon that will have a huge impact on this amongst many, many, but think specifically what we’re discussing today and the change it might bring to that where you’re introducing AI team members in a team. What do you think about that?
Stephanie Grober (45:00.706)
I think that there are tasks AI can do well, but when it comes down to communications, strategic thinking, most of us don’t like it. We don’t love fully AI generated content, right? Where nobody’s reviewed it. We’re not thrilled. Journalists most often don’t want to get pitches that were written by AI, outlets don’t want to receive articles that were written by AI
So, you we pitch byline articles for clients all the time. A lot of newsrooms now have a, you know, a disclaimer that we may reject your piece if we think it’s written by AI. So it remains to be seen, you know, there are AI helpers, they’re on our teams right now, you know, how many companies are incorporating AI, we do have AI teammates.
We’re figuring out the best use for them. Some are better than others. Some are more trusting of AI than others. And some folks are more clever to use it as a tool than others. when it comes to communicating back and forth with artificial intelligence completely, the more strategic and in depth you get, just don’t know if that’s what we’re going to see in the very near future.
Shel Holtz (46:29.649)
Yeah, I have an AI colleague now. I have a two-person communication team where I work myself and one colleague and no budget for consulting. And so what I did was it took about four or five hours because I really worked on this, but I created a custom GPT who’s the senior communications consultant with a specialization in my industry. it doesn’t do stuff for me, but it’s a sounding board.
If I develop a strategy and I want somebody to play devil’s advocate, I can’t go to my $400 an hour consultant, I don’t have a budget for that. So I’ll just ask the AI consultant. I realize that it’s not as good, but in the absence of any alternatives, it’s fine. And it has come up with some really good responses. So…
Stephanie Grober (47:18.7)
Yeah, and I dare say that you’re probably, you know, far ahead of some others. So learning how to use it, learning how to maximize its output, how to get the most out of it and have consistent results, I think is where we should all strive to be today. And then in the meantime, you know, follow many voices on AI, on GEO.
It’s changing, it’s evolving so rapidly that, you know, don’t put all your eggs into one basket. Don’t buy into a one size fits all approach today. It’s still too soon. And don’t abandon your other marketing strategies or tactics in favor of some of the AI driven ones.
Shel Holtz (48:03.843)
Yeah, as we pointed out in that episode from earlier this week, recommendations from people you know are still top of the heap. Stephanie, this has been great. We really appreciate your taking the time to talk with us today. How can our listeners find you and maybe read some of what you share online?
Stephanie Grober (48:23.146)
LinkedIn is great. Stephanie Grober. I’m with Horowitz Agency. Love LinkedIn, I’m constantly talking to my clients about spending more time on LinkedIn. So I’d love to connect with anybody there. Our website is HorowitzAgency.com. And I look forward to keeping the conversation going.
Thank you guys very much for the time today.
The post FIR Interview: Generative Engine Optimisation with Stephanie Grober appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
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GEO – generative engine optimisation – is suddenly everywhere. Is it the new SEO, a passing fad, or simply good communication practice in disguise?
In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson talk with Stephanie Grober, Marketing & PR Director at Horowitz Agency in New York, about why GEO matters, the competing narratives surrounding it, and how communicators should prepare for the impact of generative search.
What we discussed
About our Conversation Partner
Stephanie Grober is the Marketing & Public Relations Director at Horowitz Agency, an integrated marketing and public relations agency with offices in Los Angeles, New York City, and Vancouver (B.C.). Her team works with law firm clients ranging from BigLaw to boutiques, designing and executing content and communications strategies that generate bottom-line growth in measurable ways.
Leveraging deep relationships with the press, she delivers high-quality earned media placements for clients and utilizes her extensive marketing background to amplify these results through a multi-channel approach.
Stephanie joined Horowitz Agency in 2021 after serving as Marketing and Communications Manager for a Top 50 accounting firm in New York City.
Relevant Links
https://searchengineland.com/what-is-generative-engine-optimization-geo-444418
https://www.geekytech.co.uk/what-is-generative-engine-optimisation/
https://www.reddit.com/r/seogrowth/comments/1m6k4gx/is_anyone_actually_doing_generative_engine/
https://zapier.com/blog/generative-engine-optimization/
https://a16z.com/geo-over-seo/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/stop-trying-to-make-geo-happen/554629/
Audio Transcript
Shel Holtz (00:01.989)
Welcome everybody to a For Immediate Release interview. I’m Shel Holtz. I’m here with Neville Hobson and our guest today, Stephanie Grober, who is marketing and public relations director at Horowitz Agency. Stephanie, it is terrific to join you today.
