Why Experienced Professionals Are Increasingly Invisible to Search and AI - Ashley Smith

INTERVIEW - ASHLEY SMITH / SHOW YOUR PROOF PAUL WRIGHT & ASHLEY SMITH And welcome back to the Link Thru Social Podcast. We have a special guest with us today, Ashley Smith. And you can find Ashley at showyourproof.beehive.com slash Ashley Dash Smith. And we're really pleased to have her. Ashley, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much, Paul. Appreciate being here. Now, Ashley is a business strategist and former real estate leader who helps experienced professionals become more visible and trusted in a world shaped by search and of course AI. She's the creator of the Proof Gap, a concept that explains why so many experts are overlooked online and how to fix it without becoming a content creator. Before we get started, Ashley, why don't you just give us a little bit about your background and then we can get started. Thanks, Paul. Yeah, I'm excited. And I'm gonna, I know that a lot of your audience really lean into social. So I am going to cater some of my messaging to adapt to the folks who you often have listening because they are they have the ability to like take this stuff to the next level. Okay. So yeah, thank you for having me. I'm a visibility strategist and I'm teaching professionals, particularly folks who've been in their business for a period of time, who have a lot of expertise, who maybe just aren't showing up online the way they should. And I talk about the proof gap, and that's really the disconnect between your real world expertise, your real world reputation, the real value you offer every day in your business, and how it shows up online, particularly through AI search and AI overviews and even AI recommendations. Okay. And so my background is in real estate. I was a realtor for 18 years, very engaged in the industry here in Canada. in Vancouver, I was chair of the professional association, the board over here, which represented over 14,000 real estate professionals at the time. so I was on the board, I was the media spokesperson, and I was very engaged with those real estate professionals. And because of that, I got to, you know, I went to all the conferences, I heard all the panels, I saw these folks sitting through session after session after session, trying to help them figure out their online presence. And for the last, you know, 15 years or so, this really meant through the lens of like social media. I started my business as a realtor in January 2008, which was an interesting time in the real estate market, if anyone remembers. So I really started at a time when it was like pretty tough. And frankly, it's not too different than how it feels right now, frankly. but I really did. I'm not I say you don't have to be a content creator to achieve the results I'm hoping to touch on today, but I also am a big fan of social. I leaned into it very heavily in my business. It's the reason I was able to be successful and build something from, you know, with very little resources and being really young at the time. but the big thing that I think I did was I leaned in really early when, you know, other folks were still poo-pooing it a little bit, didn't believe in the value of it. but I did over the years saw a lot of some of my favorite professionals, like the most top-tier professionals, sit through these things related to marketing and they understood it, but they never did it. And so what I when I'm working with my clients today, I'm working a lot with those sorts of people, the type of people who either don't know how to use social, they don't have an online presence, they're mostly invisible, they probably have the most expertise in their field. But if you Google for that expertise, they're not being found. Okay. now that's kind of just to give you a bit of a framework and a bit of an understanding about like where I come from and why I'm doing this. but for folks who lean into their social footprint, I think this stuff is a huge opportunity. So I want to talk to them. Okay. Now, the one, yeah, the I mean, the thing is we have to understand things people are changing. And so consumers are changing. Obviously, work is changing, AI is changing the value that might be perceived by professionals. So depending, you know, what business you're in, what kind of work that you do, you know, real estate's an easy example because I think many people, whether they've worked with a real estate professional in the past or not, know, hey, why do I want to pay this person this much money if I can like now I can use AI and understand market trends and I can understand like a bunch of information. And even, you know, frankly, Google is starting to implement AI agents, where and I by agent I mean like agentic AI you know tools, where you can now start searching for properties and it will be working for you in the background based on exactly your preferences. And some of the professionals don't even have that kind of they don't necessarily even have the same side of sort of access to data that can be that like, you know, we have rigid categories in our sort of more legacy data systems, right? So like two beds, one bath, how many square feet? But what if I want to say it needs to be, you know, this many minutes away from this school? And it's really important to me that there's dog parks nearby. Like, you know, how do you integrate some of that information? Anyways, I'm going a little off point here, but at the end of the day, we all recognize that the way that consumers are able to access data and the way they're starting to now have conversations, full conversations with these AI engines, including Google, which recently changed its search engine sort of strategy. And so they're leaning a lot more into AI overviews and AI conversations and trying to get very specific like draw out the specifics when it comes to inquiries people are making through Google rather than just like keyword searches, if that makes sense. It's it's not really like a pay-to-play top 10 link situation anymore, right? It really wants to bring the user, the consumer, the searcher like really good value. And so the point is we as professionals, as business people, even people who are employed, if they're thinking about future-proofing themselves and being able to showcase their real skill, their real unique point of view, what they bring to the table, this the way that AI Search is moving, it's a huge opportunity for people to start indexing their expertise online in a meaningful way so they can get found, so they