How to Get the Most Benefit from RPCN

RPCN provides opportunities for Networking, Learning, and Mutual Support. As we start a new year, think about how well you utilize RPCN for your business and personal benefits. Ask yourself, “Could I do better?” Let’s examine how RPCN can serve us in ways that we might not have considered. 

Attend all Friday meetings

Many times, I’ve considered not attending an RPCN meeting because I wasn’t interested in the topic. But I usually force myself to attend. The benefits are that every time I attend, I learn something valuable or meet an interesting person. Everyone introduces themselves, so there are opportunities for others to learn about you and the value you offer. Likewise, you learn about them. Many people I’ve met at RPCN meetings became my friends, or became clients, or referred me to people who became clients. I’ve reciprocated by connecting them with “people they should know.”

Meet all Members

For a long time, I made it a goal to meet one-on-one with all RPCN members. This was a good way of getting acquainted, forming relationships, and building trust with each other. In recent years, I’ve failed to keep up with having these “get to know each other” meetings. I haven’t put “getting to know each other” high enough on my priority list. As a result, there are members I’ve never met. This is a great personal loss and a loss for RPCN. If members bond with each other, this makes RPCN stronger. If members don’t know each other closely enough or at all, it makes it harder for them to volunteer and form productive teams. 

RPCN has about 60 members. If we meet with one member a week, we’ll all know each other better in a little over one year. Just use the members’ list on RPCN’s website and start connecting. Let me know if you’d like to meet with me.

Join an RPCN Committee or Project

As we work side-by-side with other members, we learn to appreciate their skills and how they can help RPCN and others. This builds trust and makes it more meaningful when we connect them with good contacts and/or recommend them to potential clients. 

RPCN always needs more help. There are some RPCN one-person committees that you could join and double the output. Want to improve your RPCN benefits? Just volunteer and dive in. You’ll learn to love it.

—Bob Lurz

SEO is Dead, Long Live AIO

For years, the rules of getting found on the internet were simple: write for humans but optimize for the search engines. If you sprinkled in the right keywords, earned enough backlinks, and followed search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, you were rewarded with a spot in the coveted first page of search results.

With the massive adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT, the traditional click-through model is crumbling. We are entering the age of AIO (AI Optimization). If you want your brand to survive, you need to stop trying to rank and start trying to be synthesized.

The Great Search Shift

In the old world of SEO, success was measured by clicks. You wanted users to land on your page so they could see your ads, sign up for your newsletter, or buy your product.

In the AIO world, AI is the go-between. It reads your content, digests it, and presents a summarized version to the user. This has led to the "Zero-Click Search" phenomenon. If an AI tool provides a perfect 200-word answer to a user's query using your data, that user may never actually visit your website.

This sounds like a nightmare for marketers, but it’s an opportunity. The goal has shifted from traffic to authority. When an AI tool cites your brand as the source of its answer, you aren't just a link; you are the trusted source.

The Three Pillars of AIO

To win in 2026, your content needs to be "machine palatable." Here’s how you shift your strategy from SEO to AIO.

1. Prioritize "Information Gain."

AI models are already trained on the "common knowledge" of the internet. If your blog post is just something like "Top 10 Tips for Budgeting," the AI has no reason to cite you. It already knows those tips.

To be cited, you must provide something the Large Language Modeling (LLM ) of AI doesn't have:

• Original data, such as proprietary surveys, benchmarks, or experiments
• Unique perspective, including strong opinions or contrarian views grounded in experience
• First-hand insight, such as case studies, real-world tests, or lessons learned

“I tried this for 30 days and here’s what happened” will always outperform “How to do this” in an AIO world.

2. Employ Modular Content Architecture

AI doesn't read your blog post like a human does. It scrapes it for "entities" and "facts." If your content is a wall of text, the AI might miss the point.

AIO-friendly formatting includes:

• The Inverted Pyramid: Don’t bury the lead. Answer the primary question in the first two sentences of the article.
• Heading 2 Headers as Questions: Use headers such as, “What are the benefits of AIO?," followed by a concise bulleted list.
• Semantic Tables: AI loves structured data. If you are comparing products or services, use a table. It makes it infinitely easier for the model to "lift" your data into its summary.

