VP Marketing at SparkToro | Can keep hydrangeas alive in a vase for 10 days

I'm currently VP Marketing for audience research startup, SparkToro. I also send a personal newsletter on Substack, and I'm working on a book due out this summer! (More to come on that.)

I've spoken at conferences like AdWorld, MozCon, and SaaStock. I've guest lectured at Columbia Business School, Cornell University, Stanford University, and University of Washington. In my spare time, I do marketing/content consulting, and I teach Content Marketing 201 on Maven. I'm also a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist.

Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of my profile to see the top 100 lists that I am not in.

Amanda Natividad

Rand Fishkin

Founder/Wizard of Moz

SparkToro CEO. Author of Lost & Founder. Feminist. I love underdogs, cooking, & helping people do better marketing

I'm the cofounder and CEO of three companies: SparkToro, software that makes audience research accessible to everyone, indie game maker Snackbar Studio, and the vastly superior alternative to Google Alerts: Alertmouse. I'm also the author of Lost and Founder: (2018), prev founded & led Moz (2001-17) and am a frequent keynote speaker on marketing and entrepreneurship topics. But, I'm probably best known as the amateur chef husband of renowned author, Geraldine DeRuiter.

Cofounder & CEO

I co-founded SparkToro (with Casey Henry) to enable high quality audience research for marketers, PR folks, entrepreneurs, and product builders without the need for expensive, time-consuming, inaccurate surveys or impossible-to-scale manual research.

AI responses aren't lies; they're rarely dead wrong. But they're also nowhere near consistent. If you're using Google AI, ChatGPT, or Claude to get lists of recommendations (products, brands, etc.), or if you're trying to track if your own brand/product/entity in their responses, please arm yourself with this knowledge first.

Yesterday I published a heap of charts, graphs, dataviz, and stats... but for some people those don't land. So I made a short video attempting to sum up the painstaking AI consistency research that went near-viral after yesterday's launch (30K views in the first 24hrs!). Thanks to everyone who helped share it, and 🤞 this will help even more to wrap their heads around it 👇

Cofounder of SparkToro, Alertmouse, & Snackbar Studio. Author of Lost & Founder. Feminist. I love underdogs, cooking, & helping people do better marketing

NEW research: https://lnkd.in/gwyQz_wg

How consistent are AI tools when asked for a list of brands/products?

And do the answers mean those AI tracking tools are selling you a boondoggle of snake oil chicanery?

Oh my goodness, buckle up, because the answer took 3 months, dozens of surveys, thousands of AI requests, and more than a dozen graphs, charts, and visuals to uncover. Below, I've pasted just a little taste (3/15) of the data visualizations in this research, and, apologies, but for the full findings, including the conclusion, you're gonna have to read the post. 😎

p.s. Huge thanks to Patrick O'Donnell from Gumshoe AI for being my research partner on this. Couldn't have done it without him.

Nobody knows how to hate like LinkedIn's algorithm. They hate links with a passion, so much so that the classic "link in comments" workaround is now failing, too. LinkedIn's process? Just hide the comment, too!

But, for y'all who wanna get clever and are willing to put in a bit of work, it's still possible to drive traffic/signups/motivated visits with the right techniques, and that's the focus of this week's #5MinuteWhiteboard 👇

Me: "our brand positioning is audience research for marketers."
Google: "ha ha ha... your brand is whatever we say it is."

My advice:
Step 1 - monitor your search console ratio on branded terms, keeping a special eye on those where clicks:impressions is <65%.
Step 2 - set up brand mention alerts (because what others say about you on the web is how AIs decide what to say about you)
Step 3 - when a mention comes along that says great things about you and fits your positioning... QUOTE IT. CITE IT. LINK IT. SHARE IT.

👇👇👇

When your inventor friend is laid up after surgery, but already paid for a demo slot at CES Unveiled, what do you do?

DAMN RIGHT. You offer to fly to Vegas and present to hundreds of journalists in their stead. (even though you're more than a bit nervous 😅😅😅)

So, friends, especially #PR friends -- we could really use any advice on how to talk to journalists and influencers in the CES tech world.

taplio

The Battle

Amanda Natividad

Rand Fishkin

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taplio

The Battle

Amanda Natividad

Rand Fishkin

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Rand Fishkin's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreRand Fishkin's LinkedIn Performance