Insights
Notes on visibility, reputation, and the new shape of B2B trust
Editorial notes and longer pieces from It’s a Shovel. Senior strategic perspective on AI search, reputation work, founder-led growth, and how buyers now find, shortlist, and hire.
Radical Honesty and Crisis Communications
If you had $658 billion at risk would you make a plan? With two thirds of companies unprepared for a crisis and a far…
Your secret weapon in a recession
Stakeholders support companies that they trust – especially when times are tough – and strategic communications around your purpose is far more effective at building trust than big marketing campaigns.
#ReputationWithPurpose
So what is #ReputationWithPurpose and why is it important? Take a read here: Reputation with Purpose…
Your Reputation Is More Important Than Your Revenue
Small and medium size businesses are so preoccupied with chasing sales that they just don’t seem to have the head space to consider reputation…
About this publication
A few notes on what we publish, and what we do not
We do not write listicles. There is enough “five ways to improve your LinkedIn presence” content in the world already.
We do not write hot takes on industry news unless we have something genuinely useful to add.
We do write longer pieces on the structural shifts in how buyers find and shortlist B2B providers, and shorter pieces on what we are seeing in client work, in the research, and in our own AI visibility data.
We do write pieces that take a clear position, sometimes a slightly contrarian one. We try to be useful rather than safe.
The senior strategic communications discipline has, in our view, been under-served by online content in recent years. There is a great deal of tactical material on individual channels, and very little serious commentary on how reputation actually compounds across them. We aim to write the second category.
Most engagements start with the free AI Visibility Heatmap
If anything you have read here makes you want to know how your own business shows up in AI search, that is the simplest place to begin.