Unknown:
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LinkedIn presents
Blythe Brumleve:
0:10
Oh, welcome into another episode of everything is logistics a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I'm your host, Blythe Brumleve. And we're back for round two, I guess week two of going live on LinkedIn and YouTube. For folks who may have missed the first edition, or or maybe are not, you know, were probably not aware. But let me go ahead and just break it down for you. I am one of my team podcasters selected for LinkedIn podcast Academy, it started in late March. And one of the requirements is to a read a newsletter and B, start up a live stream and go live at least once a month. So we are already over our quota for the month of May because this is the second time we are going live. And I'm going to be doing things a little bit different than what you may see. In traditional live broadcasts. There's typically in a live broadcast, there's a lot of interaction with the community, which is is great on one side of the coin. But then on the other side of the coin. It's terrible to listen to on replay. So my thought process going into these broadcasts is to create an episode that can be community building. But also be a great listen, if you're listening, you know, not in a live format. So if you are listening later on or if you're watching later on, then it is still a great show. And you don't have to worry about me pausing the conversation, you know, every few minutes just to say what's up to folks, I appreciate everybody who you know, watches my content and reads and digests it. But I want to be respectful to the folks that aren't able to watch live, which is the overwhelming majority of folks cannot watch live. So if you have any questions, any feedback that you would like to give me be sure to leave them in the comments, because I do even though these broadcasts are quote unquote, live, I record them right after my appearance on freight waves now every Wednesday at 10am, Eastern Standard Time. So the sort of the flow of how the show goes is that I pick a topic that I can kind of discuss with the talent over at freightwaves. And then as soon as that broadcast is completed, then I hop on here to be able to dive in more, more more, I guess deeply diving deeper into these topics that deserve a little bit more of a fleshing out. So as soon as I record that, then I schedule it to go live, quote unquote, at 1pm. Eastern Standard Time, I feel like that's a good timeframe for folks who are just getting back to lunch, but not exactly ready to get into the workday. So I'm trying to play to both sides of the going live and then also the podcast listener. So hopefully, y'all respect that and not respect it or just understand it and understand where I'm coming from that when these broadcasts do quote unquote, go live, I am in the comments, I am answering questions I'm you know, following up with more information, maybe something that I missed during the broadcast, but just so you know, that's sort of the the workflow and the behind the scenes of how I think about this kind of content. And, you know, we should probably just go ahead and dive into it. And this shows topic is going to be how the attention economy is evolving. And that that may sound a little familiar, especially to everything's logistics podcast members. Because I we covered this topic, pretty in depth with gray Sharkey, and other freight waves talent. She comes on the podcast every month. And we have a couple of topics that we dive really dive deep into, we talked for an hour and a half, with a lot of the conversation revolving around this topic. And I wanted to be able to shine a little bit more light on what creators podcasters content marketers, what you can do, because in the face of all of this changing, that's going on, from Google, to AI to legacy media, all of these things are happening all at once. It's a lot to sort of filter through. I've done it for you. So I'm going to go ahead and jump into what is the attention economy and at its core at its simplest core, it is where we are spending our time consuming information. The majority of that attention today and for the last handful of years, we've been focusing that attention online so think social media, think YouTube think anywhere Netflix anywhere else, where streaming platforms, any any of these platforms, where we are spending our time and attention because time is a finite resource. So now the attention economy and which I've been covering for years is really seen as a top commodity on how folks can garner your attention keep you away from anything else of what you're doing. Keep you your their hooks and their tentacles in. Yes. So you stay in your scroll a little bit more and you watch To the next video where you watch the next clip, and and hopefully you see some of their advertisers. That's essentially the attention economy. And I find it completely fascinating because you can think about the moments online, even though you know that the internet and it the way we know it now has existed, probably in the way that we know it. Now, in the last 15 years or so we saw the shift from MySpace, to Facebook, Facebook, to Instagram, Instagram to Tik Tok, where platforms are changing. And then it results in their users changing how and where they spend their time online. So I think it's completely fascinating. There's a lot of stuff going on in today's world in today's media landscape. And that's where I want to kick off the first part of this conversation, because there's really two sides of the coin here. There's how the legacy media side is handling their dwindling, I guess, influence on society. And then there's the actual, quote unquote, influencers in a traditional sense, such as an Instagram influencer, and how they're shifting their mindset, and they're actually going in getting jobs. So I want to play a couple clips for you in this first clip, it really breaks down everything that's going on in legacy media right now. And when I say legacy media, I think Fox News thinks CNN think these big cable channels of where folks are spending their time and attention online. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to share my screen I'm a little bit more, I guess, familiar with these tools now, because of everything that's going on I say this right now, but I'm going to bring up this first clip and this is from the CEO of Barstool Sports so it's her job to understand where the attention economy is going and and how that affects her business. It's kind of also affects my business as well and majority of other folks out there so let's get a recap of what's going on. I'm gonna play this clip. Where are all the
Unknown:
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media influencers going on? Lemon is out Tucker Carlson is out modifies not renewing Joe Rogan. What's really interesting is what happens next like Fox News doesn't like when anyone gets bigger than the brand but Tucker Carlson is honestly quite as big as it gets. Does he go to another network? Or does he strike out on his own like Megyn Kelly went from one network to another now she's stuck out on her own can you make more money if you just build your own tribe? Don Lemon obviously just gets embroiled in some $20 million lawsuit with CNN Joe Rogan. I'm like God, I wish Joe Rogan could come to barstool but also why would Joe Rogan come to Barstow like Joe Rogan can go build a massive, massive massive business on YouTube, which he currently has an enjoys today and then you question like, alright, Spotify spent hundreds of millions of dollars in podcast creation tools and celebrities and personalities, and they're walking away from all of that, is that because they don't like the smoke and employees don't like people like Rogan? Is it because their sales team can't monetize it the way they need to? Is it because podcasting is now being flogged casting and YouTube is beating Spotify in terms of viewership. Like there's so much happening right now. It's such a big question is the era of a media personality gone and only to be replaced by influencers? Like our media brands and personalities going to be the new top influencers in that ecosystem? That's my one on one today. What do you guys think?
