The pain point I hear from plugin authors more than anything lately is "discoverability." It's not a new problem, but this new AI-driven landscape complicates it a bunch.

A while back I saw this LinkedIn post by Rand Fishkin. It revisits an old-school idea: brand mentions. Specifically, mentioning your brand right next to the same words everywhere on the web you can. And those words should be the pain point you solve. That tactic feels very relevant again because of how ChatGPT and other LLMs learn from public conversations.

People are trying to stop saying SEO and start saying things like AEO, LLMO…The term that makes the most sense to me is "Discovery Optimization"

Discovery doesn’t just happen in search results. It happens in forums, communities, product pages, and word of mouth. That’s how humans find things, and increasingly how AI does too.

So! I’m running a small experiment with my new free plugin: Synced Pattern Popups. I’m sharing the exact same clear value statement in as many credible, free places as I can. No rewriting per platform. Just clarity and consistency.

This is the line I’m using everywhere: “Synced Pattern Popups helps you create popups using the WordPress editor you already know, not yet another builder.”

I hear this constantly from plugin authors: “I shipped my free plugin, but I’ve been stuck under 10 active installs for months. What now?”

I’ve got plenty of theories, but nothing beats hands-on experience. So I’m testing this in public and seeing what actually moves the needle in this AI-shaped environment we all inherited.

So the question is: Is this how you do it? Do you all think this will gain any traction for a tiny free plugin? Looking forward to your feedback.