2307 - How Generative Engine Optimization Is Transforming the Future of PR with Veracity's Amy Rosenberg

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0:59With us right now, Amy Rosenberg. Amy, You are the founder and president of Veracity. You're found on the web at veracityagency.com. Amy, it's great to have you. Hi, thanks for having me. Yes. Well, listen, also a fellow PR nerd. So I love geeking out on that. We're going to talk about that in just a second. You know, before we do, I always love kind of learning, you know, what people's interests are outside of work. Is there anything you've been geeking out on lately? Geeking out outside of work that's difficult because I'm kind of into AI but we could that's I guess that's kind of work but I do have fun planning trips on AI and on chat GPT and I feel and actually we went to Florida for spring break and I was having fun with chat GPT planning our itinerary and I kind of feel like it's a game I kind of feel like it's an interactive fun game But that's that.

1:57But then so personally, though, not AI, we are moving our kid to college. So college starts late here in Oregon. So we have like three weeks left with him. Oh, wow. So I'm really glad. And are they going up for the first time? Oh, yeah. Oh, my goodness, Amy. Let me tell you. I'm gonna give you a virtual hug right now. So I remember when my oldest daughter, it just so happened. I'll just tell this story really quick. We somehow, like I was going off to a conference. I was speaking at a conference and she was flying out like, and it just happened to coincide where we were at the airport at the same time.

2:37And so we were having lunch at the airport and then we had to like walk in separate directions after lunch. And so gave her a big hug. And, you know, this is the first time she's been away from home basically for more than, you know, a handful of days. And so as I'm getting up and I'm walking away and I'm like, I'm like walking in the other direction. She's walking the other direction. I'm like, do I turn around? Do I turn around and look? Do I turn around? And I did. And, and I just, you know, you see your, you see your little baby just kind of like, you know, pulling her suitcase behind her or kind of walking off.

3:13And I just, I broke down. Oh, I just got chills. Yeah. Yeah. But listen, it's, you know, it's just such a joy to see, you know, that love and that, that care and to just, to see them, you know, kind of apply that to the real world and they'll have their successes, they'll have their frustrations, but, you know, they don't give us moms and dads, a lot of books or, you know, insights on how to do this phase of life. But I just, you know, to our, any, any friend that's listening right now, whether that's on your horizon or you recall what I'm talking about, you know, full well. So sending all my love, Amy.

3:53All right, Amy, let's talk about PR and everything that you do with veracity. Yeah. Well, so I kind of have two focuses and I can talk about both, but the first focus is obviously the clients. We're very, very client centric. And so I can talk about that. And then And the other thing that I'm doing more, maybe a nerdy passion project is, but it's actually essential to my business, is training other PR people, really, and possibly training other small businesses to do their own PR. And I know that that can get quite tactical and we're not interested always in all of the tactics, but, you know, I'm only one firm, right?

4:35I can only handle so many clients, number one. and we work with, you know, mid-size kind of local, more local organ clients. And so, you know, I just have this idea of empowering others through, you know, through my books is one thing, but I started it really with a podcast. And I just realized actually that I can't do my job without other PR people. And so, so there's kind of like two facets there. So reaching out to other PR people. And I just realized a lot of them actually aren't trained. Unfortunately, it's hard to say that. I saw a lot of these PR people that I was using as freelancers were not necessarily trained.

5:19And that was a little hard for me because I'm very client focused. So that's how I kind of started with these books really. And actually those have ended up being a great training manual. but I'm not really answering your question about what we, what's going on in the PR world. You can keep on going then. Go ahead. Oh, okay. Wow. I don't know if you want that. You'll have to cut me off. Well, there's a lot going on in the world because, well, first of all, there's AI. So first of all, in the past, everyone was talking about SEO, SEO, search engine optimization, getting you on the top google okay so now what are we doing with ai we're doing generative engine optimization okay and so who is who does that is that the seo people is that the pr people who knows and amy explain what that is please oh generative exactly it's these phrases are annoying generative engine optimization So like generative AI.

6:25So I wish they would just call it AIO. So when you're, you know, like in chat GPT and you're typing, oh, I need this, whatever. Hopefully our clients will show up. Right. And so a lot of the PR industry is saying, oh, well, PR is the secret to all of this. And we've been doing this this whole time. And it's so important to do what we do, which is getting sites, citing and all this. And I can explain that. But for me, I don't take anything at face value. I sell, I could be a PR person, right? I need PR clients, maybe. I'm not going to go around and say PR is the answer to AI, you know, being seen on AI.

7:08I need to look into that, right? And so that's going to be my passion project is just kind of like digging in and looking at like what's working, what's not. Um, because apparently now to be seen online, it's just harder if you think about it. Um, and so in the past with PR, what we used to do, if we care about being seen online, not all my clients do, believe it or not, we would do, um, we would just do a lot of digital PR, right? So we would get you noted, like cited in, um, bylined articles. We would like write those for our clients and all we, and it would be on a newsworthy topic and all they would need was just the bio online and the, you know, the company name.

