For years, businesses have been asking the same question:
“How do we rank higher on Google?”
Now there’s another question that’s becoming just as important.
“How do we show up in AI answers?”
Whether it’s ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or another AI assistant, more and more people are using AI instead of traditional search engines to discover products, services and businesses. That’s changing the way people find information online, and it’s creating opportunities that many small businesses haven’t even considered yet. One of the biggest is creator content.
AI Is Learning From More Than Just Websites
When people think about AI chatbots, they often assume they’re pulling information from company websites, blog posts and news articles. They are. But increasingly, they’re also drawing on creator content.
Recent research has found that YouTube creator content appears in more than 25% of prompts answered by AI chatbots. In some high-intent industries, such as financial services, that figure rises to almost 50% of responses.
That’s a huge shift. It means creators are no longer just influencing people on YouTube. They’re also influencing the answers people receive from AI.
Why This Matters for Small Businesses
Let’s say someone asks an AI chatbot:
“Who’s the best wedding photographer in Cheshire?”
Or:
“What’s the best coffee shop in Nantwich?”
Or even:
“Which social media agency is good for small businesses?”
The AI isn’t simply looking for the business with the nicest website. It’s looking for evidence that a business is credible, talked about and recognised across the internet. That’s where creator content becomes incredibly valuable.
If respected creators in your industry or local area are talking about your business, reviewing your products or featuring your services, there’s a much greater chance that your business becomes part of the wider conversation AI is learning from.
This Isn’t Just Influencer Marketing Anymore
When many business owners hear the word “creator”, they immediately picture celebrities or influencers with millions of followers. But that’s not what we’re talking about. Some of the most valuable creators have relatively small audiences that are highly engaged within a specific niche.
- A local food reviewer.
- A property expert.
- A fitness coach.
- A technology YouTuber.
- An automotive specialist.
These creators often have significant credibility within their industry, and that’s exactly what makes their content valuable, both to people and increasingly to AI systems.
It’s About Building Your Digital Reputation
One thing we’ve spoken about on this blog before is that social media is becoming much more than a place to post updates. It’s becoming part of your digital reputation. The more places your business appears online, the more signals you’re sending that you’re active, relevant and trusted. Your own social media content plays a huge role in that. Your website does too. But now creator content is becoming another important piece of the puzzle.
It’s another way of building authority that extends far beyond a single platform.
You Don’t Need Hundreds of Creators
This is the good news for small businesses. You don’t need dozens of influencer partnerships or huge marketing budgets. In many cases, building genuine relationships with one or two respected creators in your industry could have a meaningful impact. That might involve inviting them to experience your business, sending them a product to review or collaborating on content that’s genuinely useful to their audience. The key word there is genuine.
People can spot forced partnerships a mile away, and AI is becoming increasingly good at understanding authentic relationships too.
AI Is Rewarding Businesses That Are Talked About
This feels like another example of the internet coming full circle. For years, businesses focused almost entirely on their own websites. Then social media became the priority. Now we’re entering a stage where your overall online presence matters more than ever.
- Your website.
- Your social media.
- Customer reviews.
- News articles.
- Creator content.
Together, they create a much richer picture of who you are as a business. That’s exactly the kind of information AI systems are designed to understand.
What This Means for Local Businesses
You might be reading this thinking, “That’s all well and good for national brands, but I’m just a local business.” Actually, we think local businesses have a real opportunity here. Almost every town has creators producing content about local food, independent shops, events, fitness, property, travel or lifestyle. Working with those creators doesn’t just help you reach their audience today.
It creates content that could continue influencing how your business is discovered in the future, including through AI-powered search. That’s something many businesses haven’t even started thinking about yet.
Our Advice at SMR Social
We don’t believe businesses should suddenly abandon everything they’re doing and chase every creator they can find. Far from it. Your own content should always come first. That’s the foundation of your online presence. But if you’re looking at where digital marketing is heading over the next few years, creator partnerships are becoming increasingly valuable for reasons that go well beyond likes, views and followers. They’re helping shape the information that AI uses to answer questions. That’s a fascinating shift, and one that we think more small businesses should start paying attention to.
The businesses that are talked about across the internet are becoming easier to discover, not just by people, but by AI too.
And as more customers turn to AI assistants for recommendations, that’s only likely to become more important.