Bobbie Carlton

💬 Power of Member Stories 💬 This week’s Association Insights explores how member stories and testimonials can enhance your PR strategy: ✅ Highlight real-world impact through authentic stories. 📣 Share testimonials across multiple channels. 📊 Pair stories with data for emotional and factual resonance. 🤝 Encourage members to share in their own words. Member voices build trust and amplify your association’s value. 💬 How do you use member testimonials in your PR efforts? Share below! #AssociationInsights #MemberTestimonials #PRStrategy #OnWrdUpWrd

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⚡ AI for Faster News Monitoring ⚡ This week on Association Insights, I’m sharing how AI can help associations monitor breaking news and identify smart newsjacking opportunities. AI can help you: 📰 Track breaking news across hundreds of outlets 📈 Spot trending topics gaining momentum 🎤 Match your experts to the right moment ✍️ Draft rapid-response messaging AI gives associations the speed and clarity needed to be part of the story—when it matters most. 💬 Have you used AI for media monitoring yet? How’s it going? #AssociationInsights #AI #Newsjacking #MediaRelations #OnWrdUpWrd

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One of the top concerns I hear from PR pros is how to adapt to AI, especially when it comes to writing. Ann Wylie, CSP's recent PRSA article breaks down how to not only survive but thrive. https://lnkd.in/gsr9ug89

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The most painful moment in PR. Stakeholder wants headlines. Budget is “we’ll see.” The brief is vague. The story is… not. “We need visibility.” “Top-tier media.” “Thought leadership.” What’s new? Silence. Then comes the line every PR professional knows by heart: “Just make it interesting.” 😬 PR isn’t magic. It’s strategy, timing, substance… and occasionally explaining that being alive isn’t news. Back to reframing reality.

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CEO posts get four times more engagement on LinkedIn than page posts. That’s because people trust people. Louise Watson-Dowell’s latest blog explains how LinkedIn’s 250-strong editorial team is changing the game for brands, and why comms teams who think like publishers really stand out. It’s well worth a read. https://lnkd.in/eEbE8XbQ

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Planning your marketing budget for 2026? Don't forget to factor in thought leadership. Work with a PR pro to develop content by collaborating with your thought leaders to ghostwrite contributed articles, blog posts and more. Thought leadership isn't new, but it IS getting more attention. Why? 🔹 It's now ranked as the third most important decision driver for buyers (up from ranking 20th in the previous year) 🔹 73% say that an organization’s thought-leadership content is a more trustworthy way to assess capabilities versus marketing materials 🔹 More than half (54%) of buyers surveyed said a solution provider “that consistently produces high-quality thought-leadership content has prompted them to research the organization’s offers or capabilities” Having a dedicated resource to manage an ongoing program consistently - versus a one-off effort here and there - can yield bigger benefits in terms of visibility and sales. Public relations practitioners are often experienced in not only interviewing thought leaders and writing the content, but also placing it as earned media in publications like industry trade journals. We know that this helps position B2B companies as experts in their space, and it's also an essential factor in whether they'll appear in search results (be it traditional SEO or AI-driven search/GEO). So, don't put it off. If you haven't started dedicating time and resources to a consistent, ongoing thought leadership effort, 2026 can be the year you kick it off and begin to see the benefits. #B2BPR #ThoughtLeadership

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5 Marketing Mistakes I Made (So Other Entrepreneurs & Authors Can Avoid Them): 1) When business grew fast, I lose track of mission and value 2) I spread myself thin - and outsourced - across too many channels 3) I walked before I learned to crawl It’s never easy to expose these things publicly. But if authors can benefit from the learning, it’s worth it. https://lnkd.in/eEHE8zPD

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Some AI thoughts for a Friday. The The Wall Street Journal recently asked whether AI will empower the PR industry or create "endless seas of spam." This week, I read Nicole Casperson's breakdown of Salesforce's big bet on agentic AI in financial services, and it confirmed what I've been seeing in marketing. AI isn't replacing marketers—it's just making it really obvious who actually knows what they're doing. As someone who uses AI tools daily (Claude and ChatGPT are basically my unpaid interns), here's what's happening: The Strategists are using AI to handle research, data analysis, and content optimization so they can spend more time on brand positioning, campaign strategy, and understanding what actually drives customer behavior. Nicole mentions AI agents as "digital co-workers" and that is the energy the strategists are bringing to the table. The Content Mills are asking AI to think for them while they reorganize their LinkedIn connections or whatever. They're pumping out campaigns that feel like they were designed by a robot who learned marketing from a 2019 webinar. These are the types of people that the WSJ describes. Nicole shared this example: Salesforce is helping financial advisors cut meeting prep from 90 minutes to 10 minutes. Not to replace the advisors—to give them more time for actual advising instead of drowning in spreadsheets. Same thing in marketing. When I use Claude, it's not because I've forgotten how brands work. It's because I want to find the customer insight everyone else missed while they were creating their 47th "Top 10 Industry Trends" carousel post this quarter. AI has made mediocre content embarrassingly easy to produce. But it's also raised the bar so high that generic, templated marketing now sticks out badly. Audiences can tell the difference between AI-assisted strategy and AI-generated meh. The reality: AI won't replace marketers. But marketers who use it strategically are going to have a significant advantage over those who don't. Link to the article: https://lnkd.in/gdgWeari Follow: Fintech Is Femme #AI #Fintech #Marketing

