In this AI Loves PR episode, Paul Cusker, VP of Digital and Market Research at the PR Council, highlighted an important opportunity for agency leaders: in the AI era, agencies must have a structured presence in trusted ecosystems where both machines and humans search for credibility.
Cusker’s core provocation: if your firm isn’t indexable, it doesn’t exist. “Subject matter expertise is indexable,” he said, challenging agencies to elevate the voices of internal experts and consistently place them in reputable, structured content environments. He also urged agencies to optimize their websites, calling it a strategic play for discoverability and talent attraction. “When someone’s checking out your agency, they’re increasingly likely to use an LLM. One quick test: go to [yourwebsite].com/robots.txt to see what, if anything, is being blocked from crawling by LLMs and search engines.
Another insight: staying informed means going beyond headlines. Cusker recommends that leaders monitor active LinkedIn groups focused on AI tools, language models, and use cases. “That’s where real-time experimentation is happening,” he said, nodding to comment threads and case studies.
He emphasized that trust signals are increasingly machine-mediated. “If the content isn’t contextualized in a trusted source, it’s irrelevant to the algorithm,” he said. That makes context, not just content, the new currency of visibility.
The throughline? Credibility now begins in the backend. PR leaders who understand that will not only win coverage, but clients, talent, and algorithmic visibility.