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PR, AI, and Getting Cited: How Startups Can Use Digital PR to Be Found in AI Search (with Chris Panteli of Linkifi)

• Cassie Clark • Episode 5

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Welcome back to Found in AI, the podcast about getting your business discovered in AI search.

This week, I’m joined by Chris Panteli, co-founder of Linkifi, a digital PR and link-building agency that helps brands earn coverage in top-tier publications like Forbes, the BBC, and The New York Times. Chris pitched himself for this conversation — and for good reason. He’s passionate about how PR can support businesses looking to increase their visibility, not just in traditional media, but in the way AI tools surface information.

In this episode, we dig into:

  • Why digital PR is different from traditional link-building — and why journalists still matter in an AI-first world
  • How AI search engines decide which brands to surface (and why trusted mentions carry weight, even without backlinks)
  • The biggest mistakes founders make when they DIY their own PR
  • How startups and small businesses can get PR-ready — from polishing your About page to pitching journalist requests on platforms like HARO and Qwoted

Whether you’re an early-stage founder or a marketer looking to sharpen your visibility strategy, this conversation will give you practical ways to build authority and get discovered in today’s evolving search landscape.

Resources & Links

Keywords: PR Strategy, Digital PR, AI Search, Link Building, Brand Mentions, GEO, AEO, Answer Engine Optimization, Startup Visibility, Thought Leadership, HARO, Qwoted, Journalist Requests, Reputation Building, SEO and PR, Small Business Marketing, AI Content Discovery, Digital Reputation, Marketing Authority

Find the show notes and transcript here.