Stephanie Grober (00:19.33)
Thank you guys very much for having me very excited to be here and chat a little bit about what we are calling GEO.
Shel Holtz (00:27.471)
We are, even though some people are disputing that particular moniker. But before we jump into this, Stephanie, I think our listeners would appreciate knowing something about your background.
Stephanie Grober (00:40.748)
Absolutely. So at Horowitz Agency, we specialize in working with law firms and select individuals. So very much rooted in legal marketing. I’ve been in professional services marketing for about six years now, and I’ve been a marketer for my entire career across several different industries. So I was fortunate to be able to continue honing my craft, focusing on communications and now communications, marketing, NPR for law firms and leading attorneys.
Shel Holtz (01:13.837)
And what got you into studying this field of AI and generative engine optimization?
Stephanie Grober (01:22.7)
Well, it’s a very exciting time for public relations professionals. When you are talking about AI and generative engine optimization, you’re going to hear the words authority and credibility, right? And authority and credibility are core principles of public relations. So that right there should signal, wow, this, this sounds like a PR play. And so as research has come out and we’re learning more about generative engine optimization and essentially the AI overviews that are populated when somebody puts a search term into a search engine, we’re finding that the AI is creating a brief summary using sources from the internet.
And what are those sources? Well, a lot of them are authoritative sources from top publications where you may have a PR professional working with you to get you quoted. So it all circles back to PR, makes it a very exciting time for PR professionals. Those who have already engaged the services of PR consultants or may have PR services happening in-house are a little bit ahead of the curve right now because they’re already going to be appearing in the authoritative sources that AI likes.
@nevillehobson (02:50.272)
Great. That’s a very good overview. We talked about this topic, actually, as you know, Stephanie, in the regular episode of this podcast, where we looked at this thinking about this interview, this conversation we’re going to have with you. And in fact, it made me think today, earlier today, my time in the UK, I was watching a video by Danny Sullivan, who as a name, you’ll know, he was a big deal, Search Engine Land magazine he was a founder of, he works at Google now. But he was giving a presentation at WordCamp in Portland just last week about SEO. And it was actually about SEO and GEO was how he pitched it. I was intrigued because he talked about essentially the same thing. And I thought, well, that’s not my understanding of it, unless I got it wrong. But that’s really what Shel and I talked about the other day.
Although to be fair, he did talk about what the, the most effective thing to do isn’t to argue about or worry about acronyms or initialisms or whatever. It’s about, building trust, creating clear, incredible content, putting it where you can, which already are. I thought, God, did he listen to our episode or maybe, but of course that was last week, not, the other day. but he did get me thinking about this. Is GEO an evolution of SEO? Is it? the same thing by another name. We talked about this and that’s not what we figured out what’s what’s your take on that?
Stephanie Grober (04:26.786)
Well, I loved what Shel said in the episode from earlier this week that there is no magic bullet, right? Necessarily. That is the approach I take to marketing. I, you know, working in very traditional industries, professional services, often B2B, highly regulated spaces. So understanding that, which informs our approach to marketing and may be different than a direct to consumer play, for example, you know, some brands have a much younger demographic audience, B2C needs while we are, you know, working with highly distinguished attorneys, professionals in a very traditional space. But I agree with Shel. There may not be a magic bullet here. And as for the distinction between SEO and GEO, I do see GEO as complimentary to SEO. You could say that it’s an evolution.
I wouldn’t say that they are exactly the same thing, but they are very parallel to each other. I think that if you have successfully been employing SEO strategies as a part of your overall marketing efforts, then you are probably ahead of the curve, as far as GEO. And that would be because you’ve been consistently adding optimized content to your website. You know, which keywords you want to appear in search.
You may have been structuring your content in smart ways that already are answering questions. And that would be all on your own website, right? But now when we’re talking, GEO, we’re talking about getting that content out to external sources and reinforcing many of the same things. So SEO, could say it’s about keywords. GEO is about credibility, but the LLMs, they still have to learn.
So those keywords are gonna be important for them even in your external sources. And overall, what we’re looking for with GEO is mentions and visibility, whether it’s you as an individual or your brand.
