ICYMI: Creators Aren't Just "Influencers;" They're Media Outlets and AI Search Trusts That
Today’s newsletter is a special ICYMI edition written by Kaleigh Moore, AI search strategist for B2B companies. Over the last year, an entirely new reason to work with creators has emerged: AEO. Kaleigh lives and breathes this stuff, so I asked her to share a primer on why working with creators is more important than ever.
For decades, creators have been trying to adopt a specific mindset: I’m an entire media company.
It worked as a metaphor. But now, AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI, Copilot, Claude) have made it literal. They’re citing creator posts the way they’d cite a publication.
If you’re a creator, this is potentially brand-changing news: Once an AI engine treats your content as a credible source, you’ve become a citable media outlet with authority.
And if you’re a marketer, that means there’s a completely new reason to work with creators of every follower count. Here’s why:
You need to know that you’re showing up in AI search
AI usage stats are growing at a blinding pace:
ChatGPT: 800M+ weekly active users
Gemini: 750M+ monthly, with 37% of searches starting with AI and AI overviews on 16% of queries and growing
The B2B audience is even further along. Forrester says 94% of business buyers used an LLM in 2025. Averi sees 73% actively using AI tools for research.
And what does AI research look like? After a user query, LLMs typically return summaries tagged with citations.
The goal is becoming one of those citations. You’re less concerned with being #7 on Google than with being the source behind how AI summarizes its answers.
Bottom line: with AI, it’s cool to be a creator.
That’s especially true if you’re a trusted voice within a focused topic, especially on a platform like LinkedIn. For many brands, that means doing less self-publishing and more reaching out to creators — almost as if the creators themselves were the publications.
Because… they are.
Over at HubSpot, Senior Marketer Kayla Hamilton is building a nano/micro affiliate creator program to take advantage of this new strategy — specifically designed to grow HubSpot’s own discoverability in AI answer engines.
She describes it as sitting at the intersection of creator strategy, affiliate performance, and AEO/GEO best practices to drive demand generation and LLM visibility in tools like ChatGPT.
“The main difference between our creator AEO efforts and other creator work is achieving a measurable increase in HubSpot LLM citations attributable to creator content.”
That bit about nano and micro creators is important. Turns out you don’t have to be a celebrity to be a citation.
Why AI cites creators, and why follower count isn’t the reason
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