For C-Suite Leaders, It's Time to Embrace the Comments Section

CMOs and CCOs are investing heavily in how their companies show up in AI search. It matters for sales and it matters for reputation. But just like the early days of SEO, most strategies right now throw everything at the wall hoping something sticks.

And just like traditional search, AI search will eventually reward quality signals and penalize the spray-and-pray approach. The reason chatbots put so much weight on Reddit is simple: the platform's upvote/downvote system is essentially a built-in quality score.

So what's something you can do now that has staying power?

Get your leaders comfortable in the comments section.

This is a major reversal from advice I was giving to clients even a few years ago:

"It's not good optics for a leader to be spending time in comments. You're setting the expectation you'll reply to everyone. Do you really want to deal with trolls? You could just disable comments entirely."

All things I've said.

That advice was welcomed, because getting a single comment approved for a CEO could take days, maybe even weeks.

But AI is now prioritizing Q&A-style content. That means leaders need to be showing up on Reddit, YouTube, Quora, X and LinkedIn with perspectives only they can offer.

One group figured this out a long time ago: tech founders. They've long known that comments give them their best leverage against established giants. When a founder gets into deep-expertise conversations publicly, trust follows naturally.

This deep engagement also shapes narratives before they harden. Everyone talks about storytelling, but storytelling isn't just what you put out — it's what you build with others. Here's a prime example: Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi posted a tough evaluation of Kraft Heinz on LinkedIn, and at the end of the post he asked, "What am I missing here? Can this company be saved? Weigh in below and help me better understand."

Several people weighed in, but guess whose voice was missing? The company's new CEO. That's a missed opportunity. A new CEO publicly acknowledging past missteps and laying out a clear path forward? That's how you start a turnaround story.

So here's the thing — leaders don't have to dive into the deep end and host an AMA session, but they do need to get started, because tomorrow's AI search narratives will be shaped in the comments.