Latest Digital / Social Media Marketing News & Insights

​Presented by Neal Schaffer​

In this week's newsletter:

• LinkedIn quietly rebuilt how content travels on the platform.
• If your brand still treats YouTube as an afterthought, it’s time for a rethink.
• Depth beats breadth when you're building for AI visibility.

Hey Reader,

I finally sat down and pulled 12 months of my own AI referral data, and the headline number surprised me: just 1.6% of my website traffic came from AI assistants. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude, combined. Even more surprising? That number actually went down about 45% over the year.

So why am I more invested in AI search than ever?

Because of what those visitors do when they arrive. AI-referred visitors join my email list at 0.56%, more than double my Google organic rate and nearly 5x organic search overall. That tiny 1.6% of traffic delivered 5.4% of my email signups. Small channel, serious buyers.

Here's the thing, though: the real unlock isn't the conversion data. It's that the content LLMs cite and the content Google's helpful content systems reward are the same content. Your actual experience, your own data, the results that went sideways, the details you thought were too "in the weeds" to share. Share what only you know, and one piece of work earns visibility on both surfaces.

That realization has honestly brought the joy back to blogging for me. I published the full breakdown on Monday, with every number, the 10 tactics I'm using, and the content I've stopped writing entirely: my complete guide to AI search engine optimization.

What is your own AI referral data telling you? Hit reply and let me know. I read every response.

Now 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

Shopify Says AI Search Is Driving More Traffic And Sales, Not Replacing Google - While everyone panics about AI killing search traffic, Shopify just reported the opposite: AI-driven traffic and orders tripled year over year, helping push revenue up 36% to $3.6 billion. President Harley Finkelstein called AI a complement to search, not a substitute. That's a merchant platform with real transaction data saying AI search converts. The buyers arriving from ChatGPT and Perplexity show up with high intent, and they're spending. Maybe the AI search apocalypse is actually a distribution channel. TechCrunch​

The New LinkedIn Content Playbook: AI, Collaboration, Creator Marketplace, And Out-of-Network Reach - LinkedIn quietly rebuilt how content travels on the platform, and most marketers are still playing by 2024 rules. This tutorial with ads expert AJ Wilcox walks through the new levers: out-of-network reach that puts your posts in front of people who don't follow you, the creator marketplace, collaborative articles, and how LinkedIn's AI evaluates content quality before deciding who sees it. It's the most actionable LinkedIn breakdown published this quarter. Block 20 minutes this week and rework your posting strategy around it. Social Media Examiner​

LinkedIn Profile Tips: 17 Ways To Get Found (And The Mistakes That Keep You Invisible) - I've been teaching LinkedIn strategy since before most marketers had a profile, and the biggest mistake I see still hasn't changed: treating your profile like a resume instead of a landing page. In my latest post, I share 17 specific ways to get found on LinkedIn, from keyword placement in your headline to the settings that quietly keep you invisible. Work through the list and you'll turn a static profile into an inbound lead generator that works while you sleep. Neal Schaffer​

Gen Z Now Treats Claude And OpenAI Like Consumer Brands, But Trust Is Still An Issue - New YouGov data shows Gen Z now treats AI companies like consumer brands: Claude's consideration nearly doubled to 28.1% and OpenAI's jumped to 22.1% in a single year. Yet only 28% of Americans trust AI assistants to give accurate answers. That gap between adoption and trust is where your brand can win, because trusted third-party citations carry the credibility the platforms themselves lack. AI assistants are becoming household names before they become trusted ones, and marketing into that gap is the next frontier. Search Engine Journal​

How To Sell On TikTok Shop: A Marketer's Guide To The $15 Billion Opportunity - A few months ago I set out to open a TikTok Shop for my own books, and two things stopped me cold: TikTok Shop in the U.S. prohibits standalone digital products like ebooks, and physical orders put you on the clock for fast dispatch. That firsthand dead end became my new guide, covering what you can actually list, fulfillment, the affiliate engine, and what winning brands do differently. The numbers explain why it's worth figuring out: $15.1 billion in U.S. sales, up 68% in a single year. Neal Schaffer​

This Week's Sponsor

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More Recommended Reads

How To Optimize Your YouTube Channel For AI Visibility - Foundation analyzed 8,566 keywords across 130+ B2B SaaS categories and found YouTube ranking in Google's top 10 for 80.2% of "demo" searches, plus a 0.737 correlation between YouTube presence and AI visibility. Translation: AI systems lean heavily on video when answering buyer questions, and this piece shows exactly how to structure titles, transcripts, and on-screen text so machines can read your videos. If your brand still treats YouTube as an afterthought, you're forfeiting citations your competitors are collecting right now. Foundation Inc.​

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Here Are The Marketing Skills AI Is Making More Valuable - The American Marketing Association's 2026 State of Marketing Careers Report puts hard numbers on what many of us feel: AI mentions in marketing job postings nearly doubled from 8% to 15% in a year, while U.S. marketing employment sits 27% below its March 2020 level. The report's sharpest line is that companies are not hiring less judgment, they are hiring less execution. Strategy, analysis, and leadership gain value as production work gets automated. Which side of that line does your skill set fall on? MarTech​

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Google Now Reports AI Search Impressions. Here's How To Read Them - Google Search Console now reports AI search impressions, showing which of your pages Google pulls into AI answers versus how they rank conventionally. This walkthrough explains how to read the new generative AI reports, what the numbers actually mean, and the traps in comparing them to classic search data. It's the first free, first-party window into your AI visibility that every marketer already has. The data is sitting in your Search Console right now; go check it before your Monday meeting. Search Engine Journal​

How Topical Authority Spreads (And Where It Doesn't) In ChatGPT [Study] - Semrush ran a study on whether authority in one ChatGPT topic carries over to another, and the answer should shape your content roadmap: it transfers, but only between closely related subjects, stopping cold at category boundaries. Depth beats breadth when you're building for AI visibility, and scattered content across unrelated topics earns nothing in the eyes of an LLM. Map your topic clusters before you write another word. In AI search, authority is earned narrow and spent narrow. Semrush​

What 50k Query Fan-Outs Reveal About Brands (+ Free Data!) - Moz's Dr. Pete Meyers generated 50,000 AI query fan-outs across 1,000 subtopics and found that just two fan-out types drive 97% of brand mentions in AI answers. That concentration is striking: most of the ways AI expands a query never surface brands at all, so knowing which patterns do is the whole game. Moz released the full raw dataset for free, covering 20 industry verticals. If you want to see exactly where your category gets name-checked, download the data and dig in. Moz​

​Digital Threads​

Digital Threads is a practical guide for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and creators who want to grow their online presence with confidence. Learn proven digital marketing strategies, make the most of social media and AI tools, and build your brand without a massive marketing budget.

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