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Zero Click Marketing is a marketing strategy podcast about content marketing, audience research, and how brands grow when clicks matter less. Hosted by Amanda Natividad, Chief Evangelist at SparkToro and Co-Author of the book, "Zero Click Marketing," the show explores how marketers reach audiences, build influence, and earn attention in a zero-click internet. New to the show? Start with Episode 2: What Zero Click Marketing Actually Is.
Wil Reynolds (00:00):
Social and direct is like, I emailed this thing to Amanda. I sent it to her on WhatsApp. I sent it to her on Slack. Direct, direct, direct, direct, direct. I love traffic from Teams, Notebook LM, Calendars, Google Docs, internal learning knowledge platforms, because you start finding somewhere someone curated answers and resources and thought we created some content that was worth them curating. Google and AI are just proxies for human trust. I'd rather know I'm earning human trust than to try to win for the proxy of human trust because then I got a chance to potentially win both.
Amanda Natividad (00:39):
I'm Amanda Natividad and welcome to Zero Click Marketing.
Wil Reynolds (00:45):
So it's a very interesting thing about just the way that I've always looked at presenting is one, when I write blog posts, I never make links out to other sites, open a new tab because I fundamentally believe that if my shit was that good, you're coming back, baby. You're going to find a way back. I don't need to open it in a new tab to be like, "Oh, I want you to remember this other thing." It's like, no, no, no, no, no. I've always believed that. It's one of those weird things I don't tell people. Another thing that I did, I've been waiting to talk about this. I haven't told anybody. I've never talked about this publicly. There was a time where I had more tweets than followers back in the Twitter days. And I was like, "That means I'm talking more than I'm creating value." So at one point I was like, "Say less, write with intention.
(01:31):
And then when those numbers cross, you're allowed to talk more." But until then, I was very hard on myself because if you don't have a metric, at least for me, I don't know what I'm doing. So that was something that I really disciplined myself on. And I'd be like, "Dude, you have two times the amount of tweets than followers. It took me three years to shift that." And then once it did, I was like, "Okay, what you're saying creates enough value that people want to follow you is different than just saying a lot of.
Amanda Natividad (01:55):
" Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. It's funny you mentioned that because I look at that, and again, back in the Twitter days, I looked at that before deciding to follow someone just in the sense of if I saw they had too many tweets, I'd kind of be like, "I don't know," because it kind of signals to me that they're just tweeting all day and I don't really want to see that in my feed. I would rather see someone that's kind of. Not that you're not putting though into what you're saying, that's not that, but just more of if there's some kind of number that can convey how intentional someone is being when they're talking online, that's kind of a number for that.
Wil Reynolds (02:35):
It was the quickest hack that I was in it all the time so I might as well look and you're like, ooh, all right. How would I know I'm creating value with what I'm saying and that person's just talking? And it's a weird metric. I used to use it all the time because I think your timeline became your attention. So then you're like, wait, if you're going to write seven, eight things in a day all in a row, I'm afraid I'm going to miss other stuff that I wish I saw because at some point I'm going to stop scrolling and if I follow you, I'm following you for some reason. You better really be good if you're going to be tweeting seven, eight, nine, 10 times in a row and blowing up my chronological feed because I don't want an algorithmic feed, so I like it chronological.
(03:14):
And you're like, all right, that's not going to work. So it's interesting. We all have these things we look for that aren't talked about. My new thing with AI slop comments on LinkedIn, if I get a comment that's like, oh, this person is two or three levels removed away from you before I'll respond to it, I will click on their profile, look at their comments and I look at the timestamps between their comments and I'm like, you got a pattern. You're automatically commenting on people. You are now blocked forever.
Amanda Natividad (03:42):
Oh, that's a
Wil Reynolds (03:43):
Good
Amanda Natividad (03:44):
One.
Wil Reynolds (03:44):
Because you and I would spend time - That's
Amanda Natividad (03:45):
A good one.
Wil Reynolds (03:46):
We'll spend time trying to respond to someAI slope and I'm like, I'm trying to be intentional with my thoughts and I'm trying to make people feel like, yo, this dude will get back to me. He'll try to help answer my questions. And you're like, now my time is being just taken away from me by somebody that didn't even care about the comment. So then I don't have the energy to comment back to the real people who really want to engage and learn. So you're like, nah. I click on all those two plus people, three plus people. I'm like, how are you that far away and leaving a comment on my shit? Click on their profile, click on the comment link, look at their comments. You're seven minutes ago, nine minutes ago, 11 minutes ago. It's like, oh, you're basically every two minutes just leaving comments and bursts and they're all following the same pattern because they've got a pattern tool that leaves behind the pattern.