Blythe Brumleve:
8:23
This episode is brought to you by SPI logistics, the creamier freight agent and logistics network in North America. Are you currently building your freight brokerages book a business and feel that your capabilities are being limited due to lack of support and access to adequate technology? At SPI logistics, we have the technology, the systems and the back office support to help you succeed. If you're looking to take control of your financial future and build your own business, with the backing of one of the most successful logistics firms in North America, visit SPI three pl.com to learn more. So a great clip from Erica on there that basically just summarizes everything that's going on in legacy media at this time. Now a few things that was that clip was from two weeks ago and so much has already changed since then. Number one, we have the Spotify investments into exclusive shows that seems to be going away. You know, for example, like a Joe Rogan episode dropping each day Spotify has has made the equivalent comparison that it is a the equivalent of a Taylor Swift album dropping every single day. That's the impact of listenership and viewership that has been impacted by Spotify by simply won't having one Creator on their platform. Now on the reverse, it has really affected the audience of Joe Rogan because he's coming from the YouTube platform where you can see the comments you can see the likes on a video you can watch incredibly more clips on YouTube on the YouTube experience and get recommended clips based on their algorithm which is far superior Then Spotify recommendation algorithm, I hate listening to podcasts, and Spotify. And the reason I even entertain it is is because Rogan is there. And the reason I do is not necessarily because of Rogan, but because of the guests that he has on his show, to have those long form conversations. I think that that's really fascinating to hear from, you know, scientists and doctors and things like that. So I followed his platform to Spotify, it's still a terrible experience it the podcast shut down in the middle of it, maybe hit pause, and you need to go do something and you come back, they lose your place on where you were listening to in the podcast, and then you just never really listened to the end of that show. It's happened to me several times, I'm an overcast, truther overcast, is a podcast app that you can add different playlists. And I love it that that's my podcast app of choice. To me, there are no really other apps that come close in that regard. So I like overcast. And if there's an occasional episode of a Spotify exclusive, then I will go and listen to that on occasion. But it's very few and far between as far as that's concerned. Now, with that being said, the fact that Rogan is going back to YouTube, I think just signals sort of the power of that platform. And being able to that their algorithm is is just the best it is one of those things where I will see a show. And it's a three hour long show. And I think to myself, I'm there's no way I'm watching that, but then I'll get the clips of the discussion. And the clips are, you know, anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes long. And if the guest is really interesting, I'll sit there and watch one clip, and then I might watch another and then I might watch another and then before you know it, it's it's three hours of me watching this conversation that I had zero intention of watching. And so that's where sort of the power of the YouTube algorithm comes into play. And then the also, I think the the intimidation of seeing a three hour long broadcast and saying absolutely not, I'm not spending my time listening to this conversation, unless it's somebody that you really want to listen to. So Rogan going back to YouTube probably taking a similar route. As to my favorite news program, which is breaking points. They are independently funded listener funded show. So they don't take outside sponsorship, they only take money and revenue from their audience, which leaves them vary, which makes them more trustworthy to the audience, because that's who they are beholden to even if you have sponsors and advertisers, you can think about it that you're going to maintain your integrity that you're going to maintain, I guess quality of the show and content decisions, creative decisions. But if you have a sponsor, it's a little bit in the back of your mind that you don't want to you don't want to piss them off, and you don't want to make them angry, because you could potentially you lose that part of your revenue stream, which is probably a very high majority of your revenue stream. So we have that on one side. Now with it, she mentioned also in that clip with Tucker Carlson, when that clip was posted, it was two weeks ago, he's already made the decision that he's going to be joining Twitter, and putting his content exclusively on Twitter, which I thought was really sort of just questionable, because you just dealt with this situation where you have someone controlling your content at a major news organizations, now you're gonna just put yourself in the same position and do that for another company. I thought that was a really strange move until I heard about sort of the legal theory around Tucker's move to Twitter. And it's theorized that in his contract, he was able to keep creative control of his social media accounts. If he keeps creative control of his social media accounts, then that's less of a chance for him to get hit with a, a noncompete or, you know, get sued in the future. If you were to go to YouTube or another competing news program, that's probably what his contract prevented him from doing. But by going direct on Twitter, because he already has that social media profile, then that is legally a way for him to still be able to get content out to his audience. Without you know, sort of messing with the contract terms with Fox News, they're gonna go head to head you know, legal battle wise, probably for the foreseeable future. But that kind of personality who brings in that amount of viewership does not want to just sit around and wait and wait for you know that the legal issues to sort of dry up he's gonna want to capitalize on the opportunity, especially with an upcoming presidential election. So he's that that's the reason for the move for him to Twitter. Now, the next part of this is as we're kind of talking about, you know, influencers and social media. The next clip I want to play is going to come from this influencer or not influencer but this creator in this You'll understand, I guess, sort of my not hesitancy but the way I'm using these labels creator versus influencer, and after I play this next clip, then you'll have a sort of a better understanding of why there's now a distinction between those two things. So