can be summarized appropriately and strategically, but also hopefully sort of recommended. And so we can insert social media into this strategy. but for folks who just haven't done it, don't want to do it, they're not interested in what we might think of as like vanity metrics, they don't want an audience. You can you can thoughtfully incorporate practical strategies into your everyday systems where maybe you're getting your expertise indexed on a searchable internet, you know, once a week or twice a month, and really adding depth to who you are, what you do, and why people would want to work with you or hire you or whatever. So we can dive all into that, but that's that's a lot. That's kind of the that's the concept. That's what I'm working with. And a lot of people honestly aren't thinking enough about this right now, and that's the opportunity, similar to back in 2008 when I was starting on Facebook. Yeah, it's it's the wild west again, and with AI. And you hit it on the nose. We were all about we were programmed to think about SEO and keywords, and you know, you have to incorporate your keywords on your website to be found, but now it's different, and because more and more people are starting to use their different AI platforms, you know, ChatGPT and Claude and all these different ones. And it's what I tell a lot of people ask your AI agent who is Paul Wright, and see what it says, or Paul Wright, the social media guy. And like you have to start thinking about these things now. Professionals have to start indexing, as you as you mentioned. And what is what is something when you're dealing with your clients, how are you getting them to understand that it's not just necessarily about SEO and keywords anymore? It's it's a different type of search that is going to be used. Yeah, I mean the number one pain point it goes way before the tech. It's like the thing that I think is changing the most is that people are vetting even trusted referrals. So that's number one, and that's the thing that's being changed. Like you might have a stellar reputation, but if someone searches your name and your profession and there's you don't appear to be addressing this specific pain point that person has, they are possibly gonna doubt that referral and look elsewhere or compare. And more and more the AI overview is gonna help synthesize that information. So that's number one, that's the short version. And then number two, yeah, like start searching yourself. And if it's if you're getting slim or vague AI sort of summaries of who you are and like why might I hire this person? Like pretend like you're the consumer. Number one is pretend like you do know this person, you know their name, look them up and ask like, is this a good person to hire for this specific thing, particularly the thing that you are actually known for? And what you know, people I think forget is that we know what we do, but we don't always explicitly say what we do or the specific value that we bring. So, like an outdated bio on your website or a generic bio, and realtors are specifically bad at this, but lots of people are. It's like they're trying to capture everybody, right? So in my market in Vancouver, people might say they work with home buyers and home sellers in the greater Vancouver region. Well, that's not specific. You don't look like the expert in anything, right? And you're definitely not going to get recommended by that. But for people, even who are active on social media and they're really good at capturing attention, they're really good at being engaging, people like they like them, they like their personality. But are you ever intentionally weaving in the like, what are you known for? Right. So, like the specific insights, the original point of view, the stuff that's not generic, that's not copy paste, and with the way that AI is going, like we're all using the tools, but that means the bar is now zero. So, like anyone can create a hundred blog posts a day if they wanted to, talking about the top 10 ways to do X, Y, Z. And that's kind of playing off this old SEO playbook. Yeah, that's why the that's why these search engines aren't putting weight on these things because they know that they're generic. They may, you know, people wonder, oh, do they know it's AI generated? I don't think that's the point. The point is, are there original insights? Does it showcase depth? Does it showcase nuance? And if it doesn't showcase nuance and depth and like real signals of expertise, those things don't carry a lot of weight at all. anyone can claim to do anything, right? And so what these search engines and Google included want are like signals of authority, signals that showcase thinking. And so what I talk to people when I'm talking to my clients or when I'm hosting like workshops, the thing is like, what are you known for today? Maybe what do you want to be known for tomorrow? But have like three things. Like, what are people calling you and asking you about today? Are you addressing those sorts of things in any of the content that you're putting out in a meaningful way that can be clearly understood by these AI search engines? And then how are you recording it? How are you documenting it? And how are you optimizing it? And so you, your audience is well equipped to really optimize. that part can be a little harder. But my favorite thing, you know, not everyone's up for it. I find people are sheepish about it, but my favorite thing is like encouraging people to put out like podcast type of content. And so, and you're like, Ashley, you said you don't need to be a content creator. I'm like, no, you don't have to be looking for influence. You don't have to be looking for an audience, you don't have to be thinking about building a community if that's not for you. But hop on a Zoom call once a week or what twice a month with a colleague, with a someone in an aligned, kind of like adjacent profession, someone who's doing the same thing as you, but across the country, right? Maybe, and if you're by the way, if you're new in your business, pick a mentor, someone who's leaving the business, someone who has no digital footprint at all, but really wants to like enhance their book of business for the next few years. That's the thing I'm hearing a lot about. Like, how do I make my business more saleable, right? How do I add more value to it in a way that actually, like, if people look me up, it looks like it means something, right? So if you're new, like lean into those mentors or those senior people and have conversations, even ask them