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It’s no longer just about who sees the article—it’s about whether AI can see it. Today ChatGPT has more than 500 million users, with over 28% of employed adults in the U.S. using it as part of their daily workflow. This explosive growth in LLM usage has brought major change for communication professionals—introducing a new battleground that brand and comms leaders must learn to navigate and win: Artificial Intelligence Optimization (AIO). At their core, LLMs are trained on massive layers of data—social content from platforms like Reddit and Instagram, owned content like blogs and press releases, and of course, earned media from national, trade, and local outlets. So how exactly do platforms like ChatGPT gather and present information about your brand? New research from Muck Rack points to earned media as a major piece of that puzzle, with 85% of AI-generated citations originating from earned placements. That means strategic earned coverage is directly shaping how AI platforms construct brand narratives. But are all media placements treated equally by LLMs? Not quite. We are seeing outlets like Axios, People Magazine, and Forbes offer a strategic advantage. These publications carry both editorial authority and cultural weight—yet much of their content is accessible to AI systems because it is lightly gated compared to sights such as the Wall Street Journal and thus are used more frequently by LLMs. In addition, depending on the platform a user chooses and whether that system has licensing deals in place with media publishers (like ChatGPT’s agreement with The Washington Post), the value of a media mention in an LLM environment can vary. For brands and executives, earned media has always been a tool to build trust, shape perception, and foster connection with target audiences. Now it also plays a critical role in how AI platforms learn, respond, and represent your brand across AIO environments. What To Do? Start with doing an audit. To understand what comprises the answers AI delivers, PreBunk™, a state-of-the-art solution within PRISMA, measures not only which LLMs over-index with your key stakeholders, but also digs deeper into those systems and explores which media outlets are actually driving the LLM’s viewpoint. The stories you and your team secure are already influencing how tomorrow’s AI will talk about you. #pr #ai #mikeworldwide Resources: https://lnkd.in/e2-Nh-bP https://lnkd.in/ecHZJrjX

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60% of Google searches now end without a click. Josh Elledge and I dug into this on The Thoughtful Entrepreneur podcast. And I told him what I tell every CEO: Your SEO strategy is already obsolete. It's not in my interest not to tell it straight—here's what 30 years in this business taught me about B2B authority in 2025: AI doesn't read your website. It reads what everyone else says about you. That shift changes everything. The companies winning now aren't optimizing for clicks—they're optimizing for mentions. For quotes. For being the source AI cites when your prospect asks ChatGPT about your category. I introduced Josh to my **Revenue Bridge framework**: **Authority opens doors** → You're referenced in AI summaries, quoted by analysts, mentioned by peers **Credibility converts** → Prospects already trust you before the first call **Reputation sustains** → Your narrative compounds across every channel This isn't theoretical. I watched a prospect evaluating a fintech client that could be a $30M deal get cold feet when they asked ChatGPT about payment infrastructure providers, the fintech company's competitor showed up in every response and in Claude too. Not through SEO. Through systematic thought leadership that AI recognized as authoritative. The fix isn't more content. It's infrastructure. **Multi-channel storytelling:** Your CEO on podcasts. Your CTO writing technical pieces. Your customer success lead sharing implementation stories. Different voices, same narrative. **Executive visibility:** Not vanity metrics. Strategic positioning where your leaders become the cited experts in your space. **Narrative consistency:** Every touchpoint reinforces the same story. PR, content, social, sales decks—all aligned. Josh asked the killer question: "But how does this drive revenue?" Simple. When your prospect's first 10 touches with your brand happen before they ever visit your website—through AI summaries, peer recommendations, media mentions—you've already won the credibility battle. Thought leadership isn't a nice-to-have anymore. It's your revenue infrastructure. The companies treating it like a marketing expense will lose to those who recognize it as sales enablement. Your buyers are asking AI about you right now. What story is it telling? If it's not the one you want. Let's change that together! 🎧 Full strategy breakdown: https://lnkd.in/guey3SfK #B2B #ThoughtLeadership #Revenue

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