Helping brands get rankings and revenue from Google, LLMs, AI Overviews | CEO of Contact.so | Mentions.so | Kleo.so

I help tech companies turn attention into predictable revenue.I am the CEO and co-founder of: • Contact (Most innovative SEO + AEO Agency in the World) • Kleo (AI tool that helps you create content optimized to go viral, build an audience, and get you customers)• Mentions (Helps you track your visibility and rank in ChatGPT and other LLMs)Across these businesses, we’ve built and scaled multiple bootstrapped, profitable companies, while also helping dozens of teams grow through SEO, LinkedIn, and AI-driven distribution.Most teams have the same problem: they invest in content, rankings, or social, but none of it compounds into a reliable acquisition engineMy work focuses on building distribution systems that actually scale:• Programmatic SEO and AEO that compounds• Organic content and distribution designed to convert, not just get likes• Content that helps you rank and get recommended by ChatGPT and other LLMsI work with tech teams and founders who want predictable growth without hiring massive teams or chasing tactics that stop working in six months.Here on LinkedIn, I share what we’re learning while building and scaling these companies, so other founders can avoid the mistakes that slow growth and waste years.My goal is simple: be the most transparent founder in the world, share everything, and hide nothing (so you can steal all our tactics to grow your own business) If you’re building a real business and care about predictable demand, following me will be useful.☎️GETTING IN TOUCH IS EASY:📞 Schedule a 30-minute free brainstorm and jam session with me here: https://calendly.com/trykleo/30min (Zero pressure, and if you need to reschedule, go right ahead.)

Rob Hoffman

SEO?
“Just add some keywords”
”Get green lights on Yoast”
”Let’s write a blog and rank #1?”
”Can’t we just buy some backlinks?”

But SEO in 2026 is a totally different beast.

Here’s what it actually involves:

- Total Addressable Search Market
- Google Search Console
- “Don’t change URLs”
- Quick win keywords
- Customer research
- Programmatic SEO
- Entity optimization
- LLM optimization
- Keyword Insights
- Topical authority
- Site architecture
- Schema markup
- Core Web Vitals
- Monthly reports
- Log file analysis
- Google updates
- Brand mentions
- Screaming Frog
- Technical audit
- Content decay
- Internal linking
- XML Sitemaps
- Topic clusters
- “llms.txt file?”
- Search intent
- Link building
- “It depends”
- Crawlability
- Canonicals
- Robots.txt
- Digital PR
- Mentions
- Semrush
- E-E-A-T

Just adding keywords or getting green lights on Yoast doesn't get SEO results.

True SEO and holistic marketing does.

PS. Want to see what SEO in 2026 looks like?

Join our first ever LIVE session later today. RSVP here (it’s free): https://lnkd.in/eiF7S-yM

Daily tactics to grow revenue with organic content and AEO / SEO. | My businesses: Contact.so | Mentions.so | Kleo.so (all bootstrapped, all profitable, all growing)

"I don't know how to do SEO in 2026"

Start from level 1 in The New SEO Game:

SEO isn't just Google rankings anymore.

It's now "Search Everywhere Optimization".

Reframe your “New SEO” project as a game, and you'll become addicted to levelling up.

Level 1: Traditional SEO

- Fix technical problems killing your rankings
- Research keywords and target quick wins
- Optimize on-page elements (titles, content)
- Earn quality backlinks through outreach and PR

Level 2: AI Search Optimization

- Format content so AI can parse it easily
- Build pages that AI platforms want to cite
- Structure information for machine consumption
- Test how your brand appears in AI search results

Level 3: Paid Search Visibility

- Run Google Ads for high-intent keywords
- Target competitor terms with YouTube Search Ads
- Capture Bing traffic through Microsoft Ads
- Measure paid performance across every platform

Level 4: LLM Answer SEO

- Produce authoritative content LLMs trust
- Build a knowledge base for AI training data
- Position your brand as the definitive source
- Monitor brand mentions in LLMs with Mentions

