Today is International Women’s Day, and I’ve been thinking a lot about visibility. Not social media visibility. Not follower counts. But something much deeper:
For years, founders, creators, and experts (myself included) learned how to build visibility through SEO: publish great content, rank on Google, and build authority over time. That playbook still matters. But something new is happening…
Interestingly, I saw a beautiful example of this shift today.
Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award–winning artist Billy Porter launched his Substack and shared that he’s intentionally writing there himself — not through a team — because he’s looking for a space for meaningful reflection and truth beyond the noise of social media.
Not for follower counts. Not for performative visibility. But for ideas. When I saw that, it felt like a cultural signal.
The internet is entering a new chapter where depth, authorship, and expertise matter more than algorithmic attention.
Platforms like Substack are becoming homes for that kind of thinking. And interestingly, those are exactly the kinds of signals AI systems look for when determining which voices to trust.
People aren’t just searching anymore — they’re asking. They’re asking AI assistants like Claude (or Claudette, because she’s a Queen 👑), Gemini, and ChatGPT. They’re asking generative search engines to explain things to them. And those systems don’t just show ten blue links. They reference sources they trust!
And that raises an important question for founders and creators:
“Is your expertise structured in a way that AI can recognize and reference it?”
—Shaunda Necole
This shift has a name now: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
It’s the discipline of making sure your ideas, expertise, and brand show up in AI-generated answers. And here’s why that matters especially for women founders:
Historically, women have often been underrepresented in the sources that shape knowledge online. When AI systems learn from the internet, they learn from the voices that are most visible. So if women founders, creators, and experts don’t intentionally build authority online, we risk being left out of the next chapter of discovery.
That’s why I’ve been spending so much time thinking about GEO. Not just as a technical strategy, but as a visibility strategy for expertise. At its core, GEO isn’t about gaming algorithms. It’s about building trusted knowledge ecosystems around your work.
That means:
Publishing thoughtful, authoritative content
Connecting your ideas across platforms (websites, podcasts, media, newsletters)
Making your expertise easy for AI systems to recognize and cite
In other words, the founders who will thrive in the AI era won’t just build products.
They’ll build authority. They’ll build platforms. They’ll build ecosystems of knowledge that make their expertise undeniable.
This is something I’ve been experimenting with deeply across my own media platforms, from my website to podcast to newsletter, while also finishing the manuscript for my upcoming cookbook.
What I’m seeing is fascinating. When your ideas are structured clearly across multiple platforms, AI systems begin to recognize the patterns. They start to connect the dots. And suddenly your work isn’t just content. It becomes knowledge!
On International Women’s Day, that feels especially important. Because the next era of discovery is being written right now. And the women who build visible expertise today will help shape what knowledge looks like tomorrow.
1️⃣ The next era of discovery isn’t being built on noise.
It’s being built on authorship, expertise, and meaningful ideas shared across platforms where people are thinking out loud again.
2️⃣ That’s why spaces like Substack feel so important right now.
They give creators, founders, and cultural voices room to publish thoughtfully, not just react quickly.
And those kinds of signals are exactly what the next generation of search systems is learning to trust.
I smiled when I saw Billy Porter’s video note about why he joined Substack. And even more when I noticed he had followed The Soul Food Stack as he opened his Substack doors. Moments like that remind me that the internet still rewards thoughtful voices showing up with intention.
“On this International Women’s Day, my hope is that more women founders, creators, and experts claim their space in this next era of discovery and publish their knowledge boldly.”
— Shaunda Necole
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