3. Build Your Entity Authority

In the AIO era, your "brand" is a node in a massive knowledge graph. The AI needs to trust that you are an expert. This is no longer just about backlinks; it’s about Entity Recognition.

Make sure your "About Us" pages are robust, your authors have clear bios across the web, and you are using Schema Markup, such as JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data (JSON-LD) to tell AI exactly what your content is about. If the AI can’t verify who you are, it won't risk citing you as a factual source.

The Rise of the LLMs.txt

One of the most practical shifts is the adoption of the llms.txt file. It is a new web standard, much like robots.txt, which tells search engines which parts of a website to use as high-quality resources to answer user questions. LLMs.txt provides a clean, markdown-based map of your most important information specifically for Large Language Models. It’s essentially a "cheat sheet" for AI tools, ensuring they get your most accurate and up-to-date brand information without having to guess.

Don't Just Be a Source, Be a Destination

If AI is going to steal your "informational" traffic, you must give users a reason to visit you anyway. This is the "Destination Strategy". Your blog should move beyond simple information-sharing. Offer things like:

• Interactive Tools: Calculators, templates, or AI-powered widgets.
• Community: Forums or comment sections where humans interact.
• Deep Value: Long-form whitepapers or gated videos that an AI summary can’t possibly replicate.

The New North Star

SEO isn't “dead,” in the sense that search is going away. It’s dead in the sense that the old tactics, such as keyword stuffing, long-form fluff, and backlink farming, are now liabilities.

The future belongs to the authoritative. By focusing on Information Gain, modular design, and entity trust, you’ll become the very foundation of the AI’s answer.

The era of AIO is here. Is your content ready to be the answer?

—Bob Manard

Simon Vision Consulting Program Update

The Rochester Professional Consultants Network’s (RPCN’s) program of providing mentors to the University of Rochester’s (U of R’s) Simon School of Business Simon Vision Consulting Program (Simon Vision) is gearing up to provide mentors for a seventeenth consecutive semester starting in late January. For those of you who regularly read this column, you already know about Simon Vision and what a great opportunity it is. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Simon Vision, the program is an effort to increase experiential learning opportunities for Simon’s MBA and MS students. 

At press time, we aren’t sure if there will be 12 or 16 projects in the Spring semester, but we do know that we’ll need at least 12 mentors, and perhaps up to 16, to help out. The projects won’t all be based in the Rochester area, but most are. Although the clients and projects are pretty much set for the upcoming Spring semester, it is never too early to be looking for projects and mentors for the Fall 2026 semester.

Mentors

As mentioned above, we would like to have at least as many mentors as projects. 

• The mentors meet either in person or virtually with their project manager, and/or the project team, anywhere from once per week to once per month, depending upon the needs of the team and the project. If you volunteer as a mentor, you’ll most likely have at least 3 meetings via phone, Zoom, or in person with your project manager (and possibly the team) over the 8-10 weeks.
• How often and when you meet is dictated by the needs of the student project manager and is mutually decided by the two of you. 
• It’s fun to work with the students, and you might even find yourself learning some new things. 
• If you’d like to become a mentor, please contact me at the information shown at the end of this article. 
• There will also be a mentor-student “mixer” sometime in February at the U of R. The mentors and students will have an opportunity to get to meet each other in a more relaxed setting.

Projects

Simon Vision is also looking for new projects for the Fall semester. 

• If you, a client, or an associate have an outsourceable project that could be completed in about 8 – 10 weeks, send an application to Simon Vision to get it included in the Fall 2026 semester.
• Projects are evaluated by the Simon Vision student governing board, and the leadership of Simon Vision will work with you to define the project requirements to be completed within these constraints.

Contact Information

If you are interested in having a Simon Vision Project Team perform work for you, would like more information about the program, or you’d like to volunteer to be an RPCN member mentor to a student team, please contact Dave Bassett.