Shel Holtz (06:34.097)
One of those magic bullets that people have jumped on in the last few weeks is some research that found that Reddit is the source of a lot of the content that is turning up in AI results. And Professor Malik just a couple of days ago, Ethan Malik at the Wharton School said essentially, nope, he said what they did was look at how often the sites come up in the answers at least once in the web search function of some AI agents when they do a web search for more information in response to a keyword search. He points out that the company searched for a bunch of keywords using Google AI mode and ChatGPT web search and perplexity, and then said they measured how many times those sites were included in the reply.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that if you’re doing research or if you’re just in one of the LLMs doing your job, that Reddit or Quora for that matter will be the dominant source of the information that you get. And yet this chart is everywhere and everybody’s talking about it. I confess, I went to our leadership in the organization I work and I said, we need to be in Reddit. And now…
It appears I was just chasing a shiny object or a magic bullet. How do you stay on top of what is working in this generative EO space?
Stephanie Grober (08:16.376)
So as a marketer, always have to think about which channels make the most sense for your brand or your individual brand, whoever you’re representing. Like I said, we work in legal with law firms. So Reddit is not exactly the space. There are some very famous attorneys who’ve done ask me any things on Reddit, and I’m sure that is helping them. I do believe that user generated content sites are coming up in GEO.
AI overviews simply because of how the content is structured in a very human questioning way, but it’s not going to be the right place for everybody. So when we take a look at that at Horowitz agency as PR professionals working with law firms or other other business professionals, there’s some other interesting stats. I think that stood out. So Muckrack put out a great report recently also analyzing which sites are read by AI.
And I believe it was almost 30 % of the sources are journalistic outlets with prominence and attention paid to outlets like Reuters, AP, Axios, for example. So those are sort of your tier one media. So that is a strategy you can employ for your credibility. If you don’t think that Reddit is the right place for you, okay, then let’s go after the tier one media
Now I will caveat that by saying, niche outlets are also very important to AI. So don’t think that you have to be an AP or Reuters. If you ask a niche question, it is very likely that the AI is going to read a niche or trade press outlet. So those are very valuable as well. But overall journalistic sources are a very valuable way to start appearing in GEO results. That’s where from a PR perspective, we can start maximizing our approach and our strategies, tailoring them there to support GEO.
@nevillehobson (10:21.792)
You emphasised the importance of securing tier one coverage, all those publications you mentioned, the idea being that being visible in such places can influence how generative engines surface content. But coverage like that takes time, doesn’t it? And it isn’t always immediate. So how do you advise professional services firms to balance the longer term credibility building with the short term pressure to be visible in generative search results?
Stephanie Grober (10:51.534)
Absolutely. It does not happen overnight. That’s something we tell our clients and probably any PR professional or communications professional in-house is going to share with stakeholders. You know, we don’t wake up, decide to do PR and land a New York Times article the next day
So the best approach today is to make sure that as part of your overall marketing plan, PR is included and you have a comprehensive… hopefully you already have that, but if you don’t have that and you’re thinking, I want to make sure that we’re doing GEO right, don’t neglect PR. There’s a few parts of the PR process. First one is just having your sources become media trained and responsive. And again, that takes time to be comfortable speaking to the press, to identify what they want to comment on, to give good sound bites.
That all takes some practice. So somebody who’s just starting out in PR might not be comfortable if the Wall Street Journal calls them on day one and they’re like, this is my first rodeo. So you wanna have some practice working with smaller outlets. Again, working with those trade publications which are still going to be very valuable.
So we don’t only wanna prioritize tier one, but just having a variety of PR opportunities, seeing what works best, that’s something that takes some time. So if you’re not already doing that as part of your PR strategies, the time to start is now, it’s all going to benefit your GEO. And then another key part of this is making sure the messaging is consistent. And that is down to the way you are cited in the press, for example
So, you know, as one example that comes to mind is if you’re somebody who is always referred to in the press as a celebrity criminal defense attorney over and over, that’s going to train the LLMs. When somebody is searching for a celebrity criminal defense attorney, you’re gonna come up in that AI overview because the reporters have referred to you that way in interviews. So how you present yourself to the media and how they cite you is important. It’s important to be consistent.
And then of course, you know, what you’re saying in each opportunity matters too, but I think down to the way that you are cited is, very key.
@nevillehobson (13:24.213)
I’ve got just a quick follow up on that tier one element before we kind of move on from that. But I’m just curious, actually, Stephanie, because you mentioned earlier the names of a couple of the new media, if I can call that, people like Axios. Isn’t the landscape evolving so fast, generally speaking, the media landscape that trying to kind of give labels or pigeonhole a media property as this is tier one and it’s
based on those old definitions back from print media days, I suspect. We’ve got, know, Exhaust is one of the new ones, but there are any number of I’ve never heard of you type of outlet by influencers, quote unquote, who have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of followers. And I’m wondering, Shel, I’ve talked quite a bit about nano influences and others who are kind of disrupting the traditional ways in which things are structured.
