Instagram Just Handed Brands the Ultimate AI SEO Hack

ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity can finally see what people are actually saying about your brand.

Here's What's Actually Happening

When someone asks ChatGPT for product recommendations, it doesn't care about your website. It looks for what real people are saying. Reddit threads. YouTube reviews. And now, Instagram posts.

Dmitry Shevelenko, the Chief Business Officer of Perplexity said it perfectly:

You can't trick these AI systems. But you can give them more real content to work with.

The Math

Let me show you something that should worry you.

Your current influencer strategy probably looks like this:

• 10 creators per month

• Maybe 30 posts if you're lucky

• Basically invisible to AI

Meanwhile, agentic brands are doing this:

• 1,000+ product gifts monthly

• Thousands of content pieces each quarter

• Every single one now indexed and searchable

Guess which brand ChatGPT recommends when someone asks for product suggestions?

Why This Matters

AI assistants rank information by trust. Here's roughly how it works:

1. Reddit (people arguing about products = high trust)

2. YouTube reviews (someone actually using it)

3. Instagram posts from regular people

4. News articles

5. Your product page (sorry, but it's true)

Instagram opening up to search engines means you can dominate that #3 spot. But only if you have the volume.

Most Brands Will Screw This Up

They'll send products to random influencers and hope for the best. That's like throwing spaghetti at the wall.

The brands that win will match their vibe with creators who actually care. I've written about this before - when you use vector matching to find creators who genuinely align with your brand, you get as high as 34% reply rates instead of the usual 2%.

Harney & Sons gets messages like "Thanks for taking the time to really understand who I am and what I'm about!" That's what happens when you do this right.

Here's Exactly What You Need to Do

Ship 1,000+ products monthly

I know that sounds insane. But the cost of product plus shipping is nothing compared to disappearing from AI searches. One creator usually makes multiple pieces of content. That's thousands of indexed mentions of your brand.

Stop sending generic emails

"We love your content" gets deleted. Reference their post about cinnamon rolls. Mention how it connects to your brand. Show you actually looked at their stuff.

Let creators be themselves

Don't script anything. AI systems are getting scary good at detecting fake enthusiasm. Real testimonials beat polished ads every time.

Track everything

Which creators actually post? What kind of content performs? Which testimonials could become ads? You need systems for this.

The Part Nobody Wants to Hear

While you're thinking about maybe increasing your influencer budget, other brands are already using AI agents to:

• Find and contact 1,000+ aligned creators every month

• Write personalized outreach that mentions specific posts

• Ship products automatically through Shopify

• Track when content goes live

• Score videos for ad potential

• Get usage rights sorted

This is happening right now. Today. Not in some future scenario.

What This Really Means

Instagram made posts searchable. More importantly, they made them training data for every AI assistant out there. Every unboxing video, every testimonial, every authentic mention teaches these systems that people actually like your product.

You can't fake this. You can't hack it. You can only win by having more real people talking about your brand than your competitors.

Do This Tomorrow

Look at how many influencer posts you got last month. If it's under 100, you're already losing. If it's under 500, you're invisible to AI. If it's under 1,000, you're playing defense while others play offense.

The infrastructure exists to scale this. a/gentic’s influencer campaign agents handle everything from finding creators with vector vibe matching to hyper-personalized email sending to replying to shipping products to tracking content to scoring videos for ads to usage rights requests to editing testimonial videos for ad usage.

Top brands like MUD\WTR, GoPure, Harney & Sons, OneSkin, Viome, Atoms, Qure Skincare and many others have already been using a/gentic’s influencer campaign agents (demo).

But even if you do it manually, you need to start now.

Bottom Line

Every day you wait, your competitors are getting thousands more indexed mentions. Those mentions become recommendations in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Those recommendations become sales.

The old SEO game was about tricking Google. The new AI SEO game is about overwhelming the internet with authentic proof that people love your stuff.

Instagram just gave you the keys. Most brands won't even realize what happened until it's too late.

Want to do influencer seeding at scale using a/gentic’s influencer campaign agents? DM Bora on LinkedIn.