questions, document your journey of learning. It showcases that you care, it showcases the areas you're interested in, it showcases the where you do want to go deep and where you're becoming, like where you're developing depth. And so think about okay, we can you can look at your email outbox. What kind of questions were you answering in the last couple of weeks? Pick those things, those are the things you can talk about. Or if it's a market like market insights, things you observed over the last couple of weeks, and just casually get on a pre-scheduled video call, record it. You don't need to publish the video if you're not comfortable. Get it out there as an RSS feed, which is that part of podcasting isn't that hard. Running a show and maintaining it and building an audience is hard. But if you just but if you're just so I'm gonna give you your flowers, Paul. But like you don't have to tell anyone that you're hosting a podcast. You just need to record the conversations, distribute them in trusted platforms. And there's a ways to do this where it goes out to Apple, Spotify, Amazon. These are things that Google loves to index. You know, a decent title, a decent description that outlines what you talked about. And by the way, almost all of these now have AI-generated transcripts that come along with them. You know, this is fuel that you can use without having to do a ton of prep, a ton of writing. You can take those AI gener AI generated transcripts, pop that into ChatGPT. Say, like, help me draft an 800-word article optimized for LinkedIn and you know, Google and search engines and capture like the three main talking points or the most insightful pieces of this conversation. Make sure everything's connected back to your website, make sure it's publicly available. Like if you have a newsletter, by the way, I digress. If you already are sending out a newsletter, publish it publicly, like so it can be searched. Like that's an easy way to take something you're already doing and become more searchable and discoverable and showcase your authority online. But, anyways, going back to what I said, you could do this twice a month. It doesn't have to be like fueling that algorithm monster, right? You can take these things and over time really thoughtfully start layering and showcasing your depth. We don't have to get into the mechanics of all of this right now, but the LLMs and Google love the RSS feeds. The data is easy to understand, those AI-generated transcripts give you a ton of tools to work with. It showcases your own voice, your own point of view, your understanding of how you connect the dots, and it adds just a lot of depth and authority to who you are and what you do. and so, you know, it's these kinds of things that I find can be very effective. And, you know, if you don't want to be on camera, or if you don't want to tell anyone, you know, I'm doing this and now I'm like, you don't you don't even need to share it. You don't need listeners, you just need the search engines to start understanding what you do and what you're good at and why anybody should care. Yes, no, very, very good points, Ashley. And a lot, a lot of those things that you were saying is things that I've I've done in my own professional career. I had you know put off doing a podcast for quite some time. It's always been something I've wanted to do, and I took the leap a few months ago, and I'm very happy I did, but you're right, not everyone has to do this. They, you know, as long as you're creating some content that is being picked up by RSS feeds, then you are gonna be tracked by these different AI agents and then start to be seen and start to be relevant in that. And it's it's just absolutely amazing. I wish we had more time to talk more about this. I'd love to have you back on the show in the future. but I want to just bring to everyone's attention your website again. It's showyourproof.beehive.com slash ashley dash smith. And just give us a little brief rundown of what they're gonna see on that site and how they can get in contact with you. Yeah, yeah. And thank you. Thank you so much. I know that was a lot to remember. So I when we spoke, I didn't realize it'd be said out loud. So if you're listening, you can also go to proofplaybook.com and it'll redirect to that to my site. and so yeah, check it out. It I do have workshops every now and then where I'm kind of going through the fundamentals so it'll showcase that. I think for most people, the main piece is I do have a free like self-assessment tool. It helps walk you through like how to assess where you are today. Like it's a diagnostic kind of a thing. and I would recommend people, if they're interested in this, like maybe take that and play with the steps every couple months. See how, because it's not this is the part people have to kind of think about is this is all changing in real time. So, you know, you might improve and it I you know, I don't want to make people feel stressed about it, but like you can see who's showing up with certain types of questions, who's being recommended. But as things evolve and as people get a little smarter about what they're doing, like you know, the competition, they might start doing more. So it's worth paying attention to what's happening. It's also worth seeing who's really standing out today when you're asking for like expertise in your field. So check out the diagnostic. I think it's a good starting point. I also do have some articles. I have a like LinkedIn newsletter where I'm talking about this stuff. I do some podcast stuff and YouTube and all of that. So all the stuff starts. So I welcome you all to just start there and mostly to start thinking about this because it's such a big opportunity and the window is like right now. And if you start now, even super simple, that compounding sort of effort, you could go from being, you know, the 50th recommended whatever, and to being in the top, like you know, top 1%, because a lot of people are not actively paying attention yet. You're absolutely right. And I'll include all the links, of course, on our both our audio and our YouTube podcast. and you're also very active on social media at Ashley Smith Now. Ashley Smith, I really appreciate you taking the time. I'd love to have you on the show again. some great points, and I wish you all the best, and we'll we'll we'll definitely connect again soon in the future. Cheers. Okay, TRANSITION PAUL WRIGHT the Link Thru Social podcast will be back right after this short break. 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