So where does this fit in that case? And probably the example you gave is someone brand new to this to PR just starting out suddenly is immersed in all this. What, how do you deal with this in this changing environment?
Stephanie Grober (14:36.91)
So the media landscape has changed drastically. Reporters in newsrooms, there’s been mass layoffs. What I think is interesting about GEO is as we’re saying GEO is so important, journalists are struggling. Newsrooms are letting people go. They’re restructuring at the same time. So how does GEO exist without journalism? And I hope that it demonstrates the… need and necessity of great journalism.
They can’t exist without each other because otherwise, you know, what has authority, what do we trust, right, to build a response from the AI. So like you said, Nebel, the landscape is changing. There’s new outlets every day. That continues to happen to myself and my team. We’re constantly discovering new outlets.
There’s journalists who have left major newsrooms, who have started their own newsletters, they’re on Substack, they’re podcasting. All of this is important, is the good news when we’re talking GEO, because GEO assesses a very wide variety of sources, including video, including podcasts. So I recommend that anyone who is wading into PR take as many opportunities as they’re comfortable with.
And again, don’t only hold out for Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Take a variety because you never know what is going to give you the most bang for your buck or where somebody is going to discover you. This is all about discoverability. This is about mentions. And the more you can do it, the better. All of the LLMs have their own way of reviewing sources at this point. They are not consistent.
There is not one formula that they’re using, whether it’s chat GPT or Claude or perplexity. Some of them use journalistic sources at a higher rate than others. Some of them use smaller outlets. Some of them have partnerships with major newsrooms like Financial Times to train the AI. So we’re in the very early stages.
That’s why, again, I don’t think that there is a one size fits all formula. I don’t think that there is a magic bullet today where it’s do it this way or you’re going to fail. It’s be prepared to be flexible, but be everywhere that you can. So as things shift, you’re still ahead of the curve. And anyone who has been a marketer through the rise of digital marketing, I think is probably familiar with that, and anyone who has been on the internet since the beginning of the internet is probably familiar with that, right?
When I grew up, it was the dawn of Wikipedia and things have really changed. We just got Google. I remember the first time a librarian told me about Google. So this is all gonna change. It’s gonna change very rapidly. It could go away. It could be the most important part of marketing I don’t think we know yet.
Shel Holtz (17:50.39)
How do you measure all of this? The success metrics for traditional SEO are pretty clear and not that difficult, but what should PR people be paying attention to in GEO? I’ve seen things like share of answers, citation rate, sentiment and model responses. What’s genuinely measurable that’s meaningful today?
Stephanie Grober (18:16.046)
So there are definitely some tools that are purporting to provide AI analytics, GEO analytics, which are available. I think the best way to measure today is simply through your own experimentation. Enter the questions you think your clients are asking in search, read the overviews, do you come up? Are your competitors coming up? And use that as a guide to see where you need to focus your efforts.
And again, it might be certain keywords, certain questions that you want to prioritize, but that’s the easiest way just to be the end user and see how you come up, ask, ask the LLMs to describe you, to describe your brand, your company and see what comes back to you. so again, it’s not going to be perfect. We see a lot of errors or mistakes or misassignments of names and things when we do this.
So, you know, this is not the be all and end all to being successful. And I will say that, you know, AI search accounts today for, I think less than 30 % of search traffic. So, fortunately it’s not the only driver of traffic and, you know, discoverability, so we have a little time to iron out those kinks.
@nevillehobson (19:35.906)
That’s really interesting. In episode 479 of this podcast, the one I mentioned earlier that we did, knowing we’re going to talk to you today, we talked about companies spinning up standalone, community driven content brands that become credible in their own right. When does that approach do you think makes sense? And what safeguards keep it authentic, rather than just a thin GEO play?
Stephanie Grober (20:03.592)
Unique content is incredibly smart. So if that is something that is sustainable for your company and your brand, I think it’s a brilliant idea. Content is king everywhere and in every industry, I think some more than others, but content is really king. So it just needs to be something that is sustainable. If you have users generating content, that’s excellent.
in working with attorneys thought leadership is huge. Attorneys are always writing. They’re speaking. can repurpose their content. So there’s always fresh content going up, on websites and things like that. one thing I wanted to mention too, as, as we’re discussing this, whether it’s a brand that builds their own content platform, or a company working with content in another way is that the LLMs prefer recent and fresh content.
So, you if you were writing or speaking or quoted in the press five, six, seven years ago, that’s not gonna help you today. It’s time to get back out there. In the past 12 months or so is ideal with ongoing fresh content. So just something to keep in mind because I know, you know, time passes quickly and we’re like, when was I quoted? No, it was like five years ago.