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the year is 2023. So why are we still talking about influencer culture like it's 2019 Everyone's talking about this New York Times profile by Maddie Khan, about the influencer leave from America leaving influencing and taking a nine to five job and I think Maddie did a great job on this profile of Lee. But I have one major problem with the way Lee's career is covered. The bigger story here is that the influencer economy no longer reigns supreme. We're now in the Creator economy. So when I think about the heyday of the influencer era, I'm thinking about the 2010s. I'm thinking about celebrities like the Kardashians, or Gwyneth Paltrow, who sold us a kind of aspirational lifestyle and then a platform like Instagram made it possible for quote unquote normal but still often thin, beautiful white women could become influencers and they can become kind of micro celebrities and sell a similar aspirational lifestyle to their followers by promoting products, programs, services, clothing, makeup items, etc. If I say the phrase to you wellness influencer, you have an image in your mind of exactly what I mean. So I think Lee from America saw the writing on the wall and said to herself, like this is changing, this is over I need to pivot. I think what the New York Times story misses is that the reason she needs to pivot is that that complete era is over. When I say we're in the Creator economy now I mean, we're living in the influence of tick tock Gen Z does not want to watch advertisements of me recommending products to them. Gen Z wants to come on Tik Tok and be entertained, be inspired or learn something. And so it's it's a kind of adapt or perish moment, Lee from America has pivoted to substack so she has become a creator by writing a substack newsletter to leave and influencing. When I see millennial women or Gen X women on Instagram, staging these like perfect photo shoots to promote something and they're like most photogenic lighting, and in their best outfit with their best hair and makeup done. It almost looks to me like they're like cosplaying another era because we're no longer in that era anymore. As a creative person, I find this to be a relief. And I find the creators that I follow on Tik Tok to be so much more real and authentic. I know that word is overused, then influencers on Instagram.
Blythe Brumleve:
17:39
So great thought process from that creator over on Tiktok. Because it really does highlight a different era. I remember when you know, I had first gotten into a you know, doing content. You know, I've been writing I've been blog, I came up in the blogging era, which for folks who are, you know, a little bit of the elder millennials, you'll understand what that blogging era looked like. And when you come up in that blogging era, then you started with a blog. And then social media came into the scene. And so there was a local group that was getting started here in North Florida that was trying to gather up the folks who were in that area who were doing these things online, not exactly sure of where it was going to go. And I remember at one of these dinners, there was a high profile woman there and she was a lawyer full time. But then on the other side, she she really liked crafting these office outfits looks, she would do the perfect Instagram photo, the perfect Instagram grid, she would have you know, the color palette on her grid was just perfection, she had all of these different things that she meticulously planned for her Instagram account, and then come to find out the way that she was making money was either she was first not making money at all, she was just getting free product. But then on the flip side, the way that she would make some money is by a platform called like to know it. And if you were to like the photo on Instagram, then you would get notified of where to actually buy the clothes that she was referencing in the photos. But if you were to do that, as as a fan of hers, if you were to like the photo, see the outfit make the purchase. If you were to do all of those things, which is extremely low, it's something like less than 3% of people on Instagram actually click a link and go outside of the platform. It's that low. And it's even lower on things like that. But she was only making about 12 cents on one of those purchases. Well since so after these will say after this dinner, I knew that this wasn't going to be a pathway for me. Number one I just frankly didn't care about my grid. My Instagram page is my Instagram page. I'm gonna post whatever I want whenever I want, you know algorithm be damned. And there was a completely other different mindset that was happening at the same time and that other minds that the perfection of the highly curated photos, the Photoshop, the filters, there was just a whole lot of that side of the, that just didn't interest me. So when a platform like tick tock comes around, and there are people with no makeup on making videos, there are people who are putting their makeup on while teaching you something, you know, in my experience on that platform, and I know it's not without its own drama, we're not going to get into that with this episode. But every time I'm on that platform, I laugh, or I learn, and that is something that I do not experience in the rest of social media. And so that aspect of it not to mention it speaking, you know, we mentioned YouTube's algorithm being very good, tick tock algorithm algorithm, especially for short form content, it's arguably even better. So with that sort of shift in how we're spending our time online, shifted to tic toc. And then it also shifted the kind of content that the overwhelming majority of people resonate with. And that is the really quick video, this is what I just saw, check it out, you know, almost like it just a real video that, you know, hasn't been heavily like over edited, I mean, those still exist, don't get me wrong, but the content that just resonates the most is you don't have to be dropped dead gorgeous, beautiful to go viral on Tiktok. And I think that that was sort of the first sort of example of a social media platform, giving you the content that you want to see, not necessarily based on the people that you're already following. And so it incentivizes folks to make content that people resonate with. And that is impacted every other social media platform. If you look at Twitter, Twitter has switched from their fault, they have now a for you page because of tick tock shorts has gone over to YouTube as a major major push from YouTube because they want the short form content to lead into the long form content. And those short videos are placed a higher priority on their feed versus regular videos. So tick tock has had this massive impact into how all of these other platforms are interacting. And really, that also affects how creators are making content for those platforms as well. So I thought that that was really really intriguing as far as how this shift is happening from the I guess, traditional Instagram influencer to these other platforms, and how you've really seen a lot of the traditional Instagram influencers completely