Coffees and Content: LinkedIn, AI Search & Getting Found in 2026

This week's episode is a quick but important one - recorded from the car on a busy Monday morning because some updates genuinely can't wait.

We're covering what AI is actually doing to how people find businesses right now, why your LinkedIn personal profile has become one of the most powerful visibility tools you're probably underusing, and a few rapid fire updates from the past week you need on your radar.

What's covered:

• How LinkedIn personal profiles are now being cited by AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for business queries
• 68% of Google searches ending without a click - and what that means for your visibility
• The simple self-audit: keywords, email marketing, website accuracy and paid ads
• Rapid fire: Google's Gemini Spark, Meta's AI creative tools for ads, and the big conversation at Cannes Lions

Get your tickets for our next event (13th August): https://events.humanitix.com/in-her-empire-era-presents-cocktails-and-conversations

Links:

• Join the WhatsApp community
• Follow on Instagram: @coffeesandcontentpod
• Find Loren on LinkedIn: Loren Tomlinson
• Visit us at: www.thesocialcollective.co.nz

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning, happy Monday, and welcome back to another coffees and content episode of the In Her Empire Era podcast brought to you by the Social Collective. Today's coffees and content update episode for you is gonna be a nice quick rapid fire episode because if you're like me, your Monday is jam-packed with a whole bunch of stuff to do. So, what I thought I would do this morning is bring this episode to you in a way where I can update you on what's been happening in the industry lately. And then we can just dive straight into having a killer week because I also have a really exciting episode planned for you on Wednesday for the In Her Empire era episodes. So that's not one that you're going to want to miss. So we're gonna dive straight into it today. And this week's updates are all around AI, digital marketing, and really the stuff that actually matters for how people are finding you and whether they are trusting you. Plus, I've got a few rapid fire things I'm gonna share at the very end. So for now, grab your morning cup of coffee, get comfortable wherever you may be sitting, or if you're out walking, get those feet moving, and let's dive into the updates. So, update number one for this morning is LinkedIn and how it is feeding into AI. Now, this is a really great thing that I am absolutely loving, but it is something that I've come to notice a lot of people have absolutely no idea about. So there's some new research that's come out from a platform called Meltwater, really basically talking about how LinkedIn has become one of the most cited platforms by AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Clawed, when it comes to answering things like business queries. If you remember, I guess back in the good old days, I feel like it's the stone age at this point, a lot of the work that went into things like SEO. SEO was really important for making sure that when people were Googling for you or they were asking uh Google different questions, your pages were showing up if you had really strong blog content, if you had really strong keyword research, if you were investing in like Google ads, if you had really strong SEO behind the scenes. And obviously, all of that is still still really, really important. But I do think that a lot of personal profiles on LinkedIn now are starting to get recognized for being those really great places to reference. And they're kind of adding essentially a new layer of discoverability that a lot of people aren't even thinking about yet, which is why I think it's really important to bring this conversation to the podcast. Because if you are feeding your personal LinkedIn page as a founder or as a marketer, or no matter what you are doing in your business, if you are able to feed LinkedIn some really great thought leadership and insight content, when people are starting to search for those kinds of questions, you're far more likely to be showing up than just a standard company page or a blog post. So personal pages and the content that we're posting on LinkedIn is actually now starting to give things like blog posts a bit of a run for their money because we don't just want to be educated from a business all the time. Sometimes we want to be looking for the people that are the experts. So, like I said, it's this kind of whole extra layer of discoverability that so many people haven't yet jumped on the bandwagon for. And that's why I think it's so important because anything we can do when it comes to being part of technology and part of AI where we can be early adopters is such a great thing to jump into. And so when I think about what that means for us and what we could do with it, it means that showing up consistently on LinkedIn with genuine expertise isn't just a clout game anymore. It's not just for followers. It's actually really the way that I look at it, it's to potentially start shaping what AI is saying about you, about your industry, about your area of expertise. And I think this is where having our own thoughts comes like really is really important. And I think when it comes to the way that we create content and what we're saying and how we're showing up, I think it is really important to make sure that you are doing the thinking when it comes to your content. You are embedding, even if Claude is writing you a LinkedIn post, don't just ask it to come up with the content for you. Really encourage it to use your words, to use your education, to use your uh day-to-day experience that you have in your jobs because you will always be so much more knowledgeable. And this is how we're gonna actually start shaping content that sounds like us rather than just becoming another one of those pieces of AI garbage. Then when it comes to the second update that I have, it's very, very closely intertwined with this first update that I have. And that is the AI is answering before people even click. And this is kind of what that means for your business. So interestingly enough, 68% of Google searches now end without a single click, which is significantly more than last year. And so what that means is AI tools, like especially with Google's AI overviews, like you know, those little things that pop up. Um, as soon as somebody is searching for some information on Google, you get like a little bit of an AI update at the start. So you don't even have to go all the way down to find the pages. Chat GPT and Perplexity are also synthesizing answers directly in the results, and they're only kind of citing brands that they consider to be credible and authoritative. And I think that this is a really interesting one because what it actually means is that moving forward, this isn't going to be a tech problem anymore. This is actually around visibility and authority, and that's going to become the biggest issue. And the businesses that are gonna get cited are the ones that have clear, consistent content across multiple touch points. And to explain, kind of, I guess, in layman's terms, what that means is I think about when I go onto Google now and I Google for something, and when I'm looking at the answers, I'm actually, if I'm being dead honest, I'm really only looking at what the AI-generated answer gives me at the very top of the page. Gone are the days where we look at the titles for pages and we click into them and we read them with these big articles. Those articles are still really important to make sure that you're popping up in these AI searches. But it's even more important to make sure that we know who we're speaking to, we know what we're speaking about, and we're really, really clear