Level 5: Brand Authority SEO

- Get unlinked brand mentions across the web
- Feature in industry roundups and expert lists
- Build brand recognition without traditional backlinks
- Track brand mention volume and sentiment

Level 6: Community SEO

- Provide value in relevant Reddit threads
- Share expertise on Quora in your space
- Engage in Slack communities and Discord servers
- Build reputation in industry forums and groups

Level 7: Parasite SEO

- Repurpose content on Medium and LinkedIn Pulse
- Publish beehiiv newsletters to rank in Google
- Guest post on high-authority platforms/websites
- Leverage existing domain authority for quick rankings

Level 8: Platform-Specific SEO

- Optimize for Amazon search if selling products
- Focus on YouTube SEO for video content
- Master TikTok's algorithm for short-form content
- Optimize App Store listings for apps/extensions

Level 9: Topic Domination

- Own conversations across ALL channels
- Create content ecosystems to reinforce each platform
- Become the go-to expert mentioned everywhere
- Monitor and maintain authority across all channels

Completed all levels?

SEO is constantly evolving in 2026.

Stay ahead or get left behind.

PS. Need help levelling up?

Join our first ever SaaS SEO in 2026 LIVE session tomorrow, March 4th. 
RSVP here (it’s free): https://lnkd.in/eiF7S-yM

We analysed 1,000s of AI answers to find out how LinkedIn content can improve your AI visibility.

Semrush found that LinkedIn is the 2nd most cited website in AI answers (behind Reddit).

But their only other insight?

"LinkedIn: A steady rise across all AI platforms"

So we went much deeper with Mentions and analysed 4.8M AI answers and 13.4M citations.

Here are 7 key insights we found:

1. Almost half (42.5%) of all AI prompts we’re tracking cite LinkedIn at least once. Huge reach for a single platform.

2. AI citations of LinkedIn grew by 72% in just 6 months. AI tools are finding and using LinkedIn content more every month.

3. 85% of LinkedIn citations come from Google’s AI products (AI Mode and Overviews). Using LinkedIn for AI visibility is mostly playing a Google game.

4. LinkedIn Pulse articles get 8x more citations than regular LinkedIn posts. Long articles work way better than short posts for AI visibility.

5. LinkedIn Pulse articles are doing two things at once: They help content rank on Google and then get picked up by AI answers.

6. Company pages get cited more often than any other LinkedIn page type. If your company page ranks well, it is cited more consistently by AI.

7. AI loves LinkedIn most when people ask about people, companies, experience, and practical advice.

Here are the types of prompts where AI is most likely to pull from LinkedIn (from highest to lowest):

- Hiring and HR questions (69.17%)
- Real examples and case studies (65.12%)
- “Who is this person or company?” (58.89%)
- Learning and training topics (57.04%)
- Software and tools (56.10%)
- “Why” questions (54.76%)
- “How” questions (49.72%)
- “Best” or “top” lists (48.92%)
- Recommendations (48.59%)
- Reviews and opinions (48.21%)
- Comparisons (47.35%)
- “What” or “which” questions (45.14%)
- Everything else (33.34%)

We’re currently building an AI visibility strategy for beehiiv using these exact insights.

Worth sharing the process in real-time?

Our SEO Agency is trending on X News right now... last time this happened the CEO of Google himself weighed in.

If you haven't seen it yet, Jake Ward published a controversial article yesterday.

It breaks down his AI-powered SEO experiment that will likely redefine how founders think about organic content and SEO in 2026.

So far, the results are insane:

- +466% SEO traffic growth in 60 days
- 13,000+ pages published in just 3 hours
- 50% of those pages aren't even indexed yet

People think SEO is slow. But this proves it could be the fastest growth channel for startups in 2026.

The two biggest takeaways for founders looking to invest in this growth channel:

1. Content today is built like software, not written.
2. People want to interact with content, not read it.

I've talked to dozens of founders over the past weeks, and one thing is clear…

Most know this is a growth channel they can't miss out on, but have no idea where to start.

If that sounds like you, or you’re wondering whether this would work for your site, DM me or book a call (link in comments).

