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It's time to escape the expert trap and become an in-demand speaker and thought leader through compelling and memorable business presentations, keynotes, workshops, and TEDx talks. If you want to level up your public speaking to get more and better, including paid, speaking engagements, you've come to the right place! Thousands of entrepreneurs and leaders have learned from Speaking Your Brand and now you can too through our episodes that will help you with storytelling, audience engagement, building confidence, handling nerves, pitching to speak, getting paid, and more. Hosted by Carol Cox, entrepreneur, speaker, and TV political analyst. This is your place to learn how to persuasively communicate your message to your audience.
Carol Cox:
How would it feel to get an inquiry into your
inbox from someone who wants to pay you 5000,
10,000, even $20,000 for a speaking
engagement or a workshop?
An even better.
That lead came from an AI chatbot.
Yes, it can happen has happened to me and has
happened to our clients.
And that's what we're going to talk about on
this episode of the Speaking Your Brand
podcast. Hi, I'm your host,
Carol Cox, and we're continuing our Bookable
Speaker podcast series.
Last week, we talked about how to use social
media effectively as a speaker,
not by following the trends that the
algorithms want, but instead making sure that
event organizers can find you on social media
and see the social proof that they're looking
for. Today, we're going to focus on how to
get the AI chatbots to recommend you,
to recommend you as a speaker,
as a workshop trainer,
and for your business in general,
because event organizers are using ChatGPT
and Claude to find speakers.
Our clients have gotten speaking engagements
worth 5000, 10,000, 20,000,
even $30,000 from event organizers who have
found them on ChatGPT.
And Claude here is speaking your brand.
Half of our leads now come from AI chatbots
and from Google, including not only for our
programs like our Thought Leader Academy and
our in-person speaking retreat,
but also for speaking and for workshops.
Not only is this increasing the number of
leads that we're getting,
but these are really high quality leads.
These people are ready to buy,
and they trust what AI has recommended to
them. I can't tell you how many times I've
been talking to a prospect on a console call,
and they've said to me,
Claude told me that you were the best,
or ChatGPT said that you were the top
recommendation for what I needed.
If you also want to get these types of
inbound leads, knowing how to get the AI
chatbots to recommend you is key.
And you may think this is hard to do,
and it's not technically hard at all.
What it does require is a clear,
consistent message across the different
online channels, including your website,
so that the AI chatbots understand you,
your brand, and your topics.
Now, if you haven't received any leads from
AI, you definitely should be.
Make sure you're asking prospects where they
found you, either on the form when they
schedule a call with you, or if they sign up
with something for you or in a conversation.
I'm going to share with you here in a little
bit exactly what else you can do to find out
if you are getting any traffic from AI.
Earlier this year, I created an entire course
on AI, SEO for the university where I teach.
So I did a lot of research and experimenting
on this. I really went deep.
So I'm going to give you the highlights in
this episode so that you can learn what AI
chatbots are looking for when they recommend
someone, and what you can do to get them to
recommend you.
And I have something at the end that I'm
going to share with you as a recommendation
that you're probably going to be surprised
about. I was surprised about this
recommendation when after I had done all of
this research.
If you're new to speaking your brand,
welcome. We work with women entrepreneurs,
professionals, and leaders to craft your
signature talk, identify your thought
leadership message, and build your speaker
platform. We do that primarily through our
online program called our Thought Leader
Academy, where we work with you one on one to
map out your signature talk from beginning to
end. And we also work with you in small group
calls to build your speaker platform.
You can learn more at speaking your
brand.com/academy.
Now let's get on with the show.
The first thing that you want to do is you
want to assess where you're currently at.
Go into your website analytics.
They could be embedded within your website
platform. Or if you're using Google Analytics
and see, are you seeing traffic to your
website from the AI chatbots.
You'll especially see it from ChatGPT because
there's a referrer tag that it sends.
Claude is less reliable on that,
but you should start seeing traffic from
ChatGPT. And ideally you want to see that
referral traffic increasing over time.
You also want to assess,
are people telling you that they found you
from ChatGPT and from Claude?
I recommend adding a question on your
consultation call, booking form,
or on an enrollment form that you have on
your website that says,
how did you find us?
How did you find me?
And then I just have a free form text box on
that so people can type whatever they want
and 50% or more of our leads.
This year, people have put ChatGPT,
Claude or Google in there.
So that's what the first thing to do is
assess where you're currently at.
And again, you want to see these trends
increasing over time.
The second thing you want to do is a keyword
audit. Go into ChatGPT and Google's Gemini
and ask each one what it knows about you.
Say, what do you know about Carol Cox
speaking your brand? What do you know about
speaking your brand and see what it says.
