Hi! Before we get started, a quick set of polls. I’m building a few AI tools for communicators — and I want your input on what to build first.

Which of these would you actually use?

’ll prioritize based on what gets the most interest.

Thanks in advance! — Dan

That’s a click-bait title, so here’s the answer: journaling.

Not journaling in the “dear diary” sense. I mean a daily record of what you learned and observed — what executives hinted at in meetings, what patterns you’re noticing in Slack chatter, what you read that made you rethink a strategy, what customers or employees are quietly worried about. The half-formed insights you accumulate during the day.

Communicators already gather this kind of intelligence constantly. The problem is that most of it never gets written down.

And that is a problem, because AI can’t read your mind. If your thinking isn’t recorded somewhere, AI chatbots can’t see it.

This is where journaling becomes powerful. In knowledge-management terms, what communicators carry around in their heads is called tacit knowledge — intuition, experience, and unspoken signals. AI can’t access tacit knowledge directly. But when you write those observations down, you convert them into explicit knowledge that machines can actually process. Suddenly your daily notes become something much more interesting: a private dataset of signals about your organization, your stakeholders, and your industry.

And once that exists, AI becomes dramatically more useful. Feed it your notes from the past few weeks and it can start spotting patterns, synthesizing themes, drafting strategic briefs, or helping pressure-test messaging against what you’re actually seeing inside the company. In other words, journaling isn’t reflection anymore — it’s infrastructure.

If you want AI to make you smarter, start recording what you know.

You don’t need a complicated system. Just build the habit and add a little structure each week.

Week 1 — Capture signals
Write three quick bullets each day: what happened, what felt important, and one possible insight. If you can do this after every call/meeting, even better.

Week 2 — Add context
Start tagging entries with stakeholders (leaders, employees, customers) and themes (AI, reputation, culture, strategy).

Week 3 — Look for patterns
At the end of the week, paste your notes into AI and ask: What themes or trends do you see? Then add a short “pattern note” capturing what it surfaced.

Week 4 — Turn insight into strategy
Use those patterns to ask AI for help drafting briefs, messaging angles, risks to watch, or narrative shifts.

By the end of the month, you’ll have something most communicators don’t:
A personal dataset AI can actually think with. 🥇

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Last week, GEO platform Profound came out with the results of a study, finding that “LinkedIn has become one of the most authoritative sources shaping AI-driven discovery.” The implication is clear: how your company and clients show up on LinkedIn will shape how AI represents them — even outside the platform.

Or, as Eleanor Hawkins of Axios says, “AI search is rewriting the rules of executive and brand visibility, raising the stakes for how leaders show up online.”

Your next step: If you don’t have a LinkedIn strategy, you’ll need one — ASAP. AI search has a notable first-mover advantage, as information that is found today is more likely to make it into the zeitgeist and remain in the results.

Oh, and a watch out: That strategy has to include your executives. Inc. reports that “CEO posts generate 7 times more impressions and 4 times more engagement than brand-led content” — it’s imperative that the leaders you support become not only comfortable, but active on the platform.

Here are things I’ve built while figuring out how communicators can use AI well — shared here so you can experiment with them too. I’ll keep adding to this list over time.

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Thanks for the feedback so far! I shortened this week’s email based on it — hope you like it.

Any other suggestions?

Reply and tell me.
I read every response.

Even a one-sentence reply helps. For example:
“Hey, Dan, can you recommend ______?”

Until next Wednesday,

Dan

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