I called my shot last year, then spent 183 days making it happen:

Launched 2 businesses in 4 cities and hit $75k MRR.

I lived out of a suitcase, built in public, experienced setbacks, took massive risks…

But here’s what calling my shot has made painfully clear:

1. Define the shot before you take it

I asked myself: What would the best 6 months of my life look like?

I wrote down the answer. Then showed it to my co-founder, Jake:

"We’ll spend 6 months moving from city to city, meeting interesting people. Launch two businesses and grow them fast. Build in public, and get invited on all the podcasts we've been fans of for years."

And it all came true.

You can't call your shot if you don't have total clarity on what it is. Write it down. Make it specific. Then do it.

2. Go to where the interesting people are

Whatever shot you're calling, you will need people.

I spent 6 months moving from city to city, connecting with unique and talented people.

The people I met ended up becoming my co-founders, clients, and team members.

Moving cities is your competitive advantage because so few people are willing to do it.

3. Be the first to drink the Kool-Aid

People want to join a mission and get excited about something. So don't be afraid to sell it.

You may never arrive at the original destination, but here's a secret: nobody cares.

Most people just want an excuse to go on an epic adventure.

Dream big, define your vision, then build a team around it.

4. The biggest mistake is moving so slow you don’t make any

Our first CTO quit. And we didn't let it slow us down.

In less than 24 hours we:

Met with a new candidate
Made a handshake deal for equity and comp
Flew him across the world to sleep on our couch

If you make mistakes, good. That means you're moving fast enough.

You can't steer a stationary ship.

5. Be loud and unapologetic

I’ve documented everything we built on platforms like LinkedIn and X.

People told me not to share our numbers and growth strategies publicly. But I did it anyway.

I used Kleo to turn my ideas and stories into posts (like this one) that got attention.

That attention turned into:

- 2 dream podcast appearances
- Incredible talent asking to work with us
- lead flow for all three of our businesses

The most powerful lesson in all this (for business and life)?

When you call your shot…Call it loud.

Life is short. So tell the world exactly what you want, then go get it.

Helping founders make predictable revenue from organic content and rankings on LinkedIn, Google, and LLMs | CEO of Contact.so | Mentions.so | Kleo.so

Acquiring Inbound Leads for B2B Founders with Personal Content Programs • Explaining Content, one Ugly Drawing at a time

Content steals focus, I know. Writing, formatting, visuals, posting cadence, and keeping up with comments. It becomes a weekly tax, then it gets dropped, then inbound stays unpredictable.I build an Authority Engine for B2B Tech Founders. It turns your existing knowledge into consistent content that makes you look like the category leader, without you writing a word.What you get:1) 100% custom AI voice cloneWe extract your voice from your real materials. Whitepapers, sales calls, internal docs, Slack messages, past posts, and anything else that reflects how you think and speak. No generic templates.2) LinkedIn Autopilot5 high converting posts per week, ghostwritten, formatted, and ready to publish. You do not write, format, post, or search for visuals. You approve drafts with a simple yes or no.3) Search Dominance pack2 SEO optimized long form articles per month, derived from your LinkedIn content, so your authority compounds beyond the feed.First week of content can go live within 48 hours of onboarding. You can see engagement on day 1. Your only job is approvals.I will write 3 posts for you for free using your data, so you can see the voice match before you pay. If the first week does not sound exactly like you, or better, I rewrite it until it does, or you do not pay.Best for founders who have real insight and a real product, but do not want content creation to compete with building, selling, and hiring.If you want to test the voice clone, message me: “3 posts”.

Kuba Czubajewski

IMO, this is the only realistic "future" of content marketers:

Every week, I see here new tools popping up that promise my clients they can let all their content team go because AI can do it all for them.

Not once have I seen it actually work, btw.

Content is a much deeper thing than writing a bunch of paragraphs that sound good or an infographic that looks nice.

For me, it's all about connecting the dots that are usually VERY far apart and turning it into a fresh, impactful message.

This is why I'm in love how Dropbox Dash is approaching AI for creatives.

