How Your B2B Tech LinkedIn Content Can Improve AI Visibility | #32

Like everyone else who is marketing B2B Technology brands, you are probably trying to figure out how your brand can appear more in AI LLMs.

We know that B2B Buyers are doing a lot of vendor research in these AI platforms and finding potential vendors for their shortlists based on what the LLM provides to them as a trusted solution that can solve their problem.

Recent research from Meltwater is highlighting that for B2B queries, LinkedIn is quickly becoming one of the top sources for influencing AI answers. They analysed 9.5 million citations across 16 B2B categories and the findings are of interest if you are trying to improve your AI visibility.

In this week's episode, I give my take on the research, look at the key takeaways and what this means for B2B Tech Marketers.

Research Source & Owner: Meltwater "How LinkedIn Content Wins AI Search"

This research is by Meltwater and we have no affiliation with them or this report, this is simply our opinions on the findings*

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Transcript

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If you were still on the fence about posting LinkedIn content for your B2B tech brand, the latest research might change that. So, as you know, a lot of people are trying to figure out how their brands can get cited in AI LLMs, whether that's Claude, ChatGBT, Gemini, whatever the platform might be. We do know that a lot of B2B buyers are conducting and shortening their research uh journeys, basically going to these LLMs, putting in all the requirements that they do have, uh the pain points they have, and they're looking for particular vendors, and they're taking a lot of this advice from what the LLM is giving back to them. So it's changing how we look at brand visibility. And for your BDP tech brand, that is a huge area of marketing that you need to kind of figure out and figure it out relatively quickly. It is such a new kind of area, the whole kind of AAO answer engine optimization. And there's loads of different, you know, acronyms that you can be thrown around, but really it's like how can we become more visible within LLMs? And in today's episode, I'm quickly going to run through a report by Meltwater. So their company, this is their report. Uh we have nothing to do with it, but I'm just thought it was interesting. Uh, they did a report on LinkedIn citations and how LinkedIn is becoming a really core platform for how LLMs distribute information and what they take as fact. So that's obviously a very important strategy and tactic to look at in your AI kind of visibility AO strategy. So, as I mentioned, this is a report that was recently published by Meltwater in collaboration with LinkedIn, and they were using the Meltwater Gen AI lens. So that's the opposite product they have, and essentially what they did was they did an analysis of 9.5 million AI citations, and it reveals LinkedIn's growing influence when it comes to being referenced within AI LLMs and how the LLMs essentially are trusting and utilizing LinkedIn content to give back answers. So that's obviously a key part of what we're talking about today. It's relevant uh within the content um that we do for B2B Tech brands. So the models track, so a bit of uh background what on the report. Um, and I'm just reading this report today, um, as I mentioned by Meltwater, how LinkedIn Content Wins AI Search. And maybe in the next episode, I'll run through how we can actually take these learnings from the research that they have done and apply it into your content. So the models they tracked was Copilot, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Sonnet 4, ChatGPT 5, and Gemini 2.5 Pro. And within this uh research of 9.5 million citations, within these models, um, they ran it across 16 B2B categories. So I think that's really applicable in terms of what we're speaking about today. To kind of look at the key takeaways from the report by Meltwater, uh, they were mentioning that LinkedIn is fast becoming one of the top sources of most cited content uh within uh AI tools. So all the AI tools uh are ranking LinkedIn quite highly uh in terms of when somebody puts in a question, they are then citing LinkedIn content quite highly and it's growing. Uh so that's a very interesting one to take note of. Another interesting one is that if you're looking at the different types of content that go on LinkedIn, you have obviously your individual content from personal profiles and you have your corporate pages. And they found from their research that the individual experts, the personal profiles that you're posting from, actually accounts from over you know three-quarters uh of the citation. So it's very heavily influenced by personal profiles, not as much on the corporate side. Both play a role, but from their research, it showed that it heavily weighted towards uh citing personal profiles and personal accounts as opposed to corporate pages, worth keeping in mind when you're developing your content strategy. And another one uh that was quite interesting was that they did it by, as I mentioned, uh 16 B2B categories and uh LinkedIn