Hi Reader,

Last week, three qualified buyers booked calls with me because they found my work through AI chat and Google.

Two of them came from the industry I’m targeting (architecture, engineering, and construction), and I’m in conversations about multiple six-figure opportunities.

To get here, I started publishing consistently in January after developing a methodology for AI search over the past two years. I published my first AI-assisted articles on another site at the start of 2025.

Since January of this year, I’ve published hundreds of articles built around the topics my clients may be asking AI about. I’ve gone to great lengths to make sure they are easy for AI to find and read. That includes a clean text version of every page, technical markup that tells machines what they’re reading, FAQs, and more.

The site now has measurable search visibility. During the 90 days ending August 9, 2026, dancumberlandlabs.com earned 2,290,444 impressions in Google Search and 5,565 clicks. Our citation tracker currently finds 179 citations of the site in Google AI Overviews.

And three qualified buyers told me they found my work through AI chat and Google. Citation trackers monitor a sample of indexed AI responses, while a buyer’s private AI chats remain private.

Getting found through Google and AI chat has plenty of technical complexity behind it.

But as I like to say,

it’s complex. But complex doesn’t need to be complicated.

This is the first of a few issues on the topic. My aim is to break down the complexity and make it as clear and uncomplicated as possible.

It feels like there are a lot of snake oil salespeople out there promising the world and not delivering on it. I want to cut through the noise and share what I’m doing, what’s working, and how you and your team can learn from it.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a series like this.

I hope it’s helpful. Hit reply as we go with your questions and comments. And if you want AI to recommend you to your customers, I’d love to help.

I build AI Content Visibility Systems to help qualified buyers find a firm’s expertise through search and AI chat. Pacemark is the AI maturity model I use to see where a firm stands today, what may slow its progress, and what it should do next. I’ll keep this series focused on the visibility system itself, and I’ll come back to the Pacemark connection in the final issue.

On to the first piece of the puzzle: what to put where.

1/ The publishing format

Most conversations about content begin with the platform.

• Should you post on LinkedIn?
• Start a podcast?
• Record short videos?
• Build a YouTube channel?
• Publish a weekly newsletter?
• Write articles for your website?

And most of the people leading these conversations have a bias: they have an agency or solution that is platform-specific.

Any of those can work. Some better than others. But each one can also become an expensive production system your team cannot sustain.

My rule of thumb is to use what fits your team most naturally.

But make sure it includes long-form written content that’s easy for AI to read (marked up and tagged), closely associated with your brand (on your web properties), and not behind a login or controlled by another company and its algorithm.

Social and video can help people find your work, and I recommend publishing the long-form version on your own site.

My recommendation is to begin with the work itself and choose a format that lets your team capture what it knows and publish consistently enough to build a body of expertise over time.

And by body of expertise, I mean hundreds or thousands of pieces of content.

For me, that format is written content.

AI helps me maintain that pace.

Someone else may think best on a podcast or in front of a camera.

The platform only matters after you have a repeatable way to produce useful thinking.

2/ The four tests

The format needs to pass four practical tests:

• Frequency: Does your team create useful source material often enough to sustain the work?
• Substance: Does the format let your experts explain the details and judgment behind their recommendations?
• Capture: Can you reliably record, transcribe, or save what they create?
• Review: Can the right person check the material before you publish it?

A weekly client call may produce plenty of useful material, but confidentiality could make it a more complex source to use.

A quarterly conference talk may be substantial, but it will not give you enough material for a regular publishing rhythm.

A monthly interview with one of your senior experts may give you the right balance. Etc.

Choose the source that fits how your company already communicates. Then name the subject-matter expert who will review the finished work.

In a mid-market professional-services firm, people in several roles usually need to participate. Marketing may manage the publishing calendar. Senior practitioners supply the judgment and examples. Operations or technology may own the workflow. A legal, compliance, or risk reviewer may need to approve certain claims.

The system has to fit the people who will run and review it.

Consistency means choosing a rhythm your team can maintain long enough for the work to accumulate.

One substantial article each week produces more than fifty pages in a year. Two a week produce more than one hundred.

AI can make that rhythm possible by reducing the time between the source conversation and the first useful draft.

The editorial standard still comes from your company. For the first three months, you need a clear reviewer and enough time for that person to check each piece before publication.

3/ The three-month test (try this)

Spend thirty minutes listing where your team already does its best thinking:

• Client calls
• Project reviews
• Sales conversations
• Team meetings
• Webinars and talks
• Podcast interviews
• Internal documents and presentations

Score each source from one to five on:

1. Frequency
2. Substance
3. Capture
4. Review

Then choose the one that gives you the best starting point for a three-month publishing test.

During those three months, pay attention to the practical friction:

• Can you get the source material consistently?
• Does it contain ideas worth developing?
• Can the expert review the draft without creating another major demand on the calendar?

The answers will help you improve the process before you try to increase the volume.

You can run this first test manually. Keep the source material in a folder, use an AI chat to help you develop each piece, and track the work in a spreadsheet.

Once the source material starts arriving every week, the repeated work adds up. Someone has to organize it, find the useful ideas, fill the gaps, draft the article, check the claims, prepare the page, and watch what happens after publication. An agentic system lets AI repeat the defined steps while your people remain responsible for the ideas, evidence, review, and final decision to publish.

Choosing the source is the first decision. In the next issue, I’ll show you what needs to happen after the meeting is recorded, and why asking AI to “write a blog post from this transcript” skips most of the important work.

- Dan

P.S. If this sounds like a process that could help qualified buyers find and trust your company, book an AI strategy call. We’ll use Pacemark to look at where visibility fits in your broader AI plan, what may slow the work down, and whether a content visibility system should become your first implementation.