How AI Can Help You Attract Talent

By Amanda Ellis, Livability Media

Much of talent attraction is really marketing. And AI is both shifting and reinforcing marketing best practices.

One of the biggest shifts: As the influence of large language models (LLMs) increases, you can build brand awareness (or in this case, place awareness) without necessarily driving increased website traffic. You may have heard this described as zero-click search. It means there’s now an opportunity to evaluate how AI can boost your place’s visibility, instead of focusing only on traffic and search rankings. 

Increasingly, talent is asking LLMs questions like: “Where should an engineer move if they love mountain biking?” rather than digging through pages of Google search results. You’ve probably heard the terms AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Essentially, they mean optimizing your content so conversational AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews can easily synthesize and recommend your place. How can you help AI tools showcase your area to talent looking for their next great place?
 

SEO + PR

Many SEO best practices still apply when you’re working to be recognized by LLMs, like technically healthy sites, backlinks and in-depth, high-value content. Some new focus areas include Q&A-structured copy, clear data tables and using schema markup so AI can easily crawl your site. Remember that modern AI search engines cite sources. If you have high-quality, cited content on a reputable site, AI won’t just mention your city, it will drive high-intent talent directly to you.

But PR and a consistent narrative told across the web matter just as much. AI models value trust and credibility, frequently scraping earned media, reviews, social media and even forums like Reddit to gauge community sentiment and to see what real people say about your city’s cost of living, culture, safety, and more. Monitoring and engaging in local community discussions is now a form of AI optimization, and your PR efforts take on new importance. These tools also value consistency, if you need another great reason to align your community story across local efforts and stakeholders.

You want a cohesive, positive story told across a range of authoritative sources the AI trains on. When you work with Livability, our content highlighting your community provides that trusted, third-party validation that AI engines love to cite. Check out Columbus, GA, or Roswell, NM, for examples of groups maximizing both Golden Shovel’s and Livability’s expertise to market themselves effectively and holistically in the age of AI.  
 

Data + Storytelling

We already know the importance of data in many aspects of economic development. Using data is also helpful for gaining visibility with these tools, especially original research. Because AI engines love citing hard numbers, original data is one of the fastest ways to get your community cited as a top recommendation. There are many ways to tie data to storytelling, whether you start with existing data and look for related stories or vice versa – start with stories and look at what data could back them up.

At Livability, one of the biggest data sets we generate is for our annual Top 100 Best Places to Live in the U.S. We have seen this content give our brand a real boost in being recognized by LLMs. It’s worth spending some time thinking about what data, and especially any original data, you could gather or use to boost your place brand from this standpoint.
 

Authenticity is Still Key

Regardless of what plays well for SEO or optimizing AI for talent attraction, authentic storytelling remains essential, because ultimately your audience is other humans, right? AI models actively look for firsthand experience and the unique, hyper-local details a generic algorithm can’t fabricate. Whatever is true, special and specific about your place, touting that and sharing real stories helps both humans and AI recognize your community’s value.

For more on all things marketing in the age of AI, listen to Golden Shovel Agency's Bethany Quinn in a conversation on Livability’s Inside America’s Best Cities podcast. We cover how to be everywhere your audience is, why video is the most underused tool in economic development, the three questions EDOs still aren't answering on their websites, and much more. To learn more about how Golden Shovel Agency can help you tell your unique story, schedule a meeting today.