B2B Gaps

5 reasons why it's too early to bury Reddit as a marketing channel (for those who worried that Reddit is getting less cited in ChatGPT now) 1/ We have already seen how often ChatGPT experiments with citations. The drop in citations today does not guarantee that it will be permanent. 2/ ChatGPT is the largest player in the LLM market, but Google is gradually increasing its share. Gemini, AI Overview and AI Mod continue to cite Reddit. 3/ We do not know how the story of the revision of the terms of cooperation between Reddit and Google and OpenAI will end. But Reddit is escalating the revision of the terms of cooperation, because it considers its position strong. Reddit has indeed managed to significantly improve the work of anti-spam systems and continues to be the owner of unique data. If one of the big players refuses to work with Reddit, then the one who continues to work gets a big advantage. 3 advantages that make Reddit data unique: - the largest database of answers by long-tail queries - more than one opinion per thread (sites rarely interview experts and users for their content) - much better structured data than on other social platforms Because of this, I predict that Google will agree with Reddit on new terms. 4/ Yes, most brands have paid attention to Reddit only to improve visibility in AI. But those who do it correctly and for long enough notice that this channel has its own separate value. - No social platform gives as much organic reach for posts from brand pages as Reddit. - If LinkedIn and Meta are mostly used for demand generation, then on Reddit people often search for something just like on Google and those who track such queries and participate in discussions will receive real attention from the target audience. 5/ So many people hate Reddit for spam and fake accounts, despite the fact that Reddit is constantly doing a lot of work to fix this, while on LinkedIn 50% of comments and posts are already written by AI and there is no punishment for this at all. Last, most controversial thesis. There is an opinion that Reddit only affects queries where LLMs use RAG, and in this case Reddit affects answers, only because it is in the top of the Google SERP. But why then would OpenAI need a separate agreement with Reddit? Until ChatGPT completely refuses to use Reddit data, it remains possible that Reddit is also used for training data. I don’t know how to check this. If you have any studies or posts on this let me know.

9 months ago I was banned on r/SEO. Today I celebrate 1,000 members in my own sub r/seogaps. Here is what I did and learned during this journey: 1/ The way Reddit communities are created and moderated looks like democracy: - No one can own a subreddit, only moderate it. - It is almost impossible to manage a large community without involving other moderators, which reduces the dependence on one person. But in reality, everything is a little more complicated. Each author and moderator of a subreddit is a little dictator. Whatever rules are written in the community sidebar, the moderator himself decides who can be forgiven for violations and who cannot. There is no supreme court, Reddit will not consider your complaints about moderators. So accept the rules of the game, and either play by the rules of other communities or create your own. The only method how Reddit limits the power of moderators, is getting better at automatically deleting posts and comments that look like spam. 2/ The fact that I was banned from r/SEO was a turning point. At first I was sad, but then I saw a big lesson in it. If I can constantly publish interesting content, why should it work for someone else and not for me. That's how r/seogaps was born. Most of the content there is the same as my posts on LinkedIn. But since Reddit has a large audience that doesn't visit LinkedIn + the distribution of posts on LinkedIn is always random, such content always finds readers on Reddit who like it. 3/ If you start your own community, don't expect quick results. On Reddit, there are often already popular subreddits on your topic, or more general ones that also constantly talk about your topic. But considering how many AI-generated posts there are, you can stand out even against of large competitors if you can: - post interesting, unique content - do it throughout the year - add life to your subreddit by hosting AMA sessions and sending traffic from other channels. 4/ Yesterday we had the first AMA session in the subreddit with Karsten Madsen and it has already collected 3,000 views. In my opinion, this format has a special value that YouTube interviews do not have, both for listeners and for the author: - listeners do not have to watch the video for a long time (also video summarizing through Gemini often loses some important details) - listeners also easily share answers to a specific question via screenshot or link with other people - for the author of the session it is an additional trusted URL that contributes to the understanding of LLMs who he/she is and his/her brands. Therefore, I will continue it. There will be announcements with new guests soon. Who would you like to see on the AMA session? P.S. If you want to grow subreddit yourself, I've created a detailed guide on it - hackthealgo.com/p/how-to-sta… If you need help with it, write me in DMs.

Many of us are skeptical about the value of TOFu content today. But sometimes it's useful to question even the most obvious things. I was also skeptical about it for 2 reasons: 1. Adoption of AI chats is rising, which means that even the greatest guide will be stolen by LLMs. Even if there is a citation, it has 0 value if the brand isn't recommended. 2. It became so easy to produce good enough content for a blog. We don't feel that publishing such content is worth it if every competitor can do it. So, I was wrong with these assumptions. At least partially, at least for now. For 6 months, Tango has been publishing content only for bottom-of-funnel keywords. But these keywords are gradually running out. 2 weeks ago I suggested publishing guides by "{platform} implementation" keywords. The idea was that even if they get 0 clicks from Google, it still has value as a resource for internal links for /solutions/ pages. Andrea Kosciuk did it fast. I didn't expect these 9 guides would generate 38 clicks from Google, 70 users overall, and a first conversion in 7 days. It means that: 1. We may be too pessimistic about the end of the old Google SERP with blue links. And it's clear that some people still prefer to read a well-structured article on the website, not in an AI chat interface. 2. The ability of your competitors to create similar content doesn't mean you have to avoid it. At least because: - they also may have an assumption it doesn't worth it in a new AI world; - they may miss or forget it; - they may create worse content (yes, even with AI) - they may rank lower because of a weaker domain, not enough internal links, a JS site, and other reasons. When was the last time you published TOFu content?

The biggest difference between SEO and AEO, if viewed from a B2B CMO level. SEO: you could do both demand capture and demand generation. AEO: you work only on demand capture In the old SEO world, each free tool or guide actually helped to buy views from a relevant audience. You owned the page people visit and could place a banner or link to your product. Combine some creativity and pSEO experiments, and you could generate 100K+ views every month. That's why SEO was considered so valuable for a long time. And that's the reason why the SEO role doesn't look as fashionable as before. Demand capture is too limited, and businesses can't grow without demand generation. Of course, because AEO is considered a new channel by many CMOs, it helps us to adapt and win their hearts again. But if you want to truly succeed, you have to look for ways to help with demand generation too. In most cases, it means creating (and sometimes even executing) a content marketing strategy on YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn. Do you disagree?

The worst thing you can do in your AEO strategy is to choose only one metric for tracking AI search visibility. Yes, you probably hear that it’s important to choose one North Star Metric when growing a startup. You also remember that revenue from the specific channel is the only important metric for defining the channel's success. However, reality is much more complicated. AI chats became one of multiple steps in a long user journey, alongside Google, YouTube, Reddit, and so on. I've just published a detailed guide about 5 methods to monitor AI search visibility properly, with pros and cons of each method. Check it here: hackthealgo.com/p/how-to-mon…

"Why did our AI visibility scores differ across tools?" This article is a ready-to-use answer for your customers. hackthealgo.com/p/4-variable… AI search visibility scores have become a North Star Metric in many teams now. You probably will hear such a question in 2 cases: - You or your customer decided to use 2 or more tools to monitor brand performance in AI search (to generate more insights). - You are in the process of choosing one tool and comparing it for a couple of months to determine which is the best for your needs. In both cases, you have to keep in mind 4 variables that influence such scores.