7:56And we would get a lot of those and that would help with SEO. Now they're saying that that also helps with generative AI. And so what we've been doing all along is great and we don't need to change anything. Okay. Well, let's look into that. Yeah. Well, so, Amy, if someone is, let's say someone's listening to our conversation, who should be doing their own PR and what should they be doing? And then next question we'll get into is how they know that maybe they've outgrown doing their own PR internally and when it's time to bring in some guns. That's a great question. Yeah, we'll cover the first part of that, you know, in terms of like, you know, what is kind of like, it's almost like the daily or the weekly ritual kind of like, listen, you know, give yourself a daily walk, do your push-ups, sit-ups, just your typical PR reps.

8:54What do you like to see kind of put into an SMB's, a typical SMB's regular PR schedule? Well, first of all, I do have to say, my favorite thing to say is, well, you might not need PR. Let's just be real. So we want to like think about what are we doing? Why do we need PR? But now with generative, well, with AI and everything being online, PR, it used to be kind of the secret ninja for SEO. It still is, but does SEO matter anymore? I don't know. So now it's kind of like if you want to be seen online, you might need PR. And so, and why that is is because we get our clients or we you whoever who anyone can do it you get your yourself your clients um written up in high industry publications that are online those are valued higher in google that's why it matters so we can get better links from pr versus paying for the link because of course google knows when you're paying for the link yeah so we use pr to to do that so now to know if you, I, my whole goal is to try and help people to do it by themselves if they want, right?

10:06We have to start somewhere and we don't have to start perfectly. Um, and I can explain how to start with a simple plan that gets you going where you're just putting one foot in front of the other. Um, but as I was writing my second book, I just realized like this was hard and it's kind of annoyingly hard because I, I want to oversimplify everything because I'm a yes person, right like even for my for my clients it's like we're the biggest cheerleaders for them and if they want a story or if they do something I'm gonna think it's great and it should be in the media and why isn't it um and I want to simplify it but I guess PR unfortunately is just not that simple and so with us what who we work with they and why it works is because they're they are long-term established companies that have a staff.

10:58So I need, for me, one of my, our requirements is it'd be great if we could work with a marketing director, because we're not going to come in and run the show. We will, we partner very, very deeply with clients and it's time intensive and so much so that we're sometimes holding their hands with shy thought leaders. Some of them are very shy. But, but Amy, in terms of like actually getting exposure, what's working right now? Well, this is another issue. I don't know if you want to hear what's working or what's not, but another issue - Which is something tactical. What I'm hoping for is our friend that's listening is probably like, I want to get some more PR.

11:37What should I do? Should I just blast out press releases? Well, so you should look at what's new in your organization. So you don't need to do press releases very often. You're going to look at what is new, what's going on. If you've just opened up, if you've just opened up an office, got a lot of funding, have a new interesting product that helps others, that could be a press release. That you don't need, you might even aim to do one per quarter of press releases. The other things you want to do is look ahead, like kind of look at the calendar and think about what is going on in the world. So right now we've got the holidays coming up.

12:17That's quite crowded. So let's pretend it's actually almost Valentine's Day. Let's look at that. What are we going to we what do we have to say about Valentine's Day? Do we may are we a food company? Do we want to actually add in? Let's say we do coffee. Well, what could we do that adds in something Valentine toned? It could be like adding chocolate and a recipe with chocolate and coffee or something. We're just you're always kind of looking ahead, planning ahead, and oh, you might ask, well, what do you do with all that? What do you do with the idea? Well, and that's where the problem is, but meaning you got to get in front of it and ideally pitch it out to the press and get coverage if you can.

13:04If you can't, meaning because it's quite hard to just get coverage for yourself, one kind of easy thing that you might want to look into doing is pulling editorial calendars. So editorial calendars are from the magazines. They're like the original content creators. They create editorial calendars, just like content creators create calendars. So you look at, you grab those. Often they're from the advertising department. We don't necessarily want to pay for the ad, but we ask for that calendar and the calendar. Well, we might want to pay for the ad though. That's the thing. Like that's what's changing about - Yeah, yeah.

13:43We want that high trust editorial content if we can get it, if we can earn it. Right. So then we want to see what they're covering and we want to look to see, oh, I could talk about that maybe. Or, right, like look at what's going on in your industry too. Like if you're a realtor, think about spring. Let's gear up for spring right now. We are definitely going to be selling more house. Well, not definitely. What's going on in the spring real estate market? Maybe plan a couple months ahead for that. So, Amy, your website, by the way, is veracityagency.com, and that's where folks can get your book.

14:22It's called A Practical Guide to Public Relations for Business, Nonprofits, and PR Leaders. Anything else you'd recommend? Oh, you could just check that. Check out the resources page. I have a bunch of actually free videos on there on how to do what I'm talking about doing. So try and find the editorial calendar video, and that might give you more insight into what I was trying to talk about. I love it. Yeah, you do have a nice collection of videos here that I'm here. This is going to teach you through. Chapter three, your PR toolbox. You've got a, wait a minute, you've got a lot of videos. Okay, the website, veracityagency.com.

15:04and click on, it says marketplace, and then click on videos, templates, podcasts, all kinds of good stuff. Amy Rosenberg, your founder and CEO, thank you so much for joining us. Okay, yeah, you too. Have a good day.

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