Anyway, back to the content. I think that’s a very smart and strategic play if it can be supported. We know that marketers only have so much time in their day. There’s a lot of things that demand attention. So you have to choose to prioritize what makes the most sense and is a sustainable effort for your team.
Shel Holtz (21:43.063)
In that episode that we recorded this week and in a previous episode, in fact, that we dedicated to this topic, we discussed the argument that press releases need to be reformulated for algorithms. I’m skeptical of that. How do you adapt or should you adapt everyday PR assets, whether it’s press releases, content that goes on your company’s website newsroom? Thought leadership pieces from your executives on LinkedIn or wherever? How do you adapt those so they’re more likely to be used and cited by LLMs but still useful for the human readers they were originally designed for?
Stephanie Grober (22:32.75)
Absolutely. And when I listen to that art that that episode rather, you know, one thing that crosses my mind is, is, you know, part of me wants to say the press release is dead. Can we say that? I’m not sure. It feels like it might be dead, but there is also a school of thought that GEO is reviving the press release.
Now, if you put out press release across the wire, meaning in most cases you’re paying to put it out across the wire, that might be something that hits an LLM and is used to train on a certain topic. So in some ways, a press release still can have influence in that way. Other than that, the typical press release is not going far these days. It’s very difficult to maximize a press release.
We are competing for attention in the media landscape. There are less journalists. There is more news. The news cycle is shortened. It’s not even 24 hours. It’s about 24 minutes, it feels like most times. So just your standard press release, not put across the wire, not going far for most companies, you know, unless you are a enterprise corporation or, you know, very exciting in some other way.
@nevillehobson (23:58.229)
Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s interesting. Is the press release dead? It’s a topic that pops up frequently. I think Shel and I have talked about this, the press release is dead, at least six times in the last six years. It could be more.
Shel Holtz (24:12.945)
By the way, I do like to remind people that for compliance purposes in the U.S., they still have some value, regulatory compliance.
Stephanie Grober (24:20.301)
Yes.
@nevillehobson (24:20.936)
Yeah, I’m sure that’s the same here in the UK too, although it may not be specifically a press release, a device you need to have as a compliance record. But I mean, it’s a thorny question because I see people commenting on this here and there on social networks particularly now and again that, yes, this is dead and B, no, it’s not.
But this notion of repurposing press releases to take into account the audience change, i.e. it’s not people, it’s the algorithm. I’m not using the word machine. I see people talk about it’s the machines. It’s not the machines. It’s the algorithm, right? So I think that is a credible view.
I disagree with you there, Shel. I think that is something that we are seeing that you need to prepare your content to publish it online with two audiences in mind, which are the humans and the algorithms. And the example Shel mentioned that we discussed specifically in an episode was somebody who has thought this through, it’s a really good visual explainers on the differences between them. They made a lot of sense to me, I have to say.
But is it going to be like the press release, the social media press release from 2006 to 2010, that was a template of the things you should include for social media to take advantage of it generated quite a lot of excitement, a lot of buzz, lot of hype and ultimately just kind of faded away. It didn’t really, you know, attract a lot of attention.
Is this likely to be the same case? I wonder. So I think this does this is important this change along with all the other things that we’ve been discussing. And I just wonder where this is going to fit if people are going to be creating press releases where the prime audience they’re thinking of is an algorithm. Where does that fit into the picture?
Stephanie Grober (26:19.436)
Well, there’s the algorithm, there’s the machines, but ultimately humans are still engaging with the content, right? So if the AI is gonna feed it back to us, it has to appeal to the human audience. So I think that there’s only so many differences between them. I personally have not seen a huge variation in the style of a great press release myself. And I think most communications professionals… I hope that most of them have a great sense of what it takes to have a really effective press release. I would say again, in the industries that I’ve worked in, that’s not changed very much regardless of whatever flashy marketing terms and strategies are in use at the time. But as far as getting it to hit,
The LLMs, the algorithm, it has to address the human at the end user who has a question and is seeking information and it has to answer that question.
Shel Holtz (27:23.025)
Yeah, that’s interesting because one of the very first arguments that I heard about what you need to do for your brand or your content to show up in the LLM results is to get away from saying what and get more into saying how. More explanations, more details. This leads me to believe that content marketing is probably a strong contributor to what LLMs get trained on.
