AI Is Reshaping Your Startup's Comms Strategy

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-09

AI has become the single most important decision-shaping layer in the startup world. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are now the default routes through which prospective clients size up your products and applicants consider your job postings. Your potential investors are firing off prompts rather than spending time scrolling through several pages of Google search results. AI compresses discovery, evaluation, and recommendation into a single interface. Navigating this new reality will prove decisive for startups. ### What LLMs Are Reading To understand how to make a startup appear in LLM results in the best possible light—and as relevant answers to prompts—we need to understand how LLMs work. In a May 2026 report, PR analytics firm Muck Rack found earned and third-party media make up about 84% of AI citations. Paid and advertorial content? A rounding error at 0.3%. Ahrefs, an SEO data company, studied 75,000 brands and reached the same conclusion. A March 2026 distribution study by MarTech company Stacker found that pushing the same content through earned outlets rather than your own site lifted AI visibility by a median 239%. So here's the takeaway: earned, corroborated coverage is now the start of a supply chain for both trust and visibility within LLMs. ### Why Big Publications Aren't Always the Answer Many founders make the mistake of pursuing big-name publications straight away. Seasoned PR professionals can tell you this is rarely a feasible strategy. The studies confirm what was already efficient: starting smaller works better. Trade and industry media have long been quiet anchors of trust. They're within grasp for early-stage startups and rewarded by LLMs for their subject-specific authority and depth. Recency also plays a role in how results show up. Smaller, trustworthy publications offer a more consistent, steady storytelling journey. ### What You Can and Cannot Control Community and reference platforms are among the most-cited sources of all—and they're un-pitchable. Muck Rack found Wikipedia appears in ChatGPT's top three cited domains in 12 of 17 industries. Reddit is cited heavily across models. Both are notoriously hard to influence. Wikipedia vets editors for impartiality and requires high-trust, earned or academic citations. Review platforms pull serious weight too. A Seer Interactive analysis of 800,000 AI responses found review sites among the most-cited sources for product questions. G2 ranks near the top for B2B software. However strategically you maximize these channels, AI gravitates toward something less gameable. Building domain authority with backlinks isn't inherited from the old SEO playbook—it still works, but the Ahrefs study found brand mentions predicted AI visibility three times more strongly than backlinks. You can't buy your way into AI citations either. AI doesn't reward paid media to reach the demographic of your choice. Its sources are harder to engineer. ### What You Can Control One thing you can control is owned media: your website, blog, and social media. It accounts for 16% of citations and is used by models to fill in informational blanks. Appropriate optimization includes the hygienic foundation of a crawlable site and a tidy social presence. Many of these elements are indispensable for making a good first impression on a journalist. To better cater to AI models, implement structured data and schema markup, use clear headings, and experiment with question-and-answer formats. ### Thinking Bigger About Comms and AI LLMs are undeniably adept at synthesizing and regurgitating information (and increasingly solving problems), but they struggle to perceive and absorb reliable information about the real world. There are multiple unfortunate instances of models learning from their own error-riddled AI outputs, creating a doom loop of slop. - **Focus on earned media** – It's the backbone of AI trust. - **Build brand mentions** – They matter more than backlinks. - **Optimize owned channels** – Even a 16% slice matters. - **Avoid shortcuts** – Paid media won't get you into AI citations. > "Earned, corroborated coverage is now the start of a supply chain of both trust and visibility within LLMs." The real opportunity lies in chronicling reality—in telling authentic stories that AI can't fabricate. Your startup's comms approach should reflect that. In summary, AI isn't a passing trend. It's reshaping how trust is built and how visibility is earned. Startups that adapt now—by prioritizing earned media, optimizing owned assets, and avoiding shortcuts—will be the ones that thrive in this new landscape.