Instead of proposing yet another "I'll do it for you" tool, they're solving one major pain most of us feel:

Not being able to connect the dots because the dot you're looking for is in a file you forgot the name of.

Sounds trivial, but OH MY GOD, the amount of time I used to spend on scrolling through my G-drive is embarrassing.

And this is where I think the whole AI for content conversation should land.

AI is incredible at recall.

Humans are still the best at judgment what matters, what’s true, what’s new, and what’s worth saying out loud.

You won't win because you can generate 50 posts a day.

But if you can pull the right inputs fast, then make a call on the angle, and ship a message people actually remember, you will win.

PS. this is not sponsored by anyone, I just saw their launch and loved it.

I’ll write 3 LinkedIn posts for free, in your voice. If it sounds like you (or better), we install your AI Authority Engine in 90 days.

Here's a 10-min flow I use with founders to create weeks of content for them:

The goal is to create one small, high-integrity narrative object that can survive multiple contexts without losing its meaning. 

The easiest way to do that is to start with a 10-minute CEO video (use Tella or Loom), because spoken answers preserve something writing tends to bleach out: conviction, nuance, and those small qualifiers that signal real experience. 

I beg you, don’t ask for “thought leadership.” 

Ask one tight prompt that forces specificity, like what buyers are getting wrong about a problem right now, what that misunderstanding costs them, and what they should do instead.

Once you have the Loom, the extraction step matters more than the editing. 

You’re looking for a structure:

Pull out:

- one contrarian claim that creates tension
- one vivid symptom that makes the claim relatable
- one constraint that makes it believable
- one before/after framing that makes the shift obvious
- one proof detail that anchors it in reality

That proof detail can be lightweight. It can be “we heard this on 12 calls this month,” or “this showed up in every deal we lost last quarter.” 

Now you take those five ingredients and you write one “source paragraph” in plain language. Don't think of any platform yet. 

Just articulate the idea clearly as if you were explaining it to a smart friend over coffee. This paragraph becomes the anchor. Every other asset is a translation of it, not a reinvention. That’s how you keep integrity when you repurpose.

From there, I like to create three outputs that each do a different cognitive job:

First, a short text post that opens with the contrarian claim and immediately explains the symptom. 

The mistake people make is opening with the claim and then drifting into abstraction. Don’t. 

Earn the reader’s trust by describing what they already see in the wild, the call snippets, the internal debates, the marketing copy that “sounds right” but doesn’t move anything.

Second, a simple carousel where each slide is a single unit of meaning. Not “tips,” but progression. The before model, the cost of that model, the constraint that keeps people stuck, the after model, and then one practical move they can try this week. 

If you can’t fit the idea on five slides without it turning into fog, the idea isn’t ready yet.

Third, a longer form piece where you unpack the constraint and the proof detail. 

This is where nuance belongs. Why the obvious fix fails. What tradeoff you’re making. What to watch out for. 

This is also where you can safely include a real example, even if it’s anonymized, because you have space to set context.

Two quality checks before you hit publish:

• If the post could apply to any company, it’s too generic. 

• If the reader can’t repeat your point in one sentence, it’s too complicated.

If you want, reply with your niche and I’ll give you 5 tight CEO prompts that reliably produce these “weeks of content” anchors.

I recently changed my banner to this one below and you might think I went insane:

This is not a typical path content people choose for their businesses.

“Free value” beyond a regurgitated ChatGPT lead magnet is a rare thing here.

My thinking is this:

I built an Authority System for copying B2B founders’ voice with AI.

It’s GOOD. Took me about a year to get here. 

And the easiest way to prove it is to show my potential clients how it works.

Yes, building a sample assistant is harder than posting fancy carousels and “vulnerable” fake-ass stories

But I’ve always been more of a show-don’t-tell kinda guy and not planning to stop now.

Curious how it works? Dm me “3 posts”

"comment on other creators' posts" is sh!tty advice:

I used to spend 2 hours per day here commenting on probably all of them big creators.