Now, obviously, if you've been using ChatGPT
yourself or Claude yourself,
it's good to know already a lot about you.
So it's going to be skewed in the sense that
it, it already has that information about you
from all of those that chat history.
You can use sites like answer the public.com
where it will send those queries.
What do you know about speaking your brand to
ChatGPT and Gemini through their API so that
you're not skewing the results based on your
chat history? So I'll put a link in the show
notes to that. Answerthepublic.com.
I have used that myself so I could get a
better sense of what the chatbots know about
me and about speaking your brand.
Once you do that keyword audit to verify that
with the AI, chatbots know about you is
accurate, then take a look at your key
website pages and content from the
perspective of an AI.
Can it easily find what it's looking for?
Is your content clear and consistent?
Is it well structured?
For example, go to your speaker page on your
website and if you don't yet have a speaker
page, you should definitely add one.
I'll include a link in the show notes to my
speaker page. So you can see an example and
you want to write this in third person.
So using your name, not I,
because as the robots are going through and
looking through all of these website pages,
you want to make sure that your name and your
company name keeps coming back in the
content. So all my speaker page,
I don't say I am the founder of speaking your
brand. I say Carol Cox is the founder of
Speaking your Brand, host of Speaking your
Brand podcast, etc.
create your speaker page or update it as
needed. Make sure you have good information
on it that the AI chatbot would find helpful
when it's deciding who to recommend as a
speaker. So that leads us to.
The second thing was how to become the answer
that the AI chatbots give to the user.
In traditional SEO, search engine
optimization links were the primary way that
Google established authority.
If there were a lot of websites that had a
link back to the New York Times.
Then the Google ranking algorithm figured
that the New York Times website was a high
quality website that a lot of people link to,
so therefore, it would rise in the top of the
search results rankings.
I've been in digital marketing for,
well, ever really since the internet came
about 25 years.
I teach digital marketing and business at the
at a university. So I have been steeped into
this industry for decades.
And SEO used to be such a hot thing because
everyone wanted to get into the first listing
on the the famous ten blue links on the first
page, or at least the first few that were
listed on there. The opportunity now with AI
chatbots is that this is a completely
different paradigm than links.
It's not about who links to you.
Instead, it's about making sure that you have
clear, consistent content on your website
that AI systems can understand and connect
back to you, your brand,
and your topic.
You want the AI to draw a thick,
permanent line between your name and your
company name and what it is that you do.
Your topics.
Here's a quick primer on how large language
models work.
They are a neural network very similar to the
neural networks in our own brains.
And so they have all this information and
they need to make sense of it.
And so what they do.
Much like how our brains work,
is that they group like things together.
For example, one part of their neural
network, say one little corner of their
neural network, they'll have things related
to cat, dog animals, fish,
horses, cows, etc.
so all of that is kind of grouped together,
farms, anything related to that.
And then on the opposite side of their neural
network, they may have word associations
related to say, topics in history Napoleon
and the French Revolution in World War II.
So all of those things are grouped together.
Now, of course, they can cross-pollinate.
You could talk about the use of horses in the
Napoleonic Wars.
And so that would be a connection.
But it's a much longer connection.
That connection is weaker than it is between,
say, dogs and cats as pets.
I know this is kind of wonky,
isn't it? But I love this stuff. I was a
software developer before I started speaking
your brand, so AI has definitely brought back
the techie in me. My point is that you want
the AI chatbots to draw that thick,
permanent line around what it is that you do.
You want those associations to be closely
connected to each other.
You don't want that long weak line.
You want it to be close together.
When I'm on consultation calls with
prospective clients and they have found
speaking your brand from ChatGPT or Claude,
and then I will ask them,
well, do you remember what you were chatting
with with the AI about when they recommended
speaking your brand?
And they always say one of two things.
Either Clore thought that I needed help with
thought leadership, and they recommended
speaking your brand, or I was looking for
help with the signature talk.
And so ChatGPT highly recommended you.
Those are the two topics thought,
leadership, and signature talk that the AI
chatbots most associate with speaking your
brand. And they are right. That's exactly
what we do and exactly reflects all the
content we've been putting out for years.
So speaking, your brand has become one of the
answers. When users are working with their AI
chatbots and trying to figure out their own
thought leadership or their own signature
talk. How did this happen?
How did speaking your brand get to be one of
the top answers?
It's because of all of the content we have
been putting out, specifically on the
Speaking Your Brand website for years.
And there is one very specific type of
content that has made the biggest difference.
And I'll share that with you here in just a
little bit. Ai systems,
just like your potential clients and event
organizers, are looking for specific answers
to specific questions such as,
I'm looking for a speaker on personal
branding who lives in Orlando.