(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Welcome back to Found in AI, the show about getting your business discovered in AI search. I'm your host Cassie Clark, fractional content strategist, founder of Cassie Clark Marketing and CMO of ThoughtTree. Each week I sit down with marketers, founders, and operators to explore what it actually takes to get found in today's AI-driven search landscape. Today I'm joined by Chris Ventelli, co-founder of Linkify, a digital PR and link building agency that helps brands earn coverage in top tier publications like Forbes, the BBC, and the New York Times. Chris pitched himself for this conversation, and honestly, for good reason. He's passionate about how PR can support businesses looking to increase their visibility, not just in traditional media, but in the way AI tools surface information. In this episode, we dig into the connection between PR, digital reputation, and AI search results. And Chris shares practical advice for startups and small businesses that want to make PR work for them. Here's part of that conversation. Okay. So yeah, my name's Chris Ventelli. I'm the co-founder of Linkify. We're a digital PR link building agency, and we have done for you services. So we represent you, your business, your brand, to the media with the aim to get you coverage and links on the world's largest and most authoritative publications. So what do those publications look like? I know that's like an ask me like I'm explained like I'm five, but pretend I know nothing about link building or PR or anything in that way. So I suppose what separates digital PR link building from other forms of link building is the publication that you're getting the link from. And what separates that is the way that you earn the link, which is by pitching the media and it being an editorially earned piece of coverage. So there's lots of sites out there that exist for the sole purpose of selling links to people. There's sites that might have good content, but they don't have much traffic. They're not very authoritative. They're not real businesses, but we would view tier one media as real journalists and high-end freelance writers writing real editorial pieces of content for those publications. And then us trying to, I don't want to say weasel our way in, but us trying to get ourselves into those stories by providing value to the journalist as opposed to anything else like payment or link swaps. It's just a pure value give. And then hopefully you get that coveted link at the end of it. At the end of it. So what is your strategy? Do you wait for the piece to be published and then go to them and be like, hey, can you add this in? Or do you get them before the piece gets published? Yeah. So a lot of journalists, they will proactively be searching for experts to quote in their articles as they are working on it. So that enhances the credibility of the piece that they're writing. It also allows them to explore maybe alternative views and bolster the credibility, let's say, of a point that they're making within their article from a real expert. And you can monitor and track the journalists that will source for these requests. There's platforms like aggregator platforms that will collate those for you and you can look through them. And it's a really good way to start building relationships with journalists because journalists, they're sort of quite lazy, I would say inherently. They're like an easier path. So if you can provide them with a really good comment, let's say from one of your experts, if you're representing a client and it really helps them with their story, they're much more likely to come back to you and try and reuse your expert or reuse you. Or if they're a very high-end freelance writer, they might write for multiple high-end publications. And once you can start developing those relationships with journalists, that's like a really good stepping board to be able to consider doing more outbound stuff. So that's where you might say, hey, I've worked with you a couple of times. We've provided commentary for your articles. We're actually releasing a story of our own. Is this something that would be interesting to you and your readership? So it's a really good pathway to start developing and nurturing those relationships as well. So do you think AI will change how journalists themselves source stories? And what does that mean for the PR strategy, do you think? Yeah, I mean, a bunch have just been laid off in the UK from one of the big journalists, one of the big editorial conglomerates. So journalists are losing their jobs. AI makes writing more efficient. But I think when it comes to true news, AI is not writing the real news and then the real thought pieces behind the news as well. They'll always need to be a human for that. And if you consume the news or things that you're interested in, you sort of know the person behind it and you like to read that from a real human. So I think it's become a more competitive landscape. But I think as time goes on, journalists will more and more be looking to source credible experts within their pieces in order to make their stories and the things that they're writing about stand out from AI content. Right. Yeah, I agree. I would rather hear someone's opinion other than like the same rehashed AI written content. I'm really nosy, I want to know what people are actually thinking. So in that, how do you see PR fitting into a world where people are searching less on Google and more inside of AI search tools? I think that digital PR is a great way to build authority and grow brand. And I think brands will be the winners in AI search. Google had a great system for deciding which websites it would display on its first page of its results. So if you are writing content about cancer treatments, let's say, then what Google puts on page one for people searching in and around that topic, they had to be confident that it wasn't some nut job writing bad or dangerous advice. And the way they did that was largely with backlinks. So they devised a system where having another more authoritative site linking to your site was a vote of confidence. The more votes of confidence you have, the more the site can be trusted. And therefore the more confident Google would be to surface your website and your content on its first page. LLMs, they don't necessarily use or look at backlinks, but they're also in a similar position. They can't be surfacing dangerous or harmful content. They need to trust what they are putting to the users. And users are interacting with AI in a very different way to the sort of traditional keyword-based search. It's much more conversational. It can go down a rabbit hole. But the way that I think it's going to, or certainly from what we're seeing in early tests, is that they are heavily citing from tier one and trusted sources and brands. So the more that you can build a brand and be just trusted in your own right, the more chances you have of being surfaced inside of the large language models as well. So from a content perspective, and because I'm constantly writing pieces for different clients, for my own brand, for the company I'm working for, would you say that putting it more in a first person point of view would be better instead of just brands that do this, this, or this? Or I think brands that do this, this, or this. What do you think would be best? I think it depends on the purpose of the... You mean specifically for content pieces? Yeah, just for content pieces. Do you think adding in your own opinion from the first person perspective would be something that would help with PR on your own web, PR in air quotes for you that are not watching the video? Would you think that would be helpful or just stick more towards standard writing to the person? I think if you can... The sites that I'm seeing do well with content and PR collectively, or certainly the content that I'm consuming is when there is a personal brand behind the content. So brand, be it company brand or personal brand, and then you'll see this now with certainly a lot of marketing companies, the really great marketing companies that are putting out great marketing content. The people behind that content are influencers, personal brands in of their own right. So that's the sort of stuff that I'm consuming. And that's the sort of stuff that you see gets picked up by Google Discover and then other tier one media, because it's trusted. You're a trusted name within the industry. You're producing excellent content. Actually, funnily enough, I did a LinkedIn post a couple of weeks ago when the Google court decision was announced. And a journalist from CMS Wire saw my LinkedIn post and said, I've just seen your post. Would you provide a few comments for an article we're doing on? Now, I'm not saying I'm like a big personal brand, but it's a start of, you can see why, how, and where that would go if you put anything into it. Yeah. That is like a good win for your brand and personal brand too, if that's the direction you're going. So