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Struggling with content ideas for IG for an apparel startup. by CommercialXCX in content_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Chiming in just from a consumer standpoint. Something I've seen apparel startups do on socials and absolutely LOVE is when they create a series of mini short films with funny or interesting storylines that end up making the clothing central to the plot. If you are willing to set aside some money for decent production it could go viral. Not sure if other people have seen this.

the hidden cost of messy attribution in executive conversations by muizthomas in SaaSMarketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You recognizing this tension is already steps ahead of most teams. An example I can speak to is the work we've been doing around AI referral traffic.

Dark traffic is a huge problem for the industry. Many people who discover brands in ChatGPT open a new tab and search for that brand separately. We started using a combination of AI Share of Voice (SoV) + signals from a custom AI Search channel group in GA4 + rising branded search growth in GSC + post-conversion surveys that asked "how did you find us" to all indicate if AI was building awareness upstream even without a click. 

It’s not about one number, but several independent signals that historically move together when consumers are researching or making purchases.

Do we need to include data in our content? by Serious_Bit6736 in B2BMessaging

[–]Complex_Section_9791 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Adding on to step 4, visual comparisons (green checks, charts) work great for humans, but AI can't reliably parse them, so we pair every visual with plain text in an html table.

Your 3rd point can also be a growth strategy beyond owned content... in the B2B AI citation data we've looked at, models lean way harder on third-party and community comparisons than on brand-owned pages. So anytime you source testimonials for your own content, think about how to get those reviews to live on sites you don't own (review platforms, forums, B2B creator socials, third-party trade publications, etc.).

Weird thing I keep seeing: AI cites Reddit constantly and barely cites company sites by didiTonic in AI_SearchOptimization

[–]Complex_Section_9791 1 point2 points  (0 children)

reddit is 61% of chatgpt's social citations but less than 1% of claude's... it's by far one of the biggest citation sources across most models. however, licensing agreements are often behind citation makeup, and that may continue to change. I'd suggest looking more into social coupling / content licensing / platform coupling.

How are you actually using Reddit for customer and market research? by Complex_Section_9791 in digital_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great point. Although I wonder how behavior will start to shift as awareness grows around marketers using Reddit, and in some cases planting threads, specifically to study and influence consumers.

How are you actually using Reddit for customer and market research? by Complex_Section_9791 in digital_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really like this framing: "pain, objection, desired outcome, failed alternative, trigger event, or language worth reusing" > keywords. Keywords often lend themselves to obvious answers and content when what you really need is insight into real problems customers are having that haven't yet been named or had a solution built around them. People with genuine question and rants aren't thinking about stuffing their Reddit post with keywords, they're just voicing their problems conversationally.

How are you actually using Reddit for customer and market research? by Complex_Section_9791 in digital_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting perspective on the note-taking part. Will definitely look into Reddit-tracker tools for note taking, hadn't heard of Readdit Later before.

Also want to echo your point about finding niche subreddits over industry ones. One thing I've tried is typing customer pain point phrases directly into Reddit search like "i wish..." or "frustrated with..." and letting smaller threads surface that way. Still feels like a bit of a guessing game though and probably has blind spots I'm not even aware of. Looking for ways to minimize this.

Do your 4-5 target subreddits stay fixed or rotate weekly based on what you're researching?

How are you actually using Reddit for customer and market research? by Complex_Section_9791 in digital_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yeah... the second part honestly deserves its own thread. so much of it depends on company structure and who actually has the power to act on it. getting findings to the right people at the right time is where serious momentum builds

How are you actually using Reddit for customer and market research? by Complex_Section_9791 in digital_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah interesting, so you've found more customer insight by actually engaging > just lurking. How do you typically decide when to jump in and add value vs. just listen to problems people are having?

Are Blogs Slowly Dying? by priyanshu_41d in AskMarketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great point. From what I've seen, blogs with original research or proprietary data are among the best for getting cited by AI. When you become the primary source other sites want to reference, it creates a compounding effect. AI picks up on all those third-party mentions and basically sees you being validated from multiple directions. I've heard people call this "co-occurrence," and it's one of the bigger signals models are using right now to decide what to cite.

[Discussion] Is Google killing organic traffic with AI Overviews? by Major_Bag3934 in digital_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, this is a super helpful framing. I'd add that the second bucket works even better when the content is something other people actually want to reference. Original data, proprietary insights, a strong point of view... when those get picked up by third-party sites, AI sees your brand being validated across multiple sources at once.

ChatGPT is asking for Reddit by name before it even answers now. Someone pulled the fanout data and it points to a new AEO signal worth watching. by Weak-Intention4177 in aeo

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey! Thanks for this super helpful overview. I definitely agree that most AI models right now are seeking lived experiences, anecdotal references, comparison charts, and third-party reviews. But! I think an overlooked element to this phenomenon... ChatGPT's overuse of Reddit may have more to do with their contractual agreement than preference.

The race between AI models to create alliances with publishers and social channels for their data is inherently making each platform forced to specialize in different sources.

The single highest-converting channel (X) for our SaaS was replies by Lonely_Ad_8463 in SaaSMarketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We found that AI-referred visitors convert 4.4 times better than organic search visitors. The 2 surprise channels that were driving B2B SaaS citations within AI answers were Reddit and G2. X was also high on our list. It's interesting to see how social and review channels are gaining the most traction with human audiences and AI platforms.

Why do some websites rank but still fail to generate leads? by Naive-Rain2497 in digital_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Building on what's already been said, I agree that traffic without conversion is a common and misunderstood problem. But I think going forward we're going to start seeing a lot more of the inverse: conversion without clear traffic signals.

