Who Controls Your Story?
Most organizations don't have a clue how customers/partners find information about them. That means they have no control over what's being said or who's being cited - often to their detriment.
We're researching the connection between information production and how it gets in front of their customers. For example, one of our clients puts out a high volume of content and pays a lot for a media/strategy team on retainer. We analyzed their content production and its channel distribution versus a cohort of their peers, and the results show how deep the chasm is.
Despite the greatest spend, our client was behind 2 players who hadn't spent a dime on outside media consultants. Only the top performer scored high on both metrics and turns that into recurring, sustainable revenue.
Here are five sources and content types shaping how algorithms and AI carry your message right now:
Own Website - crawlers won't rip from PDFs and images, but they will hit anything that can be read. Text articles get cited, and especially listicles. This is one reason you may have noticed an increasing number of lists (like this one!) written by your favorite or most respected voices you follow.
Primary sources - news orgs, reporters, journalists, and other generators of information. As long as it's not in a format that requires a bunch of pre-reading to understand the information being conveyed, it's seen as a credible source.
Secondary sources - includes articles and content that layers a take onto the information uncovered by the primary sources above.
Forums - think Reddit, LinkedIn, other orgs that have most of their content driven from people. LLMs are built on the understanding that the folks interfacing with them are humans, and humans are easily affected by social proof, so it surfaces information that seems like it comes from other humans.
Information Aggregators - Same rationale as above, rating or review aggregators are often critical sources of information for decisionmaking, from choosing a restaurant for a date or an enterprise choosing what SaaS ERP best fits their market.
We treat these as datapoints that are changeable and shapeable. Dunham Listens considers the myriad sources and targets of information that shape our clients' narratives in our Narrative Ecosystem Strategy engagements.
Reach out for more info and if we can help you tell your story that reaches your audience.
Our review of the sources and content types that get picked up by algorithms and cited by AI.