it sounds like working with influencers is a way to get some of that stuff out, working with you all to get something out. So what would you say for smaller brands without these big media budgets? How can they use PR to stand out in AI? Start positioning an authority behind your brand. So if you are a personal brand for the business, or you have people on team that are extremely authoritative. So let's take an easy example. So if you're in the health business, let's say, you're a rehabilitation center or a psychiatrist then you're going to have medically qualified people on your team. And these people are extremely authoritative just by the nature of their qualifications and what they do. So if you can then put this person in front of the media and you can do that for free, you can pitch media requests for free on platforms like Harrow, help a reporter out, SOS, source of sources, quoted, spelled with a Q-W-O-T-E-D. You can follow journalists within your industry on social media. Journalists are very active on platforms like X and Blue Sky, threads even. You can look for hashtag journal request each day and see what sort of things journalists are asking for and take it just a bit of time each day to put you or your associated expert with your company out there. And that's just a great way to start building trust, not only with your audience, but also with like perspective and potential customers and clients. Yeah, I think that's a great easy way to get started with that. So are there any common mistakes that you see when founders or brands are trying this like a DIY PR in a way that doesn't actually do anything for visibility? Yeah, there's always a trade-off with relevancy when it comes to PR because it's got to be either newsworthy if you're coming up with a story and trying to get it out there or if you're contributing to another journalist piece via one of those sort of inbound requests, then the piece is what the journalist is writing. It's not about you. It's not about your new like product or your new company initiative. You are just offering as closely relevant as possible advice or commentary that aligns with your industry. So there's always going to be that trade-off because it has to be newsworthy and of interest to the readership of the publication that you're trying to appear in. So anybody that pigeonholes themselves, they say, you know, I'm an email SaaS deliverability tool and I only want to talk about SaaS email deliverability. Like that is yawn subject. Like journalists aren't writing about that. It's not sexy. I mean, they are, but you know, more niche specific industry publications. But if that's all you want to talk about, then it's going to be difficult to get that wider reach. Whereas if you're in that, then you're in marketing, you're in technology, you're probably in AI, you're in these much broader topics. And if you open yourself up to that, then you can build real authority for yourself in broader topics that still, you know, relate to you and your business to some extent. And the journalist will almost always quote you, Joe blogs from name the company, and then maybe what the company does. So Joe blogs from email deliverable and email deliverability tool. So you're, if you're getting that sort of anchor text or that collection of words about you, your name, your business, your brand, and what you do all over the place on the internet in websites that matter, then that's where the LLMs are going to start understanding it. When they redo their training, Google will understand it and yeah, it will have a compounding effect. So for Google, we know that the backlink to your company, your brand is kind of important, but for LLMs, I'm seeing other experts tell me that even if you don't have that backlink, just a mention is just as important. Are you seeing that with your own clients? Yeah. Yeah. The, the brand mentioned, I mean, we've always, we've always known there's been value in the brand mention alone. It's hard to sell that as a link building agency. Like we sell links, but we're charging you for the, for the branded mention as well. But yeah, you're a hundred percent right. Like the LLMs will see it. I mean, they're passing huge amounts of information and data when they get trained and retrained. But yeah, it's, it's having your brand and then what you do contextually within a, you know, a relevant piece of content is, is in terms of LLM visibility is definitely one of the more significant driving factors. So if you're doing digital PR in order to enhance your visibility in search, the link is going to give you that algorithmic Google SEO hit. And the sheer fact that it's also a branded mention is also helping with your LLM. So it's like the perfect activity to have your business engaged with to sort of cover all your bases in terms of how visible you're going to be in today's yeah. Today's search world, whatever that looks like and whatever the hell it's going to look like in the coming months and years. Yeah. I think, I think we're right on the edge of where it's going to start changing. So now is the time to be thinking about the things, which brings me to my next question. So some, even this morning I was in one of my marketing groups, they were asking like, do we just get rid of SEO altogether? Do we focus on just GEO stuff? What are we doing? So for the listeners who want to connect PR to their SEO slash GEO slash AO strategy, what's one step that they can take this week to get it started? Get yourselves PR and brand ready. So that's a really good question. And you missed out a bunch of three letter cinnamons for GEO. I think there's about a hundred of them. You've been here at this point. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. My biggest piece of advice is get yourself PR ready is how I would phrase that. So make sure you are clearly visible to your business. So a really good about page, or at least a really good about section on the website. So people, people and robots can see which humans are behind your business. Lots of detailed information, photos, awards, accolades, industry specific things that you've achieved. If you're a local business, make sure you've got a Google business profile, make sure you've got structured data on the website, organization schema, same as schema. If you can get a Google knowledge panel, you should try and get one of those as well. Make sure that you have like clear social profiles and make sure you have boilerplate information across all of those properties. So you are saying the exact same thing that you do, where you're from, what you do, who you service. And it's the same information everywhere. LLMs love consistency. So if on Facebook, you say I'm a marketing agency. And then on your website, you say you're a GEO agency. And then on LinkedIn, you say you're a YouTube video content creator, like nobody knows or understands what you do. So make sure you've got that boilerplate information, make sure you've got consistent information. And yeah, that's going to be your best way of getting yourself ready to be viewed in the best possible light by humans and robots. Hey, sorry to break into the conversation. I will keep this quick. We are getting ready to launch a beta for ThoughtTree, an AI workspace and reporting tool that actually helps you organize your prompts, outputs and notes. So insights are repeatable and make sense. If you'd like to be part the beta test group, head over to www.thoughttree.io and join us again. That's www.thoughttree.io. We would love to hear your thoughts on this product. Okay, now back to the conversation with Chris. Which brings me into the experiment that I'm running this week. I mentioned in a couple episodes back that I was going to some of the clients that I work with that have bios about me because ChatGPT is not, they're not in sync with what my website says. They're using an old bio from like two years ago. One of them is fixed now, the HubSpot one, which was like the biggest one, but it's still pulling from like a lesser known brand. I'm like, why? So that's the experiment this week is like getting that one. That's awesome. That's really interesting. I'd love to hear how you get on with that. And it's really good that you've identified that as well. Because that is an issue, like, especially if, you know, it's almost now, we've got so many fronts to fight in order to have the information that we want to be out there about ourselves. So the fact that you've identified that and tried to like address it is awesome. That's where we'll end this conversation for today. I'll keep you posted on the experiment I mentioned, you know, updating those old bios that AI search tools keep pulling from. And I'll share what I learned in a future episode. If you'd like to connect with Chris Pantelli, you can find him on LinkedIn or at Linkify.io. And if you're a startup looking to build a content engine that gets you discovered in AI search, you can find me at CassieClarkMarketing.com. Thanks for listening to Found in AI. I will see you next time.