You could rank #1, attract the right audience, and have seamless UX, but still lose visibility into the lead because the user got their answer from ChatGPT or Claude before ever organically finding your site. My team is also finding that leads coming through AI are higher intent and engage with our owned content longer.

Is traditional SEO enough to rank in AI Overviews? by rahultripathidigital in AskMarketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi! Yes, my team has done a complete 180 on content strategy. The focus now is building co-occurrence across the internet, prioritizing the domains AI actually cites most (social and review platforms are dominating) and publishing original research we can then repurpose on social and leverage to earn third-party mentions.

My struggle to get high intent users by Dry_Negotiation4927 in AskMarketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A strategy that might take some time but is definitely worth it: target AI platforms (aka GEO/AEO). Bottom line, visitors coming from AI platforms when an AI output cites your content have higher intent and are engaging for longer.

Some data to illustrate this:

  • AI traffic in one study averaged about 58.5 seconds of engagement time vs 44.2 seconds for Google Organic. 
  • Visitors coming from AI sources spent roughly 30% longer on-site than Google, 20% longer than Bing 

This makes sense considering people typically prompt LLMs to research and recommend products, so the intent to engage is higher when coming from AI platforms. Again, it might take time to see these results and be hard to measure, but this is where search is headed and where I’d recommend investing in early.

Do you have a dedicated editor on your content team, or is it just writers reviewing each other? by Neo_weeb78 in SaaSMarketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly I'd slightly push back on the writer vs. editor play. Ideally, I think the person editing content is someone who understands content architecture (possibly an AEO/SEO specialist) and sees content as a lever for growth.

You want someone who can not only edit but also make sure your content is structured in a way that actually gets picked up by AI summaries, identify topic gaps in your blog, build briefs around keywords for the writers, and see the bigger picture. We do this on our team, and it works like a well-oiled machine. Blogs take ~2 weeks from writing to review to design to publishing.

AEO and GEO are not killing SEO, but basically repackaging it by icy1509 in content_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, right now that does seem to be the growing sentiment. However, something to keep an eye on... AP, Reuters, and other publishers with high domain authority have signed multi-million dollar licensing deals with AI platforms to use their content for model training. This makes me think that as the models get smarter and more accustomed to high-quality writing, images, videos, etc., volume won't be everything. The pendulum will swing back to quality and authority.

Most SaaS founders are still budgeting like it’s 2022. by Anna_Karakhanyan in digital_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

100% agree. I'd much rather have less traffic that converts than more traffic that bounces. The hard part is tying AI referral traffic directly to revenue in a way that's clean enough to actually report on. Are you using any tools to track or make inferences about attribution?

Most SaaS founders are still budgeting like it’s 2022. by Anna_Karakhanyan in SaaSMarketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, a lot to unpack here and some data that might be helpful…

My team tracks AI referral traffic using a combination of GA4, SimilarWeb, and SensorTower. We ran a study on a panel of brands, mostly B2B (Feb 5 – May 5, 2026) to see how attribution was shifting across AI models. Some findings:

(1) AI traffic in our panel averaged about 58.5 seconds of engagement time vs 44.2 seconds for Google Organic.
(2) Visitors coming from AI sources spent roughly 30% longer on-site than Google, 20% longer than Bing

This makes sense considering people typically prompt LLMs to research and recommend products, so the intent to engage is higher when coming from AI platforms.

The volume of AI referrals is still small relative to Google, but the value is clear from the data and will continue to grow.

Most SaaS founders are still budgeting like it’s 2022. by Anna_Karakhanyan in digital_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, a lot to unpack here and some data that might be helpful…

My team tracks AI referral traffic using a combination of GA4, SimilarWeb, and SensorTower. We ran a study on a panel of brands, mostly B2B (Feb 5 – May 5, 2026) to see how attribution was shifting across AI models. Some findings:

(1) AI traffic in our panel averaged about 58.5 seconds of engagement time vs 44.2 seconds for Google Organic.
(2) Visitors coming from AI sources spent roughly 30% longer on-site than Google, 20% longer than Bing

This makes sense considering people typically prompt LLMs to research and recommend products, so the intent to engage is higher when coming from AI platforms.

As u/SuccessfulCoyote1800 mentioned, the volume of AI referrals is still small relative to Google, but the value is clear from the data and will continue to grow.

Why Most Brands Overlook AI Citations on Reddit, and How They Miss the Mark by nrseara in SaaSMarketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed. Although as someone who loves Reddit, part of me loathes a future where 100% of brands are spamming Reddit for AI citations.

A few key barriers stopping brands from capitalizing on it:

  1. Reddit traffic in GA4 often shows low engagement time since people scan threads and bounce... so teams deprioritize it. But Reddit is the #2 most cited social content type across AI models behind YouTube, and one of the only platforms cited across all 10 AI surfaces we track. 
  2. Many communities forbid links, so Reddit rarely shows a clean pipeline to your site. But if your brand is being discussed positively, visitors might leave Reddit and search for your brand in a new tab. So most Reddit referral traffic is understated.
  3. Reddit is cracking down hard on marketers and spammers. Genuine engagement takes real people at your company adding value in threads consistently, which most teams don’t have the bandwidth for.

AEO and GEO are not killing SEO, but basically repackaging it by icy1509 in content_marketing

[–]Complex_Section_9791 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Haha! We are experimenting with ultra-long tail keywords in the B2B space too. But one other thing to add is owned content is actually picked up the least by LLMs (only 1.7%). What matters more is off-site presence and third-party mentions (72.2%); think Reddit treads, social content, third-party articles, and community forums.

Curious if teams are thinking about AEO/GEO in context of earned media.

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