as a source uh for the AI L LMs uh across the different categories, uh ranked top five uh across domains like technology, financial services, AI, HR, and marketing. So if we're looking from a technology point of view, uh which most of you will be listening from B2B technology companies, whether you're in the marketing, go to market, demand gen, sales, whatever it might be, uh this is really interesting research that's really applicable of how your brand can start appearing in AI LLMs more and start, you know, getting in front of your buyers where they're searching, which a lot of it is being done uh using AI in today's day and age. And another one to note is that the sources, like top uh sources of information in AI LLMs changed from time to time. But what they found from this study, uh meltwater in collaboration with LinkedIn, found that LinkedIn's influence was growing throughout the course of them running this study. Some other interesting sources as well, not just LinkedIn, that they found was YouTube uh was a really cited source, often the top one uh in a lot of circumstances. So that's another platform, obviously, and that we speak about here on the 1% insight for the reason that it's a fantastic way to build long-term trust uh with your prospects, but also now it's becoming a big part of what AI LLMs are taking as trust information and giving back to your prospects when they're putting in buyer uh research questions, um, whatever model that they are using. So we're keeping in mind, um, and then they have some kind of third-party you know sources as well, like from Reddit, G2, Captera, um, etc. So for the ones you can kind of control more so, the LinkedIn and YouTube um are highly ranked. So, like I mentioned, they ran this through B2B queries in terms of different categories, and LinkedIn was ranking number one for AI and data science, uh, marketing advertising. It was ranking as a second top source for sales and revenue, supply chain logistics, consulting, B2B services, fintech. So, you know, it's a really interesting. It was ranked number three as a source for technology and SaaS, um, and all those different categories that you can kind of see in this report. So, very interesting data in terms of how you can start um improving your AI visibility, and LinkedIn is proving that it's an effective strategy of getting cited. The interesting part of this as well is that they also have some really good insights, and I think you should check out the report um for yourself, and they have all the insights in terms of what makes, you know, from their research a structure to a quality AI citable content. So you're looking at bullet lists, um, numbered items, clear headings, um, specific companies and tools. Like so, if you have a specific tool, a specific company that obviously you're posting on behalf of, then obviously you want to include that so that it gets picks up in it. You want actually your own data. That was a key part of it as well, is that they trust the data um that you are having. Um, so it's never been more important to have very specific data that maybe comes from your company or from your own research uh to utilize in your content. And that's um something that the AI LLMs will heavily uh focus towards. And obviously, then having stuff within years in different areas like that, so we can kind of give uh a timing to it uh makes makes good sense to it as well. So it's never been more important than obviously to get a strategy in place. So we've looked at all this research, and that LinkedIn is a core part of how content gets you know displayed within LLMs, and obviously, back to the start of this episode, we know that a lot of the B2B buyers, your B2B prospects, who are maybe not in the market right now for a technology solution like yours, but in the future will be, are forming buying opinions, are conducting market research, and they are using LLMs a lot in today's day and age to kind of consolidate that whole research journey. Um, it makes it more effective for them. They can go back and forth with these LLMs, uh, figure out what's the best for them, and they're creating their shortlist through all this information. Um, so it's one key part of the buyer journey that we need to be looking at. And if we want to essentially appear on their short list and have the potential to win that business. LinkedIn is proving from this research and from other research as well to be a really important platform for that. And now it's time to figure out right, if you are posting a couple times on LinkedIn, it's probably something we're looking at in terms of we need to take this more seriously, uh, along with YouTube. It's a core part of not just building that trust and content through social, it's really important for that, and it's really important to have that visibility and create that kind of relationship with them through the different pieces of content that you're putting out there. But it's really important for feeding LLMs now in terms of quality information. Uh, and from this research report by Meltwater that we just uh ran through, and I'll link it as well in the comments as the source owner, it's showcasing that