How to Show Up on ChatGPT: The PR Shift Every Small Business Needs to Know About

Quick question. When was the last time you Googled something versus just asking ChatGPT?

If you had to think about it, you're not alone, and that shift is exactly why I brought PR expert Gloria Chao onto the podcast. Gloria's built her whole reputation without ever working inside a traditional PR agency, and she's now considered one of the leading voices on how small businesses get discovered through AI search. We got into what's actually changed in how people find and buy from brands, and more importantly, what you can do about it right now, while barely anyone else is paying attention.

If you've heard the term GEO floating around and had no idea what it meant, or if you've been wondering why your Etsy or Shopify traffic feels softer than it used to, this one's for you.

Why 2026 Is the Year Search Actually Changed

We've known AI was chipping away at traditional search for a while. But Gloria made the case that 2026 is the tipping point, largely because ChatGPT is now integrated directly with Shopify, PayPal, Amazon, Etsy and Walmart. People aren't just asking ChatGPT for information anymore, they're buying inside the chat window, without ever landing on a website.

Think about your own AI habits. Chances are you weren't using ChatGPT much twelve months ago, and now it's part of your daily workflow. That same shift is happening with your customers, and it's happening fast.

Here's the line from Gloria that stuck with me most: people scroll to browse, but they ask AI to decide. That's a completely different behaviour to optimise for. Most of us are still chasing attention on Instagram. But attention isn't the game anymore. Being chosen is.

What Is GEO (And Why Should Small Businesses Care)?

GEO stands for generative engine optimisation, essentially AI visibility. It's the equivalent of SEO, but for how tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude decide who to recommend when someone asks a question.

And here's the part that made me sit up: AI doesn't care how many followers you have, and you can't pay to rank higher inside ChatGPT. There's no algorithm to game with ad spend. According to Gloria, that makes right now a genuine window of opportunity for small businesses to compete directly with big brands, in a way that platforms like Instagram or TikTok never really allowed.

How AI Actually Decides Who to Recommend

So if popularity and ad budgets don't matter, what does?

Trust signals. Gloria's tested this directly by asking ChatGPT how it decides who to recommend, and the answer keeps coming back to third-party validation: being cited in a gift guide, mentioned in a magazine, or featured on a podcast. In other words, other people talking about you, not you talking about yourself.

She shared the example of a business owner who makes travel scarves. After being featured on a major TV segment, that brand now shows up organically when someone searches "all-purpose travel scarves" in ChatGPT. No ad spend involved.

This is the shift in plain terms: marketing is you talking about you. PR is other people talking about you. And PR is what the large language models are actually pulling from when they decide who earns a recommendation.

Traditional SEO Isn't Dead, But AI Is Taking Its Traffic

To be clear, this isn't "SEO is dead" content. Traditional SEO still matters. But platforms like Etsy and Shopify have reportedly seen organic traffic drop over 22%, largely because people are completing entire purchases inside ChatGPT without ever clicking through to a website.

If someone types "I want a housewarming gift" into ChatGPT, it can surface product options and let them check out on the spot. That's the behaviour shift business owners need to plan around. The real question isn't "how do I get more followers," it's "how do I show up at the exact moment someone's ready to buy."

Why Relying Solely on Social Media Is a Risk

This part of the conversation hit home. Gloria pointed out something most of us don't want to think about: what happens to your business if your Instagram gets hacked, restricted, or deactivated tomorrow?

It's not hypothetical. Several e-commerce brands have had entire accounts disabled without warning, sometimes flagged by automated systems with no clear way to appeal. If social media is your only channel for being found, you don't actually own that visibility. It can disappear overnight.

PR and AI visibility work differently. Once you're cited in an article, a gift guide, or a podcast transcript, that reference tends to stay indexed and keeps feeding trust signals to AI tools long after the original feature went live. It's the kind of visibility that compounds instead of resetting every time you stop posting.

How to Actually Start Getting Featured

Here's the bit I know you're waiting for. Gloria's approach to PR is refreshingly simple: it's about writing a relevant pitch and sending it to the right person. Not about being the most innovative or groundbreaking business in your category.

Her go-to tool for this is Perplexity, which she rates above ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini specifically for PR because of its real-time internet scraping. Her suggested starting prompt looks something like this:

"I make [X, Y, Z item]. My website is [yourwebsite.com]. Scan my website for info and images and context, and tell me the relevant trends, insights, and specific data points I can use to tie my products to editorial gift guides and product roundups so I can get featured."

If you run a service-based business rather than a product one, swap "gift guides" for "podcasts" in that same prompt.

From there, you can ask Perplexity to organise the angles it suggests into a comparison chart ranked by likelihood of getting featured, along with the data points supporting each one. It's essentially doing the brainstorming work a PR agency would usually charge for, in seconds rather than weeks.

You can also try free tools like HARO (Help a Reporter Out) or SOS (Source of Sources), or set up a Google News alert for your industry to start building your own list of relevant journalists and editors over time.

Think Seasonally, Not Just About Features

One shift Gloria encouraged was moving away from thinking about your product's features and benefits, and instead asking: what makes this relevant right now?

A single bar of soap probably isn't a strong Father's Day gift on its own. A bundle might be. The goal is matching what you already sell to the season, occasion, or trend currently in the news cycle, rather than trying to invent something entirely new.

Real Results From Small Businesses Using This Approach

A few examples worth knowing about:

• An Australian founder behind a brand called Brick You, who creates custom Lego-style figurines from photos, was featured 13 times using this exact method

• The travel scarf brand mentioned earlier now ranks organically for its category inside ChatGPT

• A reusable, eco-friendly bag brand has been featured so many times through PR that she's stopped posting on social media altogether, relying purely on the SEO and GEO visibility she's built

None of these are overnight brand-name businesses. They're small operators who worked the trust-signal system deliberately.

The Window Is Open Right Now

If there's one thing to take from this conversation, it's that this window won't stay open indefinitely. Right now, ChatGPT doesn't run ads, and Claude has stated it won't either. That means the businesses building PR visibility today are the ones set up to be recommended as this behaviour becomes mainstream over the next six to twelve months.

By the time everyone else catches on, and they will, the businesses who started now will already have the trust signals built in.

If you want to go deeper on this, Gloria has a free AI masterclass at gloriachoupr.com/masterclass, and you can DM her the word "ash" on Instagram for an additional freebie. I'll also be exploring bringing more training on this into the membership, so keep an eye out for that.