In this week's newsletter:

• So many business buyers on paid ChatGPT plans never see ads.
• If you run Meta ads, you’ve now lost the ability to choose where they appear.
• Your website is still where customers go to check that you’re real.

Hey Reader,

Earlier this week, a member of my coaching community told me she was canceling her Feedly subscription. Her reasoning: why pay for an RSS reader when she can just ask Claude for the latest news?

I pushed back. I still use Feedly to build this newsletter, and in my experience, deep research wasn’t uncovering much I hadn’t already found. But I promised her I’d test it. So this week, for the first time, I built this issue without Feedly.

The results were mixed. Claude came back with 20 articles published between Sunday and Wednesday, ranked by how many clicks it expected each one to get based on my past newsletters. Only about half made the cut. I threw out roundups, pieces too narrow for most of you, and a “business” story that turned out to be a consumer feature. It also couldn’t find a single LinkedIn article from this week, which is a problem when LinkedIn is the topic you click on most.

Here’s the thing, though: the research worked as well as it did because of the context I’d already given it. Weeks of my Feedly sources and click data taught it where to look. AI can hand you a pile of content fast. Deciding what deserves your audience’s attention is still your job.

My takeaway: before you cancel a tool because “AI can do that now,” run one honest side-by-side test. You may find that tool was feeding your AI all along.

Have you replaced any of your tools with AI yet? Hit reply and let me know how it went.

Let’s jump into this week’s updates!

Please note: Some links in this newsletter are affiliate links. If you make a purchase through them, I may earn a small commission—at no extra cost to you.

This Week's News

Stop Treating Your LinkedIn Profile Like A Resume

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Most professionals treat their LinkedIn profile like an online resume. Two editions of my LinkedIn book later, it’s still the biggest mistake I see. In my new video, I show why it costs you in 2026, now that AI is reading your profile. I walk through the four parts that matter most: cover photo, headshot, headline, and About and Experience. Plus a 30-second test to see if you show up when someone searches LinkedIn for what you do. Watch before your next prospect looks you up. YouTube​

AI Landing Pages: From Project Plan To Published Page - You can only test a new offer as fast as you can build the page for it. Dan Sanchez used to spend four to eight hours per landing page. Now he plans the whole funnel in ChatGPT, hands a scope of work to Codex, picks from three AI-built design options, and publishes through Vercel with forms wired to Mailchimp. It’s a rare walkthrough that goes from plan to published page, split testing included. Follow it once and the setup carries over to every page you build after. Social Media Examiner​

15 YouTube Tools For 2027, Organized By The Job They Do - You don’t need 40 YouTube tools. You need one tool for each job a video goes through: planning, recording, editing, packaging, publishing and Shorts. In my latest post I share the stack behind my own channel and 400-plus podcast episodes, from VidIQ’s free tier for keyword research to OpusClip, the only clipping tool that cleared every requirement when I tested 11 of them head to head. Start with YouTube Studio’s free features before you pay for anything. Neal Schaffer​

Meta Offers Updated Ad Placement Control Guidance - If you run Meta ads for leads or sales, you’ve already lost the ability to choose where they appear. Meta has pulled placement controls from engagement, leads, app promotion and sales objectives, and awareness and traffic campaigns are likely next. Its updated guidance shows what control is left: customizing creative for each placement, placement value rules that raise or lower bids by placement, and account-level exclusions. Expect even those levers to shrink as Meta moves toward fully automated ad placement. Social Media Today​

Answer Engine Optimization: What Actually Works, According To Google And My Own Data - Over the past year, my blog earned roughly one click for every 700 impressions. I’ve been publishing since 2008, so I had about 700 posts to test the AEO pitch against. Google’s own guidance puts popular AEO tactics like llms.txt and content chunking on its list of things to ignore, while peer-reviewed research shows statistics, quotes and cited sources measurably lift AI citations. I share the eight steps I now run on my own posts. The pages that stopped ranking may be your best AI opportunity. Neal Schaffer​

This Week's Sponsor

​Are You Listening to What People Say About Your Brand?​

People may be talking about your brand online without ever tagging you—and those conversations can hold valuable insights. Brand24 helps you monitor brand mentions across the web, understand audience sentiment, and keep an eye on your competitors, all in one place. Give it a try and see what you might be missing.

More Recommended Reads

How Websites Are Becoming A Key Trust Signal For Consumers - AI is changing how buyers discover you, but your website is still where they go to check that you’re real. Wix’s first State of Websites report, drawn from more than 300 million users, found search still drives 42% of website traffic while LLMs send under 1%. The signals tied to stronger results are familiar ones: structured data, customer reviews and a real blog library. Sites with 50 or more blog posts saw 7x more monthly sessions than sites with none. Neil Patel​

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How ChatGPT Does Query Fan-Out (15 Million Queries Studied) - ChatGPT’s free model answered 6 in 7 prompts without searching the web, according to an analysis of 66.6 million responses. So for many prompts, your visibility depends on what it already knows about you. When it does search, it increasingly goes straight to the source: “official” now appears in 13.1% of English fan-out queries, while Reddit citations fell 88% in six months. The pages holding up best are original research and your own product facts. Can ChatGPT find your prices on your site, in plain text? Ahrefs​

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Your Social Media Following Isn’t The Asset You Think It Is - You can have 50,000 LinkedIn followers and still not control whether any of them see your next post. This piece asks the question more brands should be asking: who controls your access to the audience? It follows a B2B company that starts from zero with every article because interested readers have no way to ask for more. Give social the job of introductions, then offer a next step like a newsletter. The real asset is a reader who keeps choosing to hear from you. MarTech​

Google Changed Its Content Guidance. Don’t Expect A Reset. - Google now says it’s critical to have a human fact-check AI-generated content before it goes live, including titles, meta descriptions, structured data and alt text. If AI touches any of those on your site, that review is now your job. Google also won’t promise that following the rules brings lost traffic back, since a better page can’t reclaim a click an AI Overview already answered. Keep publishing high-volume AI content without a real editor and you’re funding pages Google has no reason to reward. MarTech​

Are ChatGPT Ads Worth It? Pros, Cons, Costs, And Who Should Try Them - ChatGPT ads don’t use keywords. You describe the conversation you want to appear in with a one- or two-sentence context hint, and OpenAI matches it by meaning. Early results recall the first days of Google Ads, with one expert reporting about $10 CPMs and 0.5% click-through rates. B2B marketers should note that ads only reach Free and Go users, so many business buyers on paid plans never see them. If your customers research purchases in ChatGPT, a small, capped test is worth running now. Wordstream​

​Digital Threads​

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Warm regards,

Neal

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