fail when they tried to take that audience to another platform to a YouTube to a tick tock because it's very challenging for them to to switch it up and to where they can't perfect every little thing and they just got to be comfortable just rolling with the punches. So that's another era of or another Yeah, really era that is evolving right before our eyes where you know, there's still a connotation around the term influencer, you think of someone a little bit maybe negatively, if they call themselves an influencer, but influencers in the way that it's thought have always been around. Now we're sort of putting a prettier label on it and calling them a creator. But that creator has a different mindset, I think behind their content, like I would call myself a creator, but I would cringe if someone calls me I would cringe just a little bit maybe not a lot but I would cringe a little bit if somebody called me an influencer, even though I know that that's also a fair, I guess, assumption to make. But if I'm when I think of influencer, I'm still thinking of that perfect grid. Really, all I have to offer is like makeup tips. And there's like I said, there's nothing wrong with that, because I watch makeup influencers do but I resonate. And I follow and I subscribe and I support other people much more who are making me learn something or making me laugh. So it's a different level of value that I put on that kind of content versus everything else. And maybe that shift is happening for other people as well. I mean, you can kind of make that argument with the growth of tick tock and the stagnation or the lack of growth that you're seeing in other platforms, like a Facebook, like Instagram. So those things are something to definitely keep in mind. Because especially around the shifts of why this is happening, because it happens with the audience of where they're spending their time online, then these platforms make the adjustments and then the creators or the influencers of that platform have to either adjust or face the risk of losing their audience all together. So I think the key for a lot of these creators is is asking yourself, How do I turn long form content? And do you want to make long form content? And how do you how do you take the long form content or the short form content and turn it into something that you can build a business out of? Because that's really the only point of why you're here? making this kind of content and and while you're focusing on that area, if it's not, if there's not a business case tied to it, either right now or in the future, then you kind of have to ask the question of why you're even doing it in the first place. Because a lot of these things that are being shared online, they could just be shared privately in in, you know, maybe to each their own, I guess you could say, but on the flip side, if you're a creator, and you're wondering how to sort of sort through everything that's going on, I think it's, on one hand, it's never been a better time to be a creator, because with all of these AI tools, and I will get into AI in just a minute, with all of these AI tools, it has been overwhelming how many tools that have come into the space that can now help you do your job better and faster. And so when you keep that in mind, then if you are the creator, if you are a podcaster, or YouTuber, which is where I see the most value right now and creating content online, then you can start using these other social media channels to filter that message with short form content. So you create the long form content, either through a podcast or video podcasts like this alive on LinkedIn. So you then you take that long form content, and you turn it into short form content from it. And that leads it just so many different social media clips, email marketing, text based posts on LinkedIn, newsletter posts, on LinkedIn, Twitter threads, things like that. So all of those things can factor into it. But you have to start with the long form content. That's just my personal opinion, I think that that's where you can build up your brand, you can build up distribution. And once you own distribution, then you can take that distribution and you can go anywhere with it, you can create your own products that you are 100%, you know, an owner of or you can say if I'm a truck driver, and I have hundreds of 1000s of followers, sometimes millions of followers on a YouTube on different social media platforms, I can take my talents, and I know that I can go to the best trucking company and use my talents there not only from a driving perspective, but also from a social media perspective. There's one tick tock creator called trucker, Wazir, and he makes recruitment style videos, he lets people know what happened to him during his truck driver training. So he went through all of the training and he documented it. His safety is ongoing safety training, things like you know, it's blitz week right now at the time of recording. And so he makes all of this different content around what a trucker has to go through go through in order to become a trucker. And then to stay a trucker. That kind of content is recruitment gold. And so as a driver, now he because he has, I think, like 300,000 followers on Tiktok. Last time I checked, he probably has more now. But he's able to then be recruited by other trucking companies go get a better higher paying job, maybe even get some influencer benefits, some creator benefits, whatever we're calling it nowadays. But he's able to get those additional benefits, because he already owns the distribution of the audience where people are spending their time and attention. So it's just something to keep in mind. As far as you know, these businesses out here who think they want to start a podcast or you know, creators who have already started a podcast, and they're not exactly sure of, you know, or YouTube, which whichever your your platform of choices, if you don't have an end game in mind, then you need to be thinking about it and you need it doesn't necessarily have to, I wouldn't recommend trying to think about monetizing your content. But you need to think about what that investment looks like, and what the investment will look like in the future. Because you're not doing this for nothing. We're not doing this for our health. Here, we are doing it to garner attention, we're doing it to spread education and spread awareness, whether that's about your company, or your product, or maybe a future product or a future company, there's value in the content that you're creating. And you can take that audience with you wherever you go, provided that you've done a good job at actually creating content. So it's a lot of things to I think keep in mind. And I think it's a real awakening for a lot of these especially legacy media companies who have been sort of used to that audience being built in. And now a dwindling viewership with dwindling ratings, streaming, becoming the dominant play instead of, you know, a cable