I’m thinking of the great content marketing that comes out of Microsoft where they’ll have a lengthy feature, but it contains some short videos. It contains some short audio clips. It has infographics and photos and text. And it’s all there in that format so that whoever wants to use it can just grab that audio file and maybe use it in a radio broadcast or just grab that video clip and use it in a TV news report. Does that make sense? Should we be focused more on content marketing and less on more traditional forms of communication?
Stephanie Grober (28:34.432)
I think so. And I think how we are content marketing is important. The variety, the structuring of your content, exploring some Q and A type pieces is a great idea. And hopefully folks are already doing this because of SEO, right? It shouldn’t be such a surprise where your headings and the structuring of your content pieces were important. We see that in, in journalistic content too, right? There’s, there’s headings because news outlets want their articles to come up in search rankings as well.
So this shouldn’t be groundbreaking to anybody, but think about variety in your content. Think about making sure it’s answering questions, play with the format, use various types of multimedia to support your content. I think that is absolutely a sound approach today.
@nevillehobson (29:35.04)
So I’ve got a question about, you mentioned it actually, AI overviews earlier on in this conversation. Quite a simple question, really. Less and less people are clicking through. They’re gonna get their search results using Google and they’ll have then a summary on the right-hand side of the screen. And that gives them all they need and they do not proceed any further.
What impact is that having, do you think, and will continue to have on search generally and how you measure search, whether it’s GEO or SEO, how big of a concern should that be that people are not clicking through? And by the way, I’ve seen some reports in the last few days, which I haven’t bookmarked, frankly, but they’re talking about, you know, this is not what’s happening. People are clicking through. That doesn’t seem to fit what I see.
I don’t know, respectable search results being produced or data being produced showing that that is not the case. What’s your thought on that, Stephanie?
Stephanie Grober (30:36.482)
I think it’s so early still that we don’t know yet, right? Because AI, no, GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, the generative search results still make up a very low percentage of the overall engagement with our search engines. What I did see some reports of is that the click-throughs may not be to a brand’s homepage anymore but some of their internal blog pages or specific content pages. So I think it’s smart to make sure that those are optimized.
And again, it comes back to the content marketing that we were just talking about. Folks land somewhere else now in your website environment. I think it varies very much brand to brand, company to company, depends on what type of answer the end user was seeking.
And then again, we have to think, is everybody trusting AI? Personally today, I don’t fully trust the answers AI is giving me. I’m always going to go back and research them. Now that might change individual to individual, generation to generation, but it’s not perfect yet. So, you know, I don’t think we’re at a place where somebody is just going to solely get their questions answered by AI and go about their day.
Maybe we will get there and we will see a real sea change in the way web traffic works, but I don’t think this is going to completely break the system. And I don’t think it’s going to end search traffic as we know it. and you know, if folks are answering a question where they need something, they’re still going to have to click through to get it. AI can’t procure something for you. perhaps it can answer a question, but most likely you’re going to want to click through to read further and do your own research if the AI is just producing relevant sources for you.
Shel Holtz (32:38.473)
Your agency, Horowitz Agency, has to deal with an additional wrinkle with all of this, given the nature of the market sectors that you serve. Law firms, financial services, accuracy and compliance really aren’t negotiable in those industries. So how do you balance making content citable for AI, while staying inside the lines on confidentiality, disclaimers and regulatory restrictions?
Stephanie Grober (33:08.174)
I think what I love about legal marketing is that it is so professional and it tends to err more towards the traditional side of things and value just great marketing. So law firms don’t always go for flash in the pan. Law firms weren’t racing to be on TikTok, although there’s some lawyers who are very successful, but the new hot thing isn’t always what a law firm or a professional services firm is looking to do.
Rather, they embrace the fundamentals of great marketing and then make sure that everything that is put out adheres, complies, represents the brand consistently and correctly. There’s a lot of layers of approval. Anyone working in corporate marketing is probably very accustomed to that. And I think that that’s a great thing. We are not trying to utilize any gimmicks.
We are not trying to trick the AI because we have to stand behind what is put out on behalf of our clients. And when you’re talking about professional services, that’s really guidance and counsel to folks with very important personal or business questions.
Shel Holtz (34:24.593)
And let me ask you a quick follow-up question on that, as long as we’re talking about law firms and financial services. Those are pretty close to the top of the list of professions at risk from AI. Have you seen any movement among your clients in that direction? Are they starting to replace maybe paralegals or customer support people with AI?
Stephanie Grober (34:49.132)
Law firms are embracing AI, much like every industry, industry agnostic, think companies are embracing AI. They’re spending a lot of money on ways to incorporate AI into their processes. But I think it’s too early to say if any humans have been replaced. So what I get this sense from some major law firms is that they at the very lowest levels are taking away some of the hours of intensive research that might need to be done.
