We’ve been publicly publishing guides to AEO + AI visibility for almost a year now. 

But behind the scenes, we’ve been deep in the ‘arb laboratory, safety goggles on, running a few more experiments. 

We’ve tinkered with all kinds of AI visibility tools, from brand new players fresh off their first fundraise to old-school incumbents with new AEO features. 

Some we’ve liked, some we’ve been confused by, and all of them were missing something: what to do with your AI visibility data once you have it. 

What we found was that lots of folks could tell you the numbers. Here’s how often you show up in ChatGPT, here’s the page getting cited in Google AI search, here’s how your competitors stack up in search results. 

And that’s important information!

If you know how to translate it into a meaningful content strategy. 

That’s why (🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁) we’re launching Foreshadow. 

Foreshadow is a 30-day consulting engagement where we: 

• Run your AI visibility audit (we got very good at this, what with all the tool testing)  

• Analyze how you stack up against competitors 

• Identify what relevant topics are trending up and to the right 

• Prescribe the content pillars that should drive your visibility strategy 

• Write your 90-day editorial calendar for boosting viz across the topics you should own. 

Join the waitlist here.

Let’s get into it.

Here’s how this whole thing is gonna work. 

Phase 1: We nerd out on research  

We devote a content strategist and an editorial consultant to every engagement. They start by digging deep into your SEO, AEO, website health, and performance data. The internal template is 7 sheet tabs big. 

This helps us identify how and where you’re currently showing up, and put together your competitor scorecard, to see how you’re stacking up. 

We also audit your website and make you a list of what’s broken — because you can have the best content in the world, but it won’t get cited if it can’t get crawled. The good news is, you can just give this list to your web developer. 

Also, caveat: you may already have all this data through existing tools (shoutout to our AirOps friends!). That’s great. We can still work with you (and you’ll still need us) because this shouldn’t be a fully automated content play. You need to be able to take these numbers and use them to create work that’s original and differentiated. That’s where Phase 2 comes in. 

Phase 2: We feed our proprietary algo 

Once we’ve collected and cleaned all this information, we run it through our proprietary scoring system to generate your Content Opportunity Scorecard. 

This helps us identify what keywords and content pillars present the biggest opportunity for your business, based on: 

• AEO performance 

• Trending searches for your ICP

• Your industry idiosyncrasies + maturity in the space 

• Your content goals 

• What makes your brand unique 

Phase 3: We make a plan 

Okay, so we know what you should be trying to rank for. 

The best way to rank for it? Thoughtful, SME-driven long-form content. Emphasis on the thoughtful. 

But don’t just take our word for it — here’s what Google’s “Guide to Optimizing Generative AI Features on Google Search” says:

With all that in mind, we take your AI Viz audit and map out your 90-day editorial calendar, including: 

• content themes

• topics + headlines 

• keywords 

• the SMEs in your network (or ours) to interview to write about those topics 

Phase 4: Choose your own path 

From there, you can take your content strategy and write it yourself. 

Your dedicated writer will help you identify a brand voice that resonates with your ICP. They’ll also put together a bespoke Claude skill for defining your tone of voice and editing content to sound on-brand. That’s yours to keep. 

Or … hand us the keys, and we’ll make the plan come true. 

We love to drive. 

Campaigns that got us talking: Oreo would like you to choose its next bad decision. 

New packaged food products are expensive bets, so Oreo is letting fans pick its next flavor: banana pudding, deep-fried cookies, or, somehow, chicken and waffles.

Somebody is about to look at Oreo and think, Needs chicken.

AI spotlight: Your newsletter can talk to Claude now. beehiiv’s new MCP lets Claude and ChatGPT work directly with your beehiiv account.

You can ask which issues drove growth, who your most engaged subscribers are, or what you should write next month without first downloading a CSV, uploading the CSV, discovering it’s the wrong CSV, downloading another CSV, and briefly considering a career making doughnuts.

Don't make a career pivot. Use code STORYARB30 for 30% off 3 months of beehiiv.

Stuff that makes us scroll back up: Reddit’s share of ChatGPT citations dropped 86% in a matter of weeks. One theory: Reddit is getting a lot stingier about letting its content be crawled.

Meanwhile, docs and help centers are becoming a much bigger part of what ChatGPT cites.

WE WERE ON A BREAK: GEO edition.

Writing for LLMs like they’re your new ICP.

(Your actual ICP would like a word.)

Publishing 47 articles because SEMrush gave you 5,000 keyword opportunities.

(The spreadsheet was a map, Kevin. Not a dare.)

Asking Claude how to get Claude to recommend you.

(We have created a very normal economy.)

Calling every content update “GEO.”

(You added an FAQ.)

Checking your brand once in ChatGPT and declaring victory.

(See you next week.)

(Oh man, we love a product launch. We’re still getting love notes about our last one, our newsletter tier. This is so darn fun for us.) 

So yeah. Foreshadow. 

Named such because we love Chekov’s gun, a cozy Poirot, and a mysterious figure under a bridge saying, “Don’t go into the woods after dark.” 

And because with the right information, you can spot what’s trending in your industry before anyone else. 

And then show up first. And more importantly, show up smart. 

See y’all next time. 

— the storyarb writers’ room 🫡

Oh! And another thing... Justin Hall is credited as being the internet’s first blogger, posting first in 1994. His documentary about it is called Overshare.

Content marketing has changed a lot in 32 years. The urge to tell the internet everything has not.

We help brands reach thousands of B2B marketing leaders, and we turn great experts into editorial features worth their inbox space.