subscription. A lot of these legacy media companies are looking themselves in the eye and know that they've already seen the peak, and they're on their downward trajectory, and they're losing a lot of their top talent, and their top talent is going independent. And that should be a lesson for all of the other creators out there that if you are already creating content, then you're on the right path. And these other media companies especially slow to move, legacy media news programs are slow to catch up. But there's opportunity and there's enough for all of us to eat. As long as you are authentic with your audience. You're trustworthy with your audience. If you make a mistake, you own up to it. You apologize for it, and you try to get a little bit better you Today, we're all human. And you know it, I think that that's something that's been missing from a lot of content creators online is that we have that sort of that perfection that's existed for a while in the sort of the thought process that we're safe when we watch, you know, some of these ABC or NBC or any of these other, you know, legacy media news companies, that what we're getting from them as the truth, but we never hear an apology, we never hear a correction. Unless you're watching some of these other independent creators shout out to breaking points again, because if they make a mistake on one of their broadcasts, they're going to let you know, and they're going to apologize for it. And they're going to try to get better the next day. Never hear that on legacy media channels. And I think it's high time that for a lot of these platforms, and for a lot of creators, is to look at where legacy media failed, failed their audiences and failed what their responsibilities were to do. And how us as consumers, us, as you know, where we spend or choose to spend our attention and where that shift is happening. You can also make that choice either from a creator standpoint, and from an audience standpoint of who you're going to choose to support and why. So that's one side of the coin. Whew, that was a lot. So the other side of the coin is AI content in Google changing the game Ghin. So I talked a little bit about this on freight waves now. But to recap, 90% of the search market is controlled by Google 60 More than 60 I want to say 60 66%. But I'm not exactly I know, it's more than 60% of Google of alphabet, which is Google's parent company. Alphabets revenue comes from search. Now, when we think of Tik Tok, when we think of Instagram, that's where Gen Z is going to make internet searches. So they're going to those platforms. First, they're not really going to Google anymore to conduct those searches. However, Google still controls the majority of that market, there's still a hell of a lot of money to be made in the search market. But the caveat there is that an overwhelming majority of search results do not end in a click. And when that is so impactful, because the overwhelming majority of content marketers over the last 10 years, have invested the majority of their budgets into making SEO friendly search engine optimization, friendly content to appeal to Google, and to a lesser, lesser extent, to appeal to Bing, maybe Yahoo DuckDuckGo, some of these other search engine platforms, but Google still controls 90% of it. So if 60% of their revenue comes from search, they're less likely to implement new products that are going to affect that market share for them. Enter AI and Microsoft chat up and Microsoft and chat GPT I guess I could call it Microsoft chat. GPT. But Microsoft is a big investor in in open AI. Open AI makes chat GPT. So they the the Microsoft CEO said a few months back, he's like, I want to make Google dance. Well, Google listened. And they hit the I guess, annual event last week where they mentioned there was a viral video that went around that showed the CEO of Google's I think it's Sundar Pichai. But he made 300 More than 300 references to AI in his one keynote address, talking about all of the new products that Google is releasing, basically kicking and screaming that they've had to release these products into the wild because ChaCha Beatty has a real chance to disrupt how we interact with search engines. And what does the future of a search engine look like? Whenever you are thinking about it from the lens of I need to as a content marketer, I want to know what keyword phrases that people are searching for. So I can make content around that, and especially if it's applicable to my business. Now, that has been the main focus. And it's also why as I stated that Google has been resistant to entering, you know, debuting any kind of product, they've been heavily investing in AI for years. But they did not want to introduce these products, because they admittedly, they feared what it could do to their overall core business strategy. They were forced to do it. So I want to share this Twitter feed on how Google's new search engine and new search engine results page is going to ultimately fare. So I'm going to bring up this tab from the boring marketer. So on the screen of what you're looking at right now, and if you're listening to the podcast version, I'm sorry, I'm gonna break it down for you. So you know, a traditional search engine results page on Google. You have the search engine box, and then you have a list of results on the left hand side, and then maybe on the right hand side are some advertisements or Google Maps placement. That is all changing. So the layout is completely changing to where now the first thing you're going to see is not a string of ads, and then you know, the the actual top 10 results, what you're going to see is the generative AI, that anytime you ask it a question, it's going to answer those questions right there on the screen. And so if you're not, if you're if you're just listening to this broadcast, then what you see is a question that's being asked about two different planets. What planet is the most similar to Earth? That was a search engine phrase that was used. And then there Google's AI was used to create the answer to this, so you're not seeing the traditional search engine result link. And the reason this is important, is because publishers for years have been making this content with the idea that someone would click on that search engine result, arrive on their website, read, get the information that they're looking for. And then either, you know, book, a meeting, book a demo, check out pricing, follow them on social media. That was the the end goal of why you would be answering these questions and why you would spend as a business you would spend your time and energy and budget into creating this content to answer these questions. Now, a lot of that is going to be changing to where the answer is just going to be given right on the search engine results page. So the incentive to click is even less now, already, before Google introduced this. The click through rate was already dropping dramatically. I mentioned earlier about how