A three-week experiment by freelance writer Mandy Bray, published on the HubSpot Marketing Blog, tested whether LinkedIn content can lift visibility in AI answer engines — and the early numbers suggest the channel rewards individuals, not just big brands.

The motivation came from a simple observation. When Bray searched Perplexity for citable B2B reports, AI platforms kept surfacing LinkedIn posts by ordinary professionals alongside sources like Gartner and McKinsey. For a solopreneur who "could never compete against the likes of huge agencies or enterprises" in traditional search, that pattern looked like an opening.

The research behind the tactic

The hunch aligns with third-party data:

• SEMrush and Meltwater both found LinkedIn is the second-most cited URL by generative AI models, behind only YouTube. Per SEMrush, 11% of pages cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode originate from LinkedIn.
• Google AI Mode cites LinkedIn most: 14.3% of responses reference the network.
• Meltwater found 75% of LinkedIn citations come from individual pages, not company pages, and 51% come from profiles with fewer than 10,000 followers.
• Long-form articles (500–2,000 words) and mid-length posts (50–299 words) account for the largest share of AI citations.
• Educational, advice-driven content is the most-cited format.

The commercial stakes are real. According to Loginix, 73% of B2B buyers now use AI tools in their research, and AI search converts at 5.1X the rate of Google organic search.

The experiment

Bray scoped the test around "case study writer," a service she wanted to grow but had never actively marketed. She describes herself as an inconsistent LinkedIn poster whose last LinkedIn article dated to 2016.

She used HubSpot AEO to set a baseline. Onboarding took under 10 minutes: brand, domain, services, ideal customer profile, and a few competitors. The tool suggested branded and unbranded prompts — from "Can you recommend a case study writer for X industry?" to "What are best practices for writing a case study?" — then ran searches across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

Starting point: 0.11% visibility across the prompts.

The three-part methodology:

1. Profile optimization. She made "case study writer" prominent in multiple LinkedIn profile sections to signal matching expertise to AI systems.
2. Targeted publishing. Two LinkedIn articles and two posts, all on case studies, written from direct experience with no AI writing involved. She engaged with every comment.
3. Weekly monitoring. Each week she checked metrics and ran manual incognito searches on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode.

Results after three weeks

Citations stayed flat for the first two weeks. Movement came in week three.

Brand visibility ticked up to 0.95% on Gemini while staying essentially flat on ChatGPT and Perplexity. Brand mention citations and owned domain citations versus competitors both rose from 2% to 5.3%.

The standout win came on Google AI Mode. Branded prompts on Perplexity or ChatGPT returned three to five writers who were not Bray, plus three to five platforms or agencies. Google AI Mode recommended exactly one writer prominently: Mandy Bray. The result mirrors the data showing Google AI Mode and Gemini cite LinkedIn more than their peers.

Five lessons

Focus matters. AI systems struggle to categorize generalists. Bray advises picking one or two services or industries to be known for and optimizing for those.

Unbranded mentions count. Tactics that chase branded "Top 10 vendors" mentions don't fit solopreneurs. Awareness-stage prospects who find her articles or follow her are not zero-sum outcomes.

Claude won't recommend solopreneurs. Despite being the most popular AI platform among marketers, Bray's target audience, Claude.ai flat-out refuses to recommend freelance writers, offering instead a shortlist of platforms and hiring best practices.

Benefits extended beyond citations. Profile views rose over 200% in 28 days. Post impressions grew 237% and post engagement 340%. A contact reached out specifically about case study writing after noticing it in her profile.

Three weeks wasn't long enough. SEMrush found three-quarters of authors cited by AI tools had posted on LinkedIn at least five times in the previous four weeks. And a recent study put the typical AI citation lifespan at just 11 to 15 days, meaning visibility requires ongoing effort as models update and new pages are indexed.

What comes next

Bray plans to keep publishing LinkedIn articles and posts on case studies and her other services, analyze the freelancers who currently rank highly in AI search, and extend AEO to her website with service-specific pages such as "case study writer for SaaS" and "freelance content writer for edtech."

Her advice to other solopreneurs: set a baseline with an AEO tool such as HubSpot AI Search Grader, use AI for ideation but never as a substitute for your own voice, and stop waiting for the perfect idea. "When writing advice or educational content, your unique POV is the most valuable thing you have to offer — put it on full display."

Source: HubSpot Marketing Blog (https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/linkedin-aeo-experiment) / Source: semrush.com (https://www.semrush.com/blog/linkedin-ai-visibility-study/)