But then they are prioritizing the value giving advice that their professionals can provide. So it might not take as many billable hours on research, but you might get more value in the conversation with your attorney or advisor. Of course, marketers are using AI in very interesting ways.
But again, it’s not perfect. So I think it’s still very early stages. Certainly it’s not replacing anyone in these industries yet today. And we’ll see if we get to a point where it will. Now, the same can be said for communications professionals. Is AI going to take our jobs? I personally think if AI is writing all the content, then… wouldn’t we reach a point where human written content is actually at a premium and bespoke and in demand? Because how can you stand out in a sea of AI written content, right? That doesn’t sound appealing at all. I mean, that’s not what I wanna read. hopefully we’ll still be here in five years.
Shel Holtz (36:36.049)
Yeah, I just saw yesterday that Mark Benioff at Salesforce announced that they are letting 4,000 customer support people go and replacing them with AI. I was thinking on the financial services side that might be a similar trend at some point.
Stephanie Grober (36:54.516)
Mm-hmm. Perhaps, but I think it’s very risky in, you know, legal services, accounting, when you’re talking about that. you know, these industries are waiting in very carefully.
@nevillehobson (37:11.518)
We could do a whole episode just on this topic. So sticking with GEO looking ahead as I tend to do, there’s the horizon. Where do you see GEO going and evolving over the next year or so? And traditionally that question might be over the next five years. No, the next year or so. Do you think it will mature in that timeframe or will it need longer, becoming maybe a reliable discipline like SEO eventually did? Or is it more likely to, I guess, remain a contentious topic? People not agreeing on what it’s for, but there’s good practices that we’ll see emerging amongst all the hype. How do you see it, Stephanie?
Stephanie Grober (37:58.167)
It’s very hard for me to predict. At this point, there’s not an easy way for all of us to opt out of AI search results with every search engine. If that were to become an option, would folks just simply turn it off? And would we not even need to have this conversation if it simply falls from sort of the consciousness? Or is it going to be continued to be sort of forced upon us as search engine users?
Of course there was the Google antitrust case decision this week where, know, they’re keeping chrome and Gemini is going to be, feeding us its results. So I don’t see that going anywhere in the next year. I will be watching to see if AI search gets smarter and gets more accurate. and how our clients or those I work with appear in the search. So it will be sort of testing for us.
Of course, we’ll be looking out for more case studies of it leading to work. Anecdotally, there are folks in legal who are saying, yes, I’ve gotten clients from chat GPT searches, which is great. I personally know that there are some attorneys I’ve worked with in corporate law, for example, who after a great streak of appearing in outlets like Wall Street Journal, CFO.com, know, AI will tell me about them if I say who is a great &A attorney in Los Angeles. That’s what I want to see. That’s what I’ll be looking for in the next year. I can’t say that definitively we’re going to see a sweeping change more than that.
Shel Holtz (39:44.634)
In the episode that we recorded earlier this week, I mentioned that I had read an article about, I think it was a LinkedIn article from somebody who said he had tripled the volume of output in order to have more content out there that could be hoovered up by the models in the hopes that the volume would lead to more visibility in results.
I’m not sure that’s the answer, but certainly budgets aren’t keeping up with volume. The point was made that this individual did not get more budget to help create all that content. So if your firm were hired by a communications leader and asked you to adjust their content strategy for GEO, what process changes would you recommend, say, over the first 90 days?
Stephanie Grober (40:42.35)
Absolutely great question. One thing I wanted to mention too, when we’re talking about important content right now is rankings, reviews. So whether it’s professional rankings for an individual or best of lists, I would make sure that a client is incorporating those into their strategy. Because what better way to train an LLM than by appearing on a best of list from the last six to eight months, right? That’s exactly what you want to come up for most likely in a search.
We do probably over 500 nominations for our clients each year. So that is always a part of our strategy, but very important. I’d be looking at online reviews, whether for a company, could be your Google My Business reviews. It could be Yelp, Facebook, wherever you might get reviewed, in whatever way you might get reviewed. And then making sure that the client is out there, mentioned and visible again.
Each month, fresh mentions in journalistic outlets, whether they are prestige media or trade press, they still have value. Multimedia, getting them on video, getting them in podcasts anywhere we can. And then from a content strategy as a marketer, hopefully at this point you are repurposing, but use AI and let it help you repurpose.
There’s so many tips and tricks that marketers can use when it comes to AI. And that includes taking what you already have and making it new, repurposing it into different formats to make your job a little bit easier. So that today is one of the biggest benefits of having AI available to us as a tool to make content production easier.
