If You Asked ChatGPT to Find an Advocate Today,
Would It Know You Exist?
Here's a slightly uncomfortable experiment.
Open an AI assistant and ask:
"Who are the leading advocates in [your area of practice] in [your city]?"
Then ask:
"What should I look for when choosing an advocate for this matter?"
Then:
"Which law firms are known for this type of work?"
Read the answers.
You may notice something important. The AI isn’t looking at your Instagram follower count. It is trying to construct an answer from information it can find and interpret.
That changes the question advocates should be asking. Not: “How do I get ChatGPT to rank me?” That’s the wrong mental model.
The better question is:
“Is there enough credible, useful information about my professional identity for modern search systems to understand who I am and what I know?”
AI can't discover a reputation that isn't documented
Imagine you’ve spent 25 years handling a particular category of work.
Your professional network knows it. Your former clients know it. Your peers know it.
But online? There may be almost nothing that clearly connects:
Your name → your practice → your experience → your expertise
That’s a problem whether the search system is Google or an AI assistant.
This is why "AI SEO hacks" are mostly the wrong conversation
You will see plenty of advice promising:
Secret prompts
Special AI schema
GEO hacks
Keyword formulas
Tricks to force citations
Be skeptical. There is no magic switch that turns an advocate into an authority in AI search.
The fundamentals still matter:
- Useful information.
- Clear professional identity.
- Original expertise.
- A credible website.
- Consistent professional profiles.
- Well-written content.
- Relevant publications.
- Information that can actually be understood and connected.
If an AI system is trying to answer: “Who is credible on this subject?” the strongest long-term asset is not a trick.
It’s credible information.
What does that mean for an advocate?
Start making your expertise visible. Not promotional claims. Useful knowledge.
- Explain complicated developments in plain English.
- Write about questions clients repeatedly misunderstand.
- Analyse developments in your area of practice.
- Publish your professional perspective.
- Create a proper professional biography.
- Maintain consistent information about your practice.
- Build a website that clearly explains what you do.
- Keep your professional profiles current.
Over time, these pieces form something bigger: a body of evidence about your expertise.
That’s useful to humans. It’s useful to traditional search. And increasingly, it’s useful to AI-assisted discovery.
A body of evidence about your expertise.
That’s useful to humans.
It’s useful to traditional search.
And increasingly, it’s useful to AI-assisted discovery.
There's another reason this matters
Imagine someone asks an AI system:
✓ A professional website
✓ Clear areas of practice
✓ Useful articles
✓ Professional profiles
✓ Credible publications
✓ Consistent information
has given the digital ecosystem something to understand.
An advocate with almost nothing online has not.
But don't write for machines
That's the irony.
The easiest way to make your content sound like it was written for AI is to write content no human would want to read.
- Generic introductions.
- Ten obvious bullet points.
- No opinion.
- No examples.
- No experience.
- No specificity.
- No reason to remember the article.
That’s commodity content.
The better approach is simple: write something genuinely useful to another human being. Explain what you actually know. Answer questions you’ve actually been asked. Give examples where appropriate. Bring your professional experience into the explanation. Say something that isn’t already repeated on a hundred other websites.
That is the kind of content that can build authority with people first — and become discoverable across modern search systems as a consequence.
But don't write for machines
That's the irony.
The easiest way to make your content sound like it was written for AI is to write content no human would want to read.
- Generic introductions.
- Ten obvious bullet points.
- No opinion.
- No examples.
- No experience.
- No specificity.
- No reason to remember the article.
That’s commodity content.
The better approach is simple: write something genuinely useful to another human being. Explain what you actually know. Answer questions you’ve actually been asked. Give examples where appropriate. Bring your professional experience into the explanation. Say something that isn’t already repeated on a hundred other websites.
That is the kind of content that can build authority with people first — and become discoverable across modern search systems as a consequence.
The Chamberly perspective
You don’t need to become famous on the internet.
You need to become legible to it.
That is a very different objective.
And for an advocate, probably a much more useful one.