in terms of the kind of content that we share and that I guess the space in the industry that you want to occupy. Because I think if we don't have that, it's gonna be so much harder. Like if you're talking about, say, for example, you're a clothing company and one day you're educating on t-shirts, the next day you're talking about skirts, the next day you're talking about shoes, then you're all of a sudden talking about the different seasons, but you're not relating them to your products in any way. And all the while we're still talking about a whole bunch of things, but not really to our ideal clients. We're just educating on the topic in general. That's gonna make it so much harder for AI to actually pick up what is your brand about? Who are you talking to? Who are we supposed to get you in front of? And this is gonna apply to everything. It's going to apply to your meta advertising, it's going to apply to the keyword searches, it's going to apply to how people find your website. So a few things that you can do, I guess, if you're wondering how do I actually make sure that I'm appearing in these AI searches. First and foremost, I will be looking at your keywords across your socials and your website, making sure that you're using the words, like the actual words that your clients would be searching. So no jargon, nothing overcomplicated. You want to have simpler ways that they can find you. And then I also want you to go into Google, type in your service or your industry or the kind of work that you do. And I want you to look at what it autocompletes. And I want you to tell me what else is coming up in the search. There's these really cool videos, if you've seen them on platforms like TikTok where or YouTube, where celebrities are essentially like not Googling themselves, but they're pulling like a little white strip off of a like a board that's got it'd be like Lauren Tomlinson is the and then fill in the blanks here. I look at what the fill-in-the-blank sections are for my industry. So, like uh digital marketing agency, and then see what it comes up with at the end of that sentence because that is the kind of stuff that people are searching for, and that is a really great way to come up with content that actually speaks to what people are looking for. Then when it comes to your email marketing, remembering that that is your own audience. I love, love, love email marketing because you own that. AI can't touch your email marketing. You can, well, I mean, it can in certain ways, but it you have control over the narrative there. You have control over making sure that you tell your audience what you want them to hear. And that is such a great way to warm them up to then obviously get them to convert. And then the last one really is your website accuracy. So if you're running things like paid ads, your website is predominantly going to be the destination and it needs to match. We need to have the right services listed. We need to have accurate information, clear language, because AI searches also pull from your website. And if it's outdated, or if it's unclear, or if there's lorem imp on your website, or there's incorrect information about your business, that's not going to help with your visibility in AI searches. So really just asking yourself if somebody Googled your business and AI gave the answer, what would it say about your business and is that actually true? And if you're wondering what it would say, go and ask. Go and Google yourself, go and type it into Claude or type it into Chat GPT or Perplexity or whatever you're using and see what it actually says about you. And then question, is that accurate? And do I need to change something else? Then coming into the rapid fire section for what else that I think you really need to know this week is first up is that Google has launched Gemini Spark, which is a 24-7 AI agent that's working across Gmail, Google Dive, Google Calendar. It's basically like an AI always-on chief of staff for Google users. So it's in the US and it's a beta version, but it's hopefully going to be coming over this way very soon. And I personally am very excited about using AI to streamline my workload a lot more. The second is that Meta has announced end-to-end AI creative tools for ads at Cans Lions. They are basically building a system where you can give Meta a URL and a brief and it will handle all of the creative. I think that's really interesting, but it also does mean that for now, creative is still our job, but eventually it's going to be shifting. And so now it's making sure we know how to give good briefs. We know how to spot good creatives. I think it's also really important for you to lean into talking to your digital teams or like your design teams and anybody that is doing design work for you to really make sure that they are flexing their point of difference. You are visually communicating about your brand in a different way. You're weaving in photos and videos of you doing the job and getting out there because yes, all of these things can be replaced by AI, but also it's going to get really easy, in my opinion, to spot what is AI and what is not, especially with platforms like Instagram and Facebook now requiring you to mention if AI is incorporated in this. And I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see it's going to continue in this trajectory for a while, I think. But I also wouldn't be surprised if at some point the industry turns on its head a little bit and we start seeing people wanting more and more real connection and real content from real creators and real humans. So that's something I'm interested to see how it goes. And the last one is the industry's big conversation this week was, of course, at Cannes Lions. The whole festival was framed around human creative authority versus AI, exactly what I've just been touching on. And one of the big takeaways from the room was that brands, the brands that are really winning, aren't the ones that are replacing humans with AI. They're the ones using AI to make their human creative even sharper. And like I said, that's I think the balance that's really worth thinking about for your own content isn't how can I replace every single human on my team with AI. It's how can I use AI to really enhance what we're doing. So that is everything for today's uh conference and content, rapid fire episode for you with a few updates, a lot of AI heavy stuff. But if you're really loving the AI conversations and you want to be the one that's in the room when AI is deciding who to recommend, remember that you have to be in the conversation before that moment happens. And if you're keen to dig into this stuff a little bit more, if you're Auckland-based or New Zealand-based, please make sure that you check out our upcoming event. It's called Coffees, it's called Cocktails and Conversations. It's coming up on the 13th of August in Auckland. The link is in the show notes. The evening is all around having a panel talking about the new AI era, really giving you that reassurance that your job isn't going anywhere and there's nothing to be worried about, but also looking at how we can really enhance AI to make our jobs better, smarter, how we can really just propel ourselves forward. So there's more information on the In Her Empire podcast Instagram page if you want to find that. You can also head over to inherempire.com and you can check out all the details there. Otherwise, make sure you get your tickets. Early word is now all sold out, which is so exciting. But I want to make sure that you don't miss any of the chances to snap up some tickets. So make sure that you head over to our website, grab your tickets, and I will see you there. But that is all for today's episode. I will catch you all on Wednesday for another episode of In Her Empire Era. See you then. Bye.