a lot of Gen Z and a lot of Gen. Z Gen Z. Yeah, a lot of Gen Z and millennials, I guess Gen X two, you could probably, and maybe not Gen X. So millennials and Gen Z, the way that they are searching is going to social media first and not necessarily going to Google. But with a respect of the large amount of people who still go to Google, it results in what's called a zero click search, meaning they got their answer on this page, and there is no incentive for them to click through. And to get more additional information. This kind of a lot changes that to where you now have a display screen that not only answers your question, but prompts you to ask a follow up question. If you look in the bottom left hand corner of this search engine result of this results page, it says it's highlighted asked to ask a follow up. So it's encouraging you to ask another question about the results that you've just seen. And then it lists a couple of suggested questions of what Google thinks you're going to ask next. And then on the right hand side, they do cite their sources, which is great to see it's not something that Chet GPT has done until just recently, when they enabled browsing capabilities. For the folks who don't know check GBT has been trained on data up until 2021, unless you have the browser extension plugin, which then brings in, you know, modern results for everything past 2021, including, you know, up to like breaking news, still a little finicky. But that is the first glimpse of what we are seeing of what the new search engine result page is going to look like. Do you wish there was a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit employees, and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business? Well, all of this should already be on your website. But too often, we hand that responsibility of building our online home off to a cousin, a neighbor's kid down the street, or a stranger across the world. Digital dispatch believes in building a better website at a fraction of the costs that those big time marketing agencies would charge. Because we've spent years on those digital front lines, our experienced team focuses on the modern web technologies to bring in all of the places you're already active online, show off those customer success stories, and measure the ROI of it all in one place. With manage website plans starting at $90 a month, head on over to digital dispatch.io to see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. We've got explainer videos right on the website and the ability to book a demo immediately find it all over at Digital dispatch.io. Now the reason that this is important is because it's going to bring up the next part of what I wanted to discuss. And I'm gonna bring up that same tab. Because it's the boring marketer, if you if you haven't followed them, they are really great follow over on Twitter, they I think they have a really great newsletter, too. It's tough to keep up with all the newsletters that's in my inbox right now. But it's basically what they said the boring marketer calls this as basically it's cool stuff that Google is showing on their results page. Now, it's a mix of Google search chat GPT and tick tock slash reels but on steroids. So they've noted Google has noticed the trend of dwindling search performance. And so they're trying this is their attempt at Trying to create are trying to rectify that. But then, if you may remember, the Featured Snippet, which was also a very big deal in Content Marketing World, I'm not going to bore you with the details of that. But it was something kind of similar where the incentive to click through wasn't necessarily there for the audience, or the searchers to take because if they get the answer on the screen, there's no incentive to click, unless you can think about it from the lens of that you want to be able to optimize your content for nuance and be able to go more in depth with that content. So there's one trick that is really slept on, as far as you know, I guess the the way that you conduct your search engine optimization research, aka, what the hell do I write about? And what the hell are people searching for? And how do I help them learn more about my business, that's sort of the the matrix that you want to put your content in. And there's one, there's one thing that's really slept on. So let me let me bring up Google first. And if you're watching this, or if you're listening to this, I'm sorry. But this is we're going to the Google search engine results page, or we're going to Google search page. And what this is called, is this is the ABC method. So income school, which is a great, you know, sort of content training school platform, they are great, I've been a member of them for years. And they teach this ABC method. And they also teach a bunch of other things. But just so you're looking at it from on the screen, so you can kind of see, I'm using the freight, or I'm using the search term freight broker. Now the key here is you type in that phrase of what you're looking for, maybe you're trying to recruit more freight brokers, maybe you're trying to, I don't know offer them additional training. So if you key in freight broker a little known trick, the ABC method is literally typing in the first letter, and then using Google's autofill, to give you ideas as to what you should be writing about. Because for folks who do not know Google does not share their keyword volume information with anyone, it is proprietary data. So H refs, you know, Moz, SEMrush, any of these other keyword tools that are estimating the volume of how often that phrase is being searched, they're just guessing now they're educated guess, but they are just guessing the only people that have access to that information is the people who work at Google, now you can get a hint of what is being searched a lot based on the autofill based on the ABC technique. So if we just key in our phrase, and then we use different key if we use different letters. So right now I'm typing out, I typed out the full word freight broker, and then I'm just going through, I put a space, and I put a letter, so I start with a, then I move on to B, then C, and so forth and so forth, in Google, and that search engine box will recommend what phrases it thinks I'm gonna I'm trying to go after simply based on either my own proprietary, you know, certain, not proprietary, but yeah, I guess proprietary search engine results data is trying to give me it's trying to help cut down the amount of time of what I'm searching for and finding an answer to it. So as a content marketer, you can use this as insight into what is actually resonating enough volume wise that Google is going to listed in their autofill. So for this example, I'm going to put in sales. So freight broker sales, is the key word that I want to use for this example. Now, what you'll see on this page is that you'll see a couple of different sponsored ads. But this section right here, the people also ask, that is such a little