Most of them don't give a rat's a*s about me or my content.

And that's perfectly fine. Why would they?

Not once have I reached out to them in a DM, they have no reason to see my comment and think:

"I wonder what this guy is about?"

But the folks I exchanged DMs with are consistently showing up under my posts.

Because we established a more meaningful connection than a [put an insightful comment here so they see you're trying hard]

See what I'm getting at?

Connection > tactics.

Build the first one and you'll never need to think about the second one again.

A year ago I thought I had it figured out:

Build a content agency for B2B founders. Use AI to do the heavy lifting. Keep costs low, scale fast. Simple.

What actually happened: 

I spent months building something nobody wanted to pay for.

The first version of the system was basically:

1. take the founder's old posts
2. dump them into a prompt
3. generate something that kind of sounded like them

The output was fine. Technically competent. The kind of content that gets 15 likes and zero leads.

I wasn't impressed with myself tbh. Neither were my clients.

So I overcomplicated everything:

A 12-step onboarding process, 5 different content formats, a pricing page that looked like a software feature comparison matrix...

I was trying to cover every possible use case for every possible client, and the result was that nobody could figure out what I actually did.

The solution was so stupidly simple, I facepalmed when I finally got there:

I started interviewing founders instead of just ingesting their existing content.

Turns out the best content a founder can publish isn't what they've already written.

 It's what they say when someone asks them the right questions:

- the unguarded takes
- the specific stories
- the things they'd never think to write down but say out loud constantly

Once I built the system around that – extract the thinking first, then write – the output stopped sounding like AI trying to be human and started sounding like the founder on their best day.

That took about a year to nail.

The offer got simpler too:

Interview you -> Write it up -> Publish it -> You approve the drafts. 

That's the whole thing.

If you want to see what it looks like, DM me "3 posts" – I'll write them for free before you spend anything.

A thing we rarely discuss in marketing is how customers perceive our narrative through preloaded meanings:

We think we’re publishing a simple story about a benefit. They’re interpreting a signal about power, intent, and control. 

That gap is what Ring ran into with its Super Bowl ad about a lost dog found through a neighborhood camera network. The creative aimed for warmth and community. 

The audience, already saturated with years of privacy discourse and surveillance headlines, watched the same 30 seconds and didn’t primarily evaluate the plot. They evaluated the infrastructure implied by the plot. 

“AI + cameras” isn’t a neutral prop anymore. It’s a symbol, and symbols arrive with cultural baggage attached.

This is the real mechanism behind “losing the narrative.” It’s rarely about execution quality but about the interpretive surface area. 

When a story leaves room for people to fill in the blanks, they will. And they’ll fill them with the strongest available frame in their mind, usually the one that best matches their anxieties. 

In this case, the counter-frame was waiting in the wings, mass surveillance disguised as safety. 

Once that frame establishes itself, everything that follows stops being “new information” and becomes “supporting evidence.” 

That’s why Ring’s sudden move away from a planned partnership with Flock Safety was immediately absorbed into the same storyline. Regardless of internal motives, it read like validation, not coincidence.

The takeaway isn’t “be careful with your messaging.” That’s too shallow. 

The takeaway is that narrative is not a message you transmit. It’s a negotiation between your intent and the audience’s prior beliefs. 

And prior beliefs are not something you overcome with a nicer tone. They’re something you have to design around. If your product or campaign touches an area where trust is already fragile, you should assume your audience will run an adversarial interpretation, even if they like you, even if the ad is well made.

A better move is to treat messaging like you treat product design:

Reduce ambiguity. Anticipate misuse scenarios. Make the boundaries legible. 

Don’t just tell a heartwarming story about what your system can do at its best. Show that you’ve thought seriously about what it could do at its worst, and what you’ve done to prevent that. 

In 2026, “we’re doing this for safety” is not a persuasive claim by itself. People want to know who gets visibility, who gets veto power, and what recourse exists when the system is wrong.

Curious how you think about this. When was the last time you watched a brand’s “feel good” story and immediately felt the darker subtext the audience would attach to it?