@nevillehobson (42:30.014)
You make a good case for that, Stephanie. That’s exactly what I say to people. If you don’t use it or you’re skeptical, this is one thing you could do, you’ll benefit from doing this. That’s been great, this conversation. I think we’ve reached a point now for that famous question, Shel mentioned at the very beginning, which is, what didn’t we ask you that you really wish we had?
Stephanie Grober (42:53.998)
You know, I think a great question would be what is going to be the greatest impact that AI has on PR, public relations, and communication? I think those industries are still inherently human. I think they are relationship driven. I don’t think that we’re ever going to take humans out of the equation.
So even as we are working to boost GEO results, doing public relations, getting media mentions, we’re working with people. You have a PR professional, you have a client source, you have a journalist who’s a person, and that is still very valuable. AI can’t do that for us, it’s relationship driven. So make sure people are doing your PR, not AI.
@nevillehobson (43:43.818)
To kind of add add to that topic, Shel and I have talked about a few times on the podcast during this year. And it’s in the kind of area of AI agents, but it’s looking at I think, Shel’s phrase for it is ‘synthetic employees,’ where you have you have a situation that isn’t too far fetched in the near future, whether that means two years, five or 10, I don’t know where think about your team and your organization, where you’ve got maybe 15 people in that team of which three perhaps might be AIs effectively. So this isn’t like, you know, some of the illustrations you see on posts where you’ve got people and there’s like a robot in there. It’s not like that. I don’t know what it’ll be like. It might be like that actually
But is that kind of like a serious disruptive element suddenly appearing on the horizon that will have a huge impact on this amongst many, many, but think specifically what we’re discussing today and the change it might bring to that where you’re introducing AI team members in a team. What do you think about that?
Stephanie Grober (45:00.706)
I think that there are tasks AI can do well, but when it comes down to communications, strategic thinking, most of us don’t like it. We don’t love fully AI generated content, right? Where nobody’s reviewed it. We’re not thrilled. Journalists most often don’t want to get pitches that were written by AI, outlets don’t want to receive articles that were written by AI
So, you we pitch byline articles for clients all the time. A lot of newsrooms now have a, you know, a disclaimer that we may reject your piece if we think it’s written by AI. So it remains to be seen, you know, there are AI helpers, they’re on our teams right now, you know, how many companies are incorporating AI, we do have AI teammates.
We’re figuring out the best use for them. Some are better than others. Some are more trusting of AI than others. And some folks are more clever to use it as a tool than others. when it comes to communicating back and forth with artificial intelligence completely, the more strategic and in depth you get, just don’t know if that’s what we’re going to see in the very near future.
Shel Holtz (46:29.649)
Yeah, I have an AI colleague now. I have a two-person communication team where I work myself and one colleague and no budget for consulting. And so what I did was it took about four or five hours because I really worked on this, but I created a custom GPT who’s the senior communications consultant with a specialization in my industry. it doesn’t do stuff for me, but it’s a sounding board.
If I develop a strategy and I want somebody to play devil’s advocate, I can’t go to my $400 an hour consultant, I don’t have a budget for that. So I’ll just ask the AI consultant. I realize that it’s not as good, but in the absence of any alternatives, it’s fine. And it has come up with some really good responses. So…
Stephanie Grober (47:18.7)
Yeah, and I dare say that you’re probably, you know, far ahead of some others. So learning how to use it, learning how to maximize its output, how to get the most out of it and have consistent results, I think is where we should all strive to be today. And then in the meantime, you know, follow many voices on AI, on GEO.
It’s changing, it’s evolving so rapidly that, you know, don’t put all your eggs into one basket. Don’t buy into a one size fits all approach today. It’s still too soon. And don’t abandon your other marketing strategies or tactics in favor of some of the AI driven ones.
Shel Holtz (48:03.843)
Yeah, as we pointed out in that episode from earlier this week, recommendations from people you know are still top of the heap. Stephanie, this has been great. We really appreciate your taking the time to talk with us today. How can our listeners find you and maybe read some of what you share online?
Stephanie Grober (48:23.146)
LinkedIn is great. Stephanie Grober. I’m with Horowitz Agency. Love LinkedIn, I’m constantly talking to my clients about spending more time on LinkedIn. So I’d love to connect with anybody there. Our website is HorowitzAgency.com. And I look forward to keeping the conversation going.
Thank you guys very much for the time today.
The post FIR Interview: Generative Engine Optimisation with Stephanie Grober appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.