And then it's going to bring back speakers.
You want the content on your website to be
well structured, clear and direct,
but don't lose your brand voice when you do
that. Make sure to include what makes you
unique and differentiates you from other
speakers and other service providers for your
business. So you want your content to be well
structured on the blog post and on the key
pages on your website.
So you want to make sure that you're having a
clear idea, an explanation,
and description of it,
examples that support it,
and then at the bottom having.
Frequently asked questions.
So a Q&A section.
I'll also include a link in the show notes to
one of my blog pages that specifically has
this structure so you can see what it looks
like. One of the best ways to get AI chatbots
to cite you and to recommend you,
is to invent a term or a phrase.
That way, you're differentiating yourself
from others out there who may be talking
about very similar things.
For example, here at Speaking Your Brand,
we have our signature talk canvas framework
that I came up with years ago,
and it is trademarked.
And I use that phrase signature talk canvas
in a lot of content and a lot of blog posts
on my website.
So then as the AI robots are going through
and scanning the websites,
they find O Signature Talk Canvas framework.
This looks really helpful to users who are
wanting to work on their signature talk.
I will cite speaking your brand and their
framework as an answer to help this user.
So becoming the answer for the AI is making
sure that the AI knows exactly what it is
that you do, that you have that clear,
consistent message for speaking.
Your brand is around thought leadership and
signature talk. What is it for you?
And then do a conversational audit.
Go into ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini and
type something like, help me find a speaker
on whatever your topic is.
Help me find a speaker on personal branding
in Orlando and then see,
does the AI ask you clarifying questions
like, what is the budget?
Are you looking for someone who has a certain
background? Are you looking for a certain
type of audience that this speaker normally
speaks on? When you see those clarifying
questions now, you'll know,
oh, I need to go add that type of FAQ,
that type of information to the speaker page
on my website or to my trainings page,
or to my offer page on my website.
So then update your page to make sure that
you're explicitly answering those specific
questions. So the AI has the answers ready.
Next time someone asks and you are a good fit
for that topic or for what that person is
looking for. So far, we've talked about
number one, assessing where you're currently
at. Are you getting traffic from AI and what
is the AI already know about you?
Number two was how do you become the answer?
So making sure that you have that clear,
consistent message that the AI in their
neural network knows to associate with you.
The third thing is to publish content
regularly. Right now, I'm publishing twice a
week on the Speaking Your Brand blog.
One blog post every week is the show notes
for the podcast episode.
The second blog post for that week is
generally a longer version of what I talked
about on the podcast that week,
or some other content related to the work
that we do around thought leadership,
signature talks, women and leadership,
and building confidence in speaking.
So some something related to that, because I
want to keep those associations strong.
And it's really key that you're publishing
this content on your own website.
The problem with places like Substack and
Instagram and TikTok is that they're walled
gardens, the AI robots and the Google robots
cannot go through and scan those websites.
Substack is behind is behind an email,
opt in, Instagram and TikTok.
Well, they're mostly video,
so the AI is not getting that type of
structured, long form content that it likes.
You can still post on social media,
you can still use Substack,
but I highly, highly recommend making sure
that you have content like this regular
content on your own website.
That's why LinkedIn is better than some of
these other platforms,
because LinkedIn does allow the robots to
scan its content, so your LinkedIn articles
and your LinkedIn profile will show up in
search. As I mentioned before,
the AI chatbots really like well structured
content. So if you've been using ChatGPT or
Claude for a while, it probably already has a
good understanding of you,
your brand, what it is that you talk about,
you can just ask it to write an AI,
SEO optimized blog post for you.
Give it the topic, ask it to interview you
first about that topic so that it can get
some additional information.
And then be sure to tell it that you want
that post to be structured and written for
both AI and for humans,
and then it will go through and give you that
summary at the top.
All of the information examples,
the FAQs at the bottom.
And again, I have a link in the show notes.
So you can see an example of this that will
make it really easy in all transparency,
most of the blog posts that have been
published on the Speaking Your Web Brand
website this year have been written by
ChatGPT. Chatgpt knows speaking your brand
really well because of the for years now
almost that I've been using it,
so I just tell it right.
An AI SEO optimized blog post based on this
podcast episode, and then I will write the
whole thing because I'm posting this content
for specifically for the robots.
Now, of course, you as a human are welcome to
go read the blog post.
But let's be real. Who's reading blog posts
nowadays? Not that many people.
So I really am doing it for the AI.
And I think that's why we've been getting so
many leads from the chatbots this year.