Quick tip if you hate when AI says "It's not X, it's Y..."

This rhetorical device is called "contrastive reframing using antithesis structure."

Hard-prompt it into your content assistant to avoid it (example below).

Also, from my tests, Claude 4.6 is much better at this that GPT models.

PS. Let me know any other annoying things AI uses - I'll show you how to remove them from the outputs.

How I helped a B2B consultancy business (very niche) start showing up in AI search:

We focused on turning their LinkedIn content into long-form SEO articles built around real opinions, specific frameworks, and language that maps to actual buyer problems.

AI tools cite sources that are clear and substantive. Since their LinkedIn content had this already, expanding it into articles became much easier.

The results measured over the last 90 days:

Overall: 1,619 AI bot hits → 4,163. That's 3x.
Homepage: 514 → 946. Almost 2x.

Every hit is ChatGPT or Perplexity pulling from their site while a buyer is actively researching. That's pipeline you'd never see in a cold outreach report.

If you want to see what this looks like for your niche, reply ENGINE and tell me what you sell.

200,000 people just watched a creator get stood up by a brand's AI chatbot:

Reformation used AI to manage its influencer outreach. It confirmed a collaboration, set up a store visit, and ran weeks of back-and-forth with a creator.

She drove an hour to the store, shot video in the dressing room... The manager had no idea who she was.

TikTok called it "an AI bot that went rogue." Reformation sent her a sweater as an apology.

Here's my read on what actually happened: 

AI made commitments nobody at the brand had authorized. And no human was watching the inbox it was running.

The bot did exactly what it was built to do - respond, confirm, follow up. 

But nobody told it where to stop. That's a systems failure.

AI doesn't know when it's overstepping. The tool runs until you build a stop - and plenty of AI marketing setups skip that step entirely.

There are places where automation works well: segmentation, sequences, content drafts.

And then there are contexts that require a human in the seat: real commitments, real relationships, anything a creator or partner will hold you to.

I put a lot of emphasis on that while working with my clients on their content assistants.

First draft can (and should) come from the AI. But the human editor before anything goes live is a must. 

Doesn't matter how good your AI tool is. If there's no one monitoring what it's agreeing to, you're one post away from a mess.

The CEO of impact put it well: "Human credibility becomes more valuable, not less."

That's the thing marketing teams running AI tools aren't accounting for right now, imo.

I've been inside a lot of AI content setups lately. 

Usually, it’s a single prompt, no real architecture:

A prompt produces something that sounds okay one day and off-brand the next.

What I built for myself first, now for clients, runs on 8 layers:

1. A voice profile: formality level, POV, energy, humor notes

2. A writing style guide: sentence rhythm, paragraph rules, formatting settings

3. A preferred/banned word list: the exact vocabulary the AI can and can't touch

4. Content pillars: the strategic territory the brand owns (and what it doesn't)

5. A CTA library: specific closing lines and keyword triggers, not improvised

6. An editorial guardrails file: a list of hard limits for the AI

7. A reference database: curated post examples labeled by format, hook type, and why they worked

8. A master prompt: the architecture that connects all 7 layers and tells the AI how to operate

Each layer feeds into the next. Remove one and the output starts drifting.

For example, the voice profile without the banned word list sounds right tonally but uses language the person wouldn't say out loud.

If you want to see what each layer looks like in practice, reply "SYSTEM" and I'll send you the breakdown.

🛑 STOP writing content like this:

1. Sit down to write on Sunday
2. Spend 30 mins staring at a blank page
3. Use AI with a generic prompt to help you
4. Publish weak af “thought leadership”
5. Cringe and repeat the next week

You literally sit on hundreds of content ideas from your work. Ones that will actually bring clients closer to you.

You just have to find them. If you want me to show you how, hit follow.

taplio

The Battle

Rob Hoffman

Kuba Czubajewski

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Performance ScoreRob Hoffman's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Rob Hoffman

Kuba Czubajewski

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);}Rob Hoffman's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreRob Hoffman's LinkedIn Performance