you know over three quarters of the citations were coming from personal expert profiles. So it's never been more important to actually get your team posting, um, have a team-led content strategy. You know, it's been around for a while now, but still a lot of B2B tech brands aren't doing it. Uh they don't want to post the content, they don't want to post on LinkedIn. You know, it's not everyone wants to post on LinkedIn, but it's for a business objective, it's you know, you don't have to become an influencer, but if you have insights, expertise within a certain sector, you're missing a trick by not creating that content because it's going to be for the betterment of the company. So, you know, whether it's uh managing director, CEO, CMO, um people, but in the team as well, it doesn't have to be um leadership. It obviously helps because it adds that authority to it, and that is more cited than maybe uh entry-level roles, but at the same time, you know, the more people from your team that are posting consistent content, quality content, backed by research, backed by your own insights, that was another part of it as well. The AI won't take generalized, you know, posts. So if you actually go into the LLMs, which is a bit of a contradiction, and what people might do is like say, give me three polls for this week on you know, supply chain technology or operations or whatever that might be, and you just post it up, it's actually not working at all because the AI will read that as generalized information that anyone has on the internet, it's not specific enough, it's not answering a question. So therefore, it's never been more important to actually have your people at the core of it. Um that's why we're big advocates of the podcast as a medium of actually getting these ideas and insights in content format that you can use for LinkedIn, for YouTube, etc., to start feeding these LLMs. So um it's worth noting that there are good strategies out there where you can make the content process easier for yourself besides sitting down every week trying to write out posts. Um you can kind of collect your thoughts through uh conversations um and then obviously partner with either your marketing team or a good content marketing agency to make that happen in terms of how that's best distributed and measured. But to kind of recap it, it is really important that you start building your team content strategy because chances are your competitors will see this research and it's really like who's going to be cited more within LLMs, and it's just good content anyway, it's just a good content strategy. People interact more with LinkedIn pages uh from a personal account than a corporate page. We've seen that for years, but now there's also an added benefit of it becoming a really important tactic and strategy for your AI visibility, which is a key part of getting in front of your B2B buyers. So uh I just wanted to run through that research today. Very interesting report by Meltwater. I will try and link it in the description below, and maybe next week we'll run through an episode of actually how we can start creating that team content strategy, how you can utilize content from both your LinkedIn company page and your LinkedIn uh personal pages as well, and how you kind of break that down on a kind of, I suppose, uh person by person basis, and how you kind of make that specific to them because everybody will have different insights and expertise, and it's like how do you you know bring that value and make it as easy as possible to create that content on a consistent basis? Um, another part to the research was that it's citing content in the last you know three months or less. So the content has to be fresh, it has to be recent. There's no point doing you know a big push and post and then forgetting about it for nine months or a year. It won't matter. Like the AI is looking for the most recent valuable answers, and it showed that within this report that you know content that's most cited is you know zero to three months old. So there you go. You know, you have to be consistent. Um, and it's not just uh do it in seasons and be like, oh, I'll just post now and then I'll I'll leave it go for a while and then I'll post again. It kind of has to be consistent because that's just the way people are best receiving content because it's actionable, it's recent, things change so fast, you need to be um relevant with it and you need to be sharing delay's insights because what worked three months ago or six months ago isn't necessarily applicable in any industry now, whether it be marketing, whether it be technology. So um worth keeping in mind as well. So this has been the 1% insight. Make sure you follow the podcast wherever you're listening, whether that's Spotify, Apple Podcasts. You can also subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter, uh The One Percent Insight. Um and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me um on LinkedIn. More than happy to chat through it, explain what I'm seeing uh within the kind of marketing for B2B tech brands right now, and happy to answer any questions. So we'll catch you on the next episode of the 1% insight.