Now, I mentioned in the intro that there's
something that I was really surprised about
as far as what the AI chatbots like.
They love conversational content,
so having that well structured content is
great. The FAQs.
But they really like conversational content,
hints, transcripts from podcasts,
and YouTube because they want to know how to
converse with their human users.
So they've been trained on a lot of
transcripts and conversational content,
and they want to continue to do that.
This is why I think that starting in the fall
of 2025, so over a year ago when I first saw
the referral traffic coming from ChatGPT and
we were getting our first leads from that,
I think it's because of all the podcast
transcripts I've had on the Speaking Your
website for years.
I've had this podcast for over nine years.
This is episode number 494.
So just think there are almost 500 blog posts
on the website related to the topics that we
talk about, and most of them have
transcripts. And I notice also that when I'm
doing searches for something related to,
say, signature talks or public speaking.
A lot of times my YouTube videos on the
Speaking Your Brand YouTube channel will also
come back as search results.
And here's what's so interesting about that.
A lot of those quote unquote videos on my
YouTube channel are not videos at all.
They're just audio. They're the audio from
that podcast episode.
But I always published every single episode
from this podcast, even the audio only once
to YouTube. And I'm glad I did because the AI
chatbots, yes, they did.
They scanned through all of YouTube as,
as well in their training data.
So now you may be thinking to yourself,
oh, but Carol, I didn't,
I don't have a podcast.
I don't have a YouTube channel.
I haven't been publishing for years and years
like you have.
What am I supposed to do?
And I get it. I think you have more content
than you think, though, that you can start
adding to your website.
As the old saying goes,
the best time to plant a tree was 20 years
ago, or maybe 5 or 10 years ago.
The second best time is today.
So start doing it now and then you'll start
seeing the benefits.
The content you may already have.
Maybe you have blog posts,
but they haven't been updated in a while.
Go to ChatGPT.
Give it an existing blog post and have it
restructure it for AI SEO.
If you've been sending out email newsletters,
but those email newsletters have just been
going to your email list,
they have not been publicly accessible.
Take those email newsletters and go publish
them on your website blog.
You can date them back to the date that they
originally were sent out.
So if you sent out an email newsletter a year
ago, just put that date as the date it was
published. So that way now everything is
landing on your website on the exact same
publication date.
So you can do that. Take all those email
newsletters. If you have articles that you've
written for Substack or for LinkedIn or post,
or more substantial posts that you have been
posting on LinkedIn.
Go and take those and add them to your
website blog. You may also seriously want to
consider starting a podcast.
And I know you may be thinking,
oh, I don't have the technical know how to do
that, or I don't have time to do that.
You don't have to do a podcast every single
day for almost ten years like I have.
I mean, you're welcome to if you want to. I
love podcasting, but you could just do
seasons, maybe do a ten episode season on
topics related to what you do,
have solo episodes, have some client
interviews or guest interviews,
but remember to make sure that everything is
coming back to how the AI is going to
associate you with certain topics.
Do a season for 8 or 10 episodes,
take a break, and then do another season.
But now you'll have that conversational
content not only out on podcast feeds,
but also posted to YouTube,
even if it's audio only.
Still have it sent to your YouTube channel.
And make sure that you have transcripts in
addition to the written show notes on your
website blog.
I use sonix.ai for the transcription for the
podcast episodes because it's very,
very high quality transcription and it has
the speaker names.
It's very well formatted.
And then I embed that into the show notes
page for every episode.
And you can see that on this show notes page,
if you go to speaking your brand.com/494,
that's the episode number speaking your
brand.com/494.
If you scroll down the page,
you can see the embed of the transcript of
this episode. So let's do a quick recap here.
The first thing is to assess where you're
currently at. What traffic are you getting
from AI. Be sure to ask leads if they found
you from ChatGPT or Claude,
do that keyword audit.
Number two, become the answer.
Make sure your key website pages and your
blog posts are well structured,
and that you have a clear,
consistent message related to you,
your brand, and your topics.
And then number three,
publish content regularly,
especially on your own website,
on your own blog, and consider starting a
podcast. If you would like to work on your
online visibility, including your speaker
page, your LinkedIn profile,
and content for AI SEO.
This is part of what we do in our Online
Thought Leader Academy.
We also make sure that you have that clear,
consistent message that you want to be known
for as we work together one on one to craft
your signature message and your signature
talk. You can get all the details,
including pricing and our next start dates
for our Thought Leader Academy as speaking
your brand.com/academy.
Again, that's speaking your brand.com
academy. In the next episode,
we're going to wrap up this bookable speaker
series. And I'm going to talk about why
thought leaders get paid more as speakers.
Until next time.
Thanks for listening.