(04:28):
So you can see it and just block, block, block, block, block.
Amanda Natividad (04:30):
Oh, that's good. See, I didn't even think about it that far. When I see the comment that I feel like it's basically kind of regurgitating what I said, but there's a question or something that indicates I should follow up. I'm like, I don't know what to say because I feel like they said what I said. It took me too long to realize this, but I'm like, oh, I think that's probably an AI comment.
Wil Reynolds (04:53):
Okay. How do you feel though? One of the hardest things is you get followed by a lot of people that English is not their first language. So then you feel bad if you're like, yo, this sounds like some AI stuff. And it's like, well, I used it because English isn't my first language and I'm trying to engage and I'm trying to learn and I'm like, and then I feel bad. So that's why I started clicking deeper because a lot of them were Indians and you're like Indian person, and you're like, is this automated or not? And I was like, no, real people are trying to communicate with me and they're using this as an interim step because they might be like, oh, I'm not exactly sure how to phrase this. But then it leaves on a ton of em dashes and crap. And before I would've just been like, nope.
(05:30):
So that's why I wanted to. It's weird. It's weird. We don't talk about this stuff
Amanda Natividad (05:33):
Enough. We don't. No, no. I mean, so usually what I do is honestly, I like pretty much every comment that people say to me, even if it's like they disagree or whatever. I'm like, cool, it's fine. We can disagree unless it's way off topic and clearly spam. So I like everything. And then if I suspect someone is probably using AI, but if they also seem like they're replying in good faith, I'm like, well, maybe they're using it as a tool to help and they don't speak English natively. I'm like, that's fine. So I'm like, that's cool. And then I might reply back and be like, yeah, thanks for this. And then if they engage with me regularly, then I kind of keep an eye out and I'm like, oh, are they an actual person and this is just a tool they're using or are they spamming the internet?
(06:19):
And then I'll look deeper at their profile activity. Yeah.
Wil Reynolds (06:23):
I know that you and Rand are tight and me and Rand are tight, but I'll tell you some of the stuff I love about AI because Rand's always like, I hate this sucks, yada, yada, yada. And I'm like, dude, the ability for people to talk to people and translate their stuff and feel like they can engage is a great use. It's like a great use. I love that people are using AI for that. The problem is then it goes into slopsville and people start abusing that. And something I've been thinking a lot about lately is Google hasn't really improved for you and I to find answers. If anything, it's going the other way. And I'm like, that's what happens when you have no competition. And as much as we hate it and all the speed at which all this stuff is coming out, I feel like AI right now with Anthropic and ChatGPT especially, we're watching what an industry looks like when there's not a clear winner and people are trying to win.
(07:23):
And I'm like, that has been really cool because I remember when search engines came out and there were 30 of them and because everybody was trying to win, everybody was trying to make the experience better. And then you're like, all right, now that we've got unfortunately defined winners in email, defined winners in search, defined winners in certain things, they stop innovating so the products don't really get any better. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, I've kind of been on this, I'm weirdly backdoor grateful for getting a peak into not a Amazon. Look at what they did to good reads. You're like, these people don't innovate. They've already done the thing. And I love the fact that with AI, these people are competing so hard that you just watch new features just show up and you're like, oh great, cool. I'll use that. Great. I'll use that.
(08:08):
So that's one of the things I love about the AI moment that we're in. As much as there's a lot I don't like, it's been nice to watch competition again in tech. I
Amanda Natividad (08:15):
Appreciate that. I think that really encapsulates what the parts of the internet that have been exciting to me as of late. I rebuilt my website, personal site, amandanet.com. I use Claude Code for it. And I mean, that's not a secret. I'm not going to tell everyone openly about, wow, I use this to make a static website. Yay, who cares? So not a secret, but also not bragging, but being honest. I've been thinking about how much fun that process was, how it felt like the old days of making websites when we all had an AOL hometown page or GeoCities. It felt like that to me even though it's not that. And I've been telling some friends this and they're like, "What are you talking about? That's not the same." I know it's not the same, but my heart feels like it's the same. And I think the thing that feels the same is I feel like I have control over this thing.
(09:11):
I feel like it's mine. I don't really care that it's templated. I have a very minimalist website. It's not about me having a beautiful website. It's the website I wanted. It's minimalist. I can just go into the HTML and fix little things, little formatting issues. I can just do that myself without having to deal with some weird rule in Webflow or Squarespace where I don't know how that functionality works. It's like I could do an HTML or CSS. I'm not an expert, but I know enough to fix those little things. Those templated things have always been because they're out of the