Using LinkedIn for AEO: How marketers can use social media to improve their AI visibility [experiment]

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Free and premium plans Agent Hub Your central home for building and managing AI agents across the platform Learn more Small Business Bundle The Starter edition of each product, built for startups and small businesses Learn more AEO (Beta) Answer engine optimization tools that track and improve your brand's visibility in AI results Learn more HubSpot Marketplace Connect your favorite apps to HubSpot See all integrations Home Marketing Using LinkedIn for AEO: How marketers can use social media to improve their AI visibility [experiment] Using LinkedIn for AEO: How marketers can use social media to improve their AI visibility [experiment] Written by: Mandy Bray HUBSPOT AEO TOOL See exactly where your brand shows up in answer engines and take action to close AI visibility gaps. Over the past few months, I noticed a pattern while researching for clients. When I searched Perplexity for B2B reports or insights that I could cite for a project, the source list would look like this: Gartner, McKinsey, peer-reviewed paper, then … John Smith on LinkedIn? Between major publications, consulting firms, and big-name industry leaders, AI platforms were surfacing LinkedIn articles and posts by regular professionals with something to say, but not necessarily a large following. This sparked an idea— could I use LinkedIn for AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) to promote my solopreneur business? In traditional search, I could never compete against the likes of huge agencies or enterprises. Here’s the experiment I ran and what I learned about optimizing for AEO on LinkedIn. First, I wanted to check that my plan to grow AI visibility through LinkedIn wasn’t just based on a hunch. Here’s what the data says: See exactly where your brand shows up in answer engines and take action to close AI visibility gaps. As a solopreneur, I’ve relied on a mix of referrals, industry groups, cold outreach, and LinkedIn engagement for leads. Now, I’ve added LLM searches to that mix. According to Loginix, 73% of B2B buyers now use AI tools in their research. Here’s why I thought that optimizing for AEO on LinkedIn was a smart move: To start, I chose a specific scope for the LinkedIn experiment. Instead of a generic prompt, I optimized prompts around “case study writer,” which is a service area that I’m growing but have not actively marketed in the past. I am a fairly inconsistent poster on LinkedIn, and the last article I published there was in 2016. To determine a baseline and build a strategy, I used HubSpot AEO. It took less than 10 minutes to go through their onboarding flow and input my brand, domain, services, and ideal customer profile (ICP). I entered a few case study writers as competitors, then started brainstorming prompts. I brainstormed prompts my target customer might use, then HubSpot suggested some related prompts. These were a mix of branded (Can you recommend a case study for X industry?) and unbranded (What are best practices for writing a case study?). Once I was happy with the list, the tool ran a search across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini to see how I fared. The results? I had 0.11% visibility across the prompts. Pretty low, but not zero. I had work to do. With a baseline and goal in mind, I set about optimizing my profile and publishing content around the key topic and my expertise. First, I reviewed my LinkedIn profile to ensure it accurately reflected the expertise I wanted to be known for. I made sure that “case study writer” was prominent and mentioned in multiple sections. This was crucial to signal to AI readers that my background and expertise matched what I was talking about. Next, I published two LinkedIn articles and two posts all about case studies. HubSpot AEO gave me a list of topic suggestions, which I used for high-level inspiration. Then I sat down and wrote two articles on case study best practices and lessons learned as a case study writer. I wrote these from direct experience, no AI writing involved. Each article included a cover image, the post, and a bio at the bottom. I engaged with any comments that people left on the posts or articles. My LinkedIn AEO experiment ran for three weeks. Each week, I checked if my metrics had progressed. I also ran manual searches in incognito mode on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode to see for myself the responses that different prompts returned. For the first two weeks that I was posting, the number of citations didn’t budge. Then in the third week, some movement happened.

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Source: HubSpot

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