known trick that SEOs are most people especially in freight that I see making content SEO focused content, they don't take advantage of the people also asked, that is another key area of where you can find insight as to what Google thinks that next move, or that next question that you want answered, it's trying to figure that out, and it will list them here. So the people also asked, which shows up pretty close to the top of the search engine results page. But if you scroll all the way down, then you'll see other related searches. And those other related searches. So freight sales, salary, freight broker script, PDF, freight sales meeting, freight broker, you know, cold calling script, which that sounds kind of interesting. So I want to click on that one. But it shows all of these different sponsored listings, of course, and you want to Oh, it's actually showing a query for my own website to another tip. Anytime you're doing your keyword research, make sure you do it in private mode, otherwise, your personal search engine habits will have fact this results page. So if you do it in private mode, the research is a little bit more attuned to the greater audience and not just yourself. So the reason I bring all of this up is because with all of these new tools that Google has introduced into the market over the last week, Microsoft wanted to make them dance, and they are dancing, and they are giving out all of their AI tools and incorporating them into all of their different products. Search is going to change and it's already changing as we see it right now and how it function. So as a content marketer, it's up to you to be able to see where the attention is evolving online. And then how can you create content to appeal to those changing habits, but also to answer the questions that your audience has. And and that one, that one trick, the ABC method is a good way to do it. Because you're going to have to in the SEO world, where now it is so easy to go into chat GPT in turn a keyword phrase and have 1000 word blog article written like that, that's already here. And that content is going to be ranking well in the short term. But it's a race to the bottom, as far as content is concerned, everybody is going to have the same content, if you just take take a keyword phrase and plug it into these platforms, and then copy and paste the blog without, you know, ever changing it, and then putting it onto your website, that is a race to the bottom. So what what you can do is use that ABC method, use the autofill method us people also ask, and you can use that to make a better SEO focused article or even take it an extra step, which is what I personally would not waste my time writing a long form blog post, I don't think it's worth the effort. I think it's in an era of marketing that existed 10 years ago, it does not exist today. And you have to alter and you have to update as attention economy changes as these platforms change as they evolve. And one of the ways that you can do that is by getting your executive team getting the leaders within your company to get on camera, to make a video, it doesn't have to be this fancy setup of nice lighting and you know, $1,000 camera on, you know, $500 microphones, it doesn't have to be all that you take an iPhone, you get a $20 microphone off Amazon, and you start recording industry experience expertise, new ones, yes, XYZ is going on in the market right now. But people also ask, including all of those different questions that other people would ask or other people would have. And including that in your long form video content. And when I say long form, I mean, it could be 10 minutes long, whatever the top, it could be an hour long, it could be 30 minutes long, I wouldn't suggest doing it any longer than say 45 minutes, because the attention span of people is challenging to you know, we just talked about the attention economy for a while. So think about it from that lens, respect people's time, make the content as long as it needs to be if it's a great topic that you can dive really deep into, then go as deep as you need to be. But including the nuance and including your own personal industry expertise, putting your leaders on camera, that is how you stand out. And that is how you make noise outside of what the blog SEO strategy is going to be for the overwhelming majority of companies that are just going to use the easy way out. And it's a race to the bottom. So if you want to succeed, and everything that's going on with the attention economy, and everything that's going on in the shift in how we spend our time online, and what else is going on with all of these different AI tools that come in to sort of complicate everything in our current plans, then that is that's something that you can see the writing on the wall as far as some of this content, that's just, it's not very good. And if a machine can write it, then chances are other machines can write it for other people. So how do you stand out that's by getting your leaders online by getting them in front of a camera and recording their expertise because for now, that cannot be replicated. And for now, that is your your best bang for your buck as far as where you're spending your content marketing investments and where your audience is going to be, you know, digesting this content online. Now, the plus side of that is that it puts a face to a name that establishes trust and credibility. It establishes authenticity as much as those words are definitely overused. But those things are still important. Even if those words are overused. They're overused because they're that important. And so using them in the structure of your own conversations and your own content will really help you stand out from everybody else who's going to take the easy way out. The best thing that has happened to content marketing is AI because it helps folks to up their game, it helps the creators who don't want to be replaced by an SEO blog writer to pivot to video. I just probably like PTSD for any of the major, like media companies who did the famous like pivot to video back in Facebook's days. But if you own your audience, you can take them wherever you go. Your podcast, your website, and your email list are the only platforms you were ever going to own. So as long as you can use these different distribution channels, LinkedIn, Twitter, even Facebook groups, Instagram to an extent, tick tock, of course, YouTube shorts, you're using all of these different platforms to point them to the long form content to make them aware of what your company does what you believe in. And that will automatically help you stand out from the rest. So hope you enjoyed that lengthy conversation. Because I think that this is really important for a lot of content marketers to not keep your head in the sand about this stuff, you have to stay on top of how the market is evolving, and how your audience is evolving and how your prospects are evolving. And you have to shift your mindset as a marketer, in order to make content that's going to be appealing for all of these different factors that are playing a role in the landscape it's going to make, in some aspects, it's going to be marketing a lot harder. But in other aspects, especially for folks like me, it's helping, because I'm already practicing what I preach with long form video podcasts, turning them into social and other forms of different content. But I am able to own my audience and then be able to own the distribution, and then use social media where it makes sense. And a lot of the times it makes sense with shorter clips with text based posts. always evolving, always changing to see what is working from a playbook standpoint. So just, it's a lot, it can feel overwhelming. But I also am a firm believer that it's never been a better time to be a creator, we have all of these tools at our fingertips that are going to help us do our jobs so much faster, and do it much more affordably. Especially when you think about it from the lens. I use this example in last week's broadcast. You know, I'm not an illustrator, I've always wanted to be, but now I can go into a platform like mid journey. And I can make I can write the text prompt, that's going to create the image that I envision and vice versa. So if you're an illustrator, and you've never been very good at writing, now you can take your your art that you've already been creating. And you can use a copywriting tool to help you push that art out to other people. So there's lots of different variations of how this can be beneficial. Of course, there are warnings get into that deserves its own sort of topic. And I could go hours and hours on that as well. But ultimately, I choose to believe that these tools are powerful. These tools are beneficial, especially to one person marketing teams, which is if you're watching this for this long, or if you're listening to this long, that likely is you you're wearing a lot of hats, you're wondering how you're going to get your job done. These tools are aiming to help that one little another, sort of behind the scenes, like as soon as this live broadcast is done, because of the distribution flow. So I create the broadcast on stream yard. But I sent it out to YouTube and LinkedIn. And once this is done, I can then go to YouTube, snag that URL, and then go to a platform called Opus clips, which is a new one for me. But they will automatically edit social media clips for you. I was quoted$3,000 to do the same thing a couple of weeks ago. And I just did it for free. Using this tool, Opus clips. Cabot tried it yet and you have a YouTube account, you make videos on YouTube, go try it, it is mind blowing how cool it isn't in this kind of technology, it's only going to get better. So invest in the long form, invest in the nuance, and pay attention to where people are spending their time and attention online. And you can pivot accordingly. If you start with one social media platform, every start with one long form piece of content, you can chop that up and send it out to all these different other social media platforms don't send the same message to each one of them. But it should be tailored towards we know what the same message you're sending out on Twitter is not going to be the same message that you're sending out on LinkedIn. So keeping all that in mind. It's time to up our game when it comes to content marketing. So AI can do a lot of things. legacy media is falling apart, and new media is growing. But there's never been a better time than right now to use these AI tools to help that one person marketing machine operate on a much more efficient basis. So get your aerial on, get out there where the people are and start taking these content chances when you've maybe had them on the back burner for a little bit too long. Now's the time to get into it skip those long Long Form blog articles that offer no insight, no nuance, and they're just, they're just something that chatty Beatty can create, and 30 seconds, skip those, and instead, use your long form content that you can then take that transcript. And you can turn that transcript into an email newsletter, you can take that transcript and turn it into a long blog posts. There are different ways that you can play around with it. You can even ask Chad GBT to summarize what your transcript is saying. And that, to me is an ethical use case of these platforms that you can use that to speed up that part of the process, but it needs to still come from a leader within your organization, the source of it anyways. And if you're not doing that, then you are going to fall behind, you know, in the next couple of years. As far as content creation benefits are concerned. So pay attention to the market. I don't say all this to scare you. I say this to help you stay prepared and stay on top of what's evolving and what's going on in both the attention economy and content marketing strategy. So that about does it for this week's episode. If you haven't already subscribed, be sure to go over to LinkedIn and look for my email newsletter. You can find it on my profile page, just search for Blythe Brumleve or Blake Brom, over on LinkedIn and it's one of the first items that shows right up on my profile everything's logistics newsletter, get subscribed because I cover topics just like this plus more and recap a lot of the podcasts that I drop every week and I put them all in the newsletter in order to make you know the distractions from work a little bit more educational, a little bit more entertaining, hopefully anyways, but if you ever have a question or a comment or you want something answered in the future, please do please drop a comment in this broadcast or shoot me a DM and I will answer it on a future show. But until then, thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for your attention. I hope you have a great day once again is everything is logistics. I am Blythe Brumleve. You can find more of my work over on everything is logistics.com including our social media links. So make sure that you are following along to get more detailed breakdowns just like this on how you can use a lot of these different tools as it is evolving your workday and your work responsibilities. So thank you again and hope you'll have a good day and go Jack's I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers and freight telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. If you liked this episode, do me a favor and sign up for our newsletter. I know what you're probably thinking, oh God, another newsletter. But it's the easiest way to stay updated when new episodes are released. Plus, we drop a lot of gems in that email to help the one person marketing team and folks like yourself who are probably wearing a lot of hats at work in order to help you navigate this digital world a little bit easier. You could find that email signup link along with our socials in past episodes. Over at everything is logistics.com And until next time, I'm Blythe and go Jags
