Building a Digital PR & AEO Program From Zero
Objective
When I joined Product.ai (formerly Demand.io) there was no press program, no data-journalism motion, and no way to measure whether AI engines were citing us at all. The job was to build all three, and to turn our own commerce data into the reason journalists and AI engines would start. That runs on Story Machine, which I vibe coded from spec to production: it reads our proprietary data against market trends, then crafts and pitches media angles built on journalist psychology.
Key Results
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Vibe coded Story Machine from spec to production: a proprietary data journalism engine built in Claude Code that reads our commerce data against market trends and journalist psychology, then runs the pipeline from dataset → story angle → media-ready pitch
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Built digital PR program from zero to 151 media placements across 92 outlets in 22 states in under 3 months
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Earned a Scripps News TV interview syndicated to 46 broadcast stations nationwide
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Secured 49 backlinks at avg DA 70.5, including 9 placements at DA 80+ (Mercury News, NewsBreak, Grokipedia)
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Stood up the CEO’s executive byline program: a recurring Fast Company column, 6–8 pieces in 2026
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Led blog rebrand to journalist-facing PR resource (Shopping, Decoded)
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Doubled Bing AI citations from ~20K to 42K+/day; grew AI-cited pages 59%
Key Links
The work
