How Approval Layers Slow Down AI Search Visibility — with Rose Ann Mullet

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Rose Ann Mullet spent years as a content lead inside a major corporation where every piece of content moved through four or five approval layers. She streamlined the process and is proud of the system they still use. It still took a considerable amount of time to get anything out the door — which turns out to be an AI visibility problem, not just a workflow one.

Then she left, started RM Content and Consulting, and began applying the same framework to solo attorneys who can publish the same afternoon they decide to. Same signals, radically different speed. This conversation is about what that gap actually costs.

In this episode:

• What it looks like to push for AI visibility from inside an org where leadership says yes in principle and nothing moves
• The "if we get the SEO right, AI will follow" argument, and why Rose and her SEO manager both knew better
• A 50% lift in ChatGPT-referred traffic after restructuring one section of a corporate site — and why they never got to properly test it
• Why regional and local offices describing the brand differently is an entity problem, not a brand-consistency nitpick
• Freshness as a retrieval signal, and why your approval chain sets a ceiling on it
• How Rose applied Freshness, Structure, and Authority to a solo attorney's personal brand, LinkedIn, and dormant blog
• Getting that attorney recommended by AI within 30 days — including the competitive-set caveat that makes the result honest
• Watching AI characterize a client using language from content Rose ghostwrote for him
• Why competitor analysis is now a weekly exercise instead of an annual one
• Where local PR fits into a visibility strategy for service businesses

I'm an AI search visibility consultant and a fractional content strategist for startups and enterprise brands. If that sounds like the kind of help you're looking for, email me at cassie@cassieclarkmarketing.com. 

Or request your AI Search Visibility Audit: https://cassieclarkmarketing.com/ai-search-visibility-audit/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

And at one point, you know, they we did have somebody who was like, well, if you get the SEO right, then AI will just follow. And the SEO manager and I were both like, that's cute.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Hey, welcome back to Fountain AI. I'm Cassie Clark, an AI Search Visibility Consultant, and this is a show where we talk about AI search, GEO, AEO, and what all of this actually means for the people who have to go execute it. Most of the conversations that I have been having lately, and I've been talking about this a lot on the show, is that AI Visibility eventually turns into a conversation about organization charts. Who owns this, who signs off on it, how long does it take to get the page updated? It's not really a conversation that people expect to have when they come in asking about citations, but it's usually the one that we need to have. My guests today lived that from the inside. Roseanne Mullet is the owner and content strategist at RM Content and Consulting, where she does brand development and ghostwriting specifically for lawyers. Before that, she was a content lead at a major corporation with regional and local offices, and there were four to five approval layers on every piece of content, and leadership that just kept saying, yeah, we should do that without actually really ever saying when. She was pushing for AI visibility from inside of all of that. Then she left, she started her own thing, and then started applying the FSA framework to solo attorneys who can publish something that afternoon that they think of it. Those are two very different operating environments, and the FSA framework works for both of them. But that's the contrast that we're talking about here in this episode. Here's Rose.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Hi, so I'm Roseanne Mullett. I'm the owner and content strategist and ghostwriter for RM Content and Consulting. Um, and what I focus on is brand development, content strategy, and ghostwriting for lawyers so that they can focus on billable hours and I focus on their marketing.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

So you're very specific with lawyers. That's who you work with.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

That is pretty much who I work with. That doesn't mean that there aren't instances where periodically I have someone reach out to me on LinkedIn and say, hey, I've seen your work and I would love to work with you. I um have worked with a CPA, um, for instance, but lawyers are really kind of where I they're they're they're my people.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

So in your intake form that you gave me, you said that you spent a lot of time implementing AI visibility from inside a company with a lot of approval layers.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Tell me what that looked like. Before I started my own company, RM Content Consulting, I worked for a major organization and we had several approval layers within our marketing department. So any content that I wrote would often go through um like four or five approval layers. Um, and that's not including if there was something that somebody flagged and needed an additional layer. Um, one of the things that I actually did there was try to streamline some things. Um, and I did that successfully, and I'm really proud of developing their content development, their the content development process that they still use, as far as I know. But that did mean that getting the content out the door, even with my streamlined process, still took a considerable amount of time, um, which has, as we know, very real implications in terms of AI and getting cited, getting mentioned, getting recommended. Um, because it's just, you know, how can you keep things fresh if you can't move as fast?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

So when you started, did you start pushing for AI visibility before you left there?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

I did start pushing for AI visibility before I left there. Obviously, um, interestingly enough, I came across your podcast when you pretty much first started out. Um, and so I actually took found an AI to our team and was like, hey, we should be listening to this. This is some really good information. Let's move on this. And um, leadership was receptive in the sense that they were like, Yes, it would be great to be mentioned by AI, but you know, we need to figure out how to do this, we need to develop this or that. And so it kind of became this like hamster will conversation, and we were running, but not really anywhere productive. Um, so what ended up happening actually is I ended up meeting with our SEO manager and having some talks with her and um giving her some information that I had come across. And so we did, we were able to shift some things around um in terms of like how we structured things. I was the main functionally, I was the content lead there. So I made sure that, like, hey, let's kind of structure these things so that maybe we have a question and kind of set it up as an answer. We moved the needle some. We had a lot of there are a lot of web pages on that website. And so what we were doing was functioning in like specific areas, like this this section of the website first, and then this section of the area. So when we did an update for an entire section of the website, we actually saw a 50% increase in our Google Analytics that was tracked through, okay, this came in through Chat GPT. Um, so that was a really cool win, but that wasn't something that we ever got the go-ahead to like really sit down and test. You know, this was in a very typical corporate world kind of situation. Two people kind of huddled together going, we know that this matters. We're gonna try to make something happen here. Um, and so you know, it was one of those things where we're really pushing leadership. And actually, the SEO manager was talking to leadership as well. Hey, you know, this is SEO is changing. We need to be adding this to the conversation. And it just was like, yeah, yeah, we should, but the conversation was always like, well, we'll get to it after this, or well, we need to focus on the SEO first, not understanding how these things kind of, you know, they're not the same. Um, and at one point, you know, they we did have somebody who was like, Well, if you get the SEO right, then AI will just follow. And the SEO manager and I were both like, that's cute. No, not quite, not exactly. Um, so trying to think through like, how do we pitch things that are gonna get approved, knowing that there's some reticence in terms of moving forward. And I honestly think a lot of those conversations, the pushback that we got was like, how can we use AI or could we use AI to speed up content development or whatever? And it's like this, this is these conversations are not the same, you know? And so I think also there was this um misconception that if we use AI, then AI will like us better. Oh, yeah, I've not heard I've not heard that. I don't know how or why that was something that was said. Um, and it I think it was their thought process was it's like you're feeding it information, so then it's like in its world. Um, and so you know, we spent some time, I spent some time being like, that's that's not really how it works.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, no, I take that back, like early, early on in talking like very first month of this podcast. I did reach out to someone who was also doing some tests and he was telling about what he was doing. And I don't want to call it prompt injecting, but I think that's the term that he used, but it was a little bit different than the term prompt injecting that we know about now. But he would spend time each day running the same prompt over and over and again about his particular brand. And his thought process was the same. If I do this enough, then they're gonna be, oh, these engines know that people are asking about it, but it was just him spending however many times to ask the same question over and over. And I told him, I was like, I don't I don't think that's how that works.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

No, well, and I would think that I mean, you know, how the robots work is also understanding, you know, they do get like IP address and what like that's all part of the pattern recognition and whatever. So, like that's not how it works. Um, and so I, you know, like I said, I didn't push too much on that. I was just like, I don't think that's how it works, bro. Like, uh, I think that we need to be thinking more strategically than that. Um, so you know, it was an interesting, and it and it was a difficult kind of thing too, because this company has a lot of like regional and like, you know, it's a major corporation with regional and then more localized offices as well. So trying to think through like how to have a cohesive message across the board was something that we struggled even in terms of like we just want our social media to match across the board, much less, you know, the consistent messaging that we need in order to show on AI. Um, so you know, there are kind of multiple pieces to that, but I really think that the, you know, there was a certain amount of hesitation. I think that the reality of corporate is also like a certain amount of this is a buzzword. We understand it's a buzzword, but we don't really understand how it works or what it does. So in this instance, we're going to look at it and be like, hey, we should be using this or how should we be using this, rather than sit back and go, okay, there's a question of how to operationalize it versus how do we actually use it in terms of marketing? What does this mean in terms of what's happening in the world in search for our reality and our customers?

SPEAKER_01 10:24

I want to pause on something that Rose said because I think it's an important thing in this episode, and it's easy to just kind of skate right past it. She mentioned those four to five approval layers. David and I talked about this in last week's episode, but Rose mentioned that she streamlined that process and she's proud of it, and she should be. But even streamlined getting a piece of content out of the door took a considerable amount of time. Here is why that's a visibility problem and not just an do we want to call it annoying to work through problem? Maybe, maybe not the right words, but it is kind of annoying to try to wait on something to come out. The F in the FSA framework is freshness, and freshness isn't a publishing metric, it's a retrieval signal. When a model is deciding which source to pull from, recency is part of how it weighs trust. Your update cadence is not a content team preference. I mean it might seem that way, but it's more like an input. So if it takes you six weeks to get a page from brief to live, six weeks is your freshness ceiling. It's not the goal that's the ceiling. Every approval layer is a tax on a signal that you've been scored on. And nobody in that approval chain thinks of themselves as the person slowing down AI visibility. Legal thinks they're managing risk, and they are. Brands think they're protecting consistency, and they are. Each layer individually is defensible, but the aggregate is the problem. This is what I mean when I say AI search visibility is a whole organization problem. It's not that your content team is doing bad work, it's just that the operating system around them was built for a world where being three weeks late didn't really cost us anything. And the other thing that Rose named, the regional and local office problem, we need to talk about that for a second. They couldn't get out their social media to match across the board. That is really the same issue but from a different angle. Consistency of a description across surfaces is how models build an entity. And if you listen to last week's episode with David, even one tiny word change that might not seem like a big deal and it might still match the meeting, changes it over time. So if every regional office describes the company slightly differently, you're not building one entity. You're building 15 weak ones. Keep that in mind for the second half because Rose walks out of that environment and she starts her own thing. If she starts working with solo attorneys who can publish the same day, watch what happens to that timeline. With the clients that you're working with now, like how are you approaching, how are you approaching that when you start working with them?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

I mean, the law firms that I work with, I um typically I'm working with you know individual attorneys and then small to medium firms. Um, so you know, the reality for law firms is you want clients to come in the door. Um, you want them scheduling consultations, you know, this more service-based, you know, the person is who's actually making the product is a little different, obviously, than marketing your, you know, random product that it's like pull from e-commerce even or listings. Um, and so I think it's a little bit easier in the sense that like you can talk about what does the internet know about you? Um, and think through, you know, explaining patterns, which, you know, lawyers, that's also part of what they do in terms of thinking through, you know, in any area of law, there are going to be patterns, there are going to be realities about how closely does this, you know, mimic this precedent or whatever. Um, and understanding that and kind of speaking that language. So I think that it's a little bit easier in that respect. Um, and you know, the reality is, is you just like any person, you have early adopters. Um, so you know, in one case, at least that I can think of, I had an attorney who part of his objective was he wanted to be thinking through how can I have AI cite me and recommend me. So that's something we started working on. And actually within the first 30 days, I was able to get him to be recommended for the area of law that he was seeking to be recommended for.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Tell us, tell us your secret sauce on how you did that.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Well, you know, I can't take total credit because honestly, it's really kind of your secret sauce. Um, you know, I think so. So focused on, you know, freshness and structure and authority. And so I applied that framework really across personal branding um in terms of LinkedIn posts. And we really kind of sat down and built a strategy um thinking through his content and then also updating, he hadn't had a blog posted in over a year. Um, and so, you know, I think the robots were like, oh, look, now there's a blog. Oh, and look, he's talking about these things on LinkedIn. And um, you know, I've also started pitching him to local media outlets. That isn't what got him in that within the first 30 days, but I think it was just one of those things where looking around his competition, the freshness wasn't there really in terms of the competitors either. So, you know, the combination of how this, you know, I would love to say that yes, I can guarantee that I will apply the uh the FSA framework across the board and I will get you there in the first in 30 days. Um, but you know, there's you and I both know that it's like AI recommendations, AI citations. This is, you know, it's constant work, it's a long-term game. And, you know, some of it is also, it does depend a little bit on what your competitors have been doing up to this point or who your competitors are.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Right. And I think that's a really good point to make because I guess that I had on, well, it was this week, but this episode will be out in about two weeks with the episode with Vlad. And he kind of briefly mentioned it mentioned competitor analysis, and he said with AI now you can do this every week if you wanted to, compared to you know, early days when we didn't have that, and it was once a year when you're really looking into what your competitors are doing. I think with this in particular, really getting an idea of how often your competitors are posting, where they're posting, looking at the citations, I think that's the way to go. So that what you have been doing with this particular one.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Yeah, yeah, that is. Um, I has I sat down and looked at initially, I started with just the blog post and was like, okay, you know, when was the last blog published? When, what was the topics, you know, um, can I tell? Kind of, you know, kind of kind of trying to game the system, obviously, in terms of like looking at what the blog posts say and then also trying to see like what does it feed me if I purposely write questions and prompts that kind of pull for that, you know, or suggest it, if you will. Um, and so kind of playing with that in terms of the initial research when we were getting started was part of it for me. Um, so you know, in SEO terms, it was kind of thinking through like what keywords are they ranking for versus what I'm ranking for, similar type thought process. Um, and that's honestly part of what informed my approach. Um, and so, you know, using that, I went forward and, you know, and it was interesting to me, I will say, that in ghostwriting some of the LinkedIn posts, you know, obviously those are shorter snippets, but in terms of personal branding, this was a um a solo practice. So, you know, the I had the law firm page and the solo, you know, his individual page. And and so using kind of both of those, I was able to kind of maneuver some things. But it was interesting to me because, you know, when AI was recommending him, you could also tell that the personal brand aspect, the individual, factored in because some of the word choice and some of the ways that it recommended and characterized him was tied to things. I was like, well, this is clearly tied to content that I wrote. Um, because that, you know, not every single thing that I set out in his strategy for the individual side was directly related to law. Um, some of it was just like be a person in terms of you know that personal branding aspect of LinkedIn. But in some cases, you know, we did posts that were, you know, be a person things he's into that relate to law. Um, you know, that lens in terms of you know how it functions, I guess if you will, or how he thinks about it, I should say. Um and so it was interesting to see that AI kind of pulled that in as well. And so then when you have like, you know, it's recommending maybe two or three firms in that area, how it's characterizing him is actually markedly different. And, you know, I hate to say more human, but you know, you have that element too. So like thinking through kind of how your whole content ecosystem functions and what is it, what is it going to characterize you as? What do you want to be known as? I also think is really important because that recommendation is going to be pulling from, you know, as we've said, across a bunch of sources. And so recognizing, I felt like even just having the business page plus the personal page made a difference.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

And it's interesting that you you're talking about this making it more personalized as a human. I was just reading the um interview between Tag Brew and Liz Liz Liz Reed, she's like VP of Search at Google this morning, and she was talking about you know, the links aren't going away. There were three different things that she talked about in this interview, but the one thing that she really mentioned is that search is now personalized for the individual, not for the other two billion people using search, but for that one person. And like my takeaway from reading this, it's like, okay, well, brands have to, we have to get really, really personal with who that we're talking to. So it's interesting that you're saying this, that even with his personal branding and pulling in the thing that he likes, that those engines are now pulling him in for this person is a real human, here he is. That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Yeah, and you know, it was also really, you know, obviously, in terms of thinking through like recommendations, I was going, okay, this particular area of law, who do you recommend within this area? And I was thrilled that within 30 days I could get him to pool for that. Um, and that was a big win. But also like recognizing how the descriptions have changed for like if I just Google his name or you know, his name attorney or whatever, like seeing how that shifts, um, I think is really interesting, kind of in that same vein because you can see specific um like quotes basically of things that I have ghostwritten for him coming up as part of that um and and part of how it characterizes him. And so I do think that it's really interesting. I think that it, you know, it's a big thing. And if you're around LinkedIn enough, you know, there's the whole back and forth about, you know, your personal brand and be a person and show up, you know, however, online. Um, you know, is it professional? Is it personal? What's the in-between? Um, but I do think that as we move forward, that there's gonna be an element of understanding, like, and we always say know your audience, like that is one of the things that as marketers, like that's like marketing 101. But I think it's gonna be really, really even more important because I think that people say know your audience, but I think you know, going back to that corporate experience, especially large corporations want to market to, you know, oh, everyone, everyone, of course, will want our product. You know, yes, we recognize that the vast majority of our buyers fall into this one particular segment, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to get the other, you know, however many percent. And you know, I have personally have spent time being like, I think we should go all in. There's an awful lot of them in that particular segment, and they're not going anywhere. So, like, let's go all in on our messaging. And that wasn't necessarily how we how that was, we didn't move forward with that particular plan. However, you know, I do think that you know, sitting down and thinking through, okay, this is what is going to work, and this is who cares, allows you to build a relationship as a brand. And I think that really the best marketers are trying to build relationships.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

So last question I have for you. So going back to the lawyer law firm that you were just talking about, and you mentioned getting him active on the company page, on his LinkedIn page, and his blog. Are those the only three channels that you're targeting right now? Or are you working on something else?

SPEAKER_00 24:28

So those are the three channels that I started with. Um, but I am working on getting him like PR. Um, so I've been pitching local media outlets for him. Um, he does some like, you know, in real life kind of community stuff. Um, so trying to get like a community feature or talking through some of that stuff in terms of local news outlets and even you know larger news outlets as well, because there are certain elements of obviously, you know, areas of law that he is focused on. And so making sure that, you know, um if you know there's a call and quoted or whatever, I am hopefully going to get it um and send it his way. So that's something that I'm working on as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Okay, that's Roseanne Mullet of RM Content and Consulting. Links to find her are in the show notes. I like to leave you with one thing every episode that you can do this week. So here's the thing: go count your approval layers. Actually, count them from brief to legal to brand to leadership to publish, whatever yours are. Then go find the last page that you meaningfully updated and figure out how many days pass between, hey, we should update this to hey, it's live on our website. That number is now your freshest ceiling. It's not a metric anyone's asking you for, and it's probably not one that's ever been on a dashboard, but it is kind of the constraint that's sitting underneath every other AI visibility decision that you're gonna make this year, and you can't fix it until you know what it is. If you want more of this in your inbox, the visibility report that I send out on Friday is a weekly newsletter. It's where I break down what's actually changing in AI Search and what to do about it. Links are in the show notes. I'm Cassie Clark, an AI Search Visibility Consultant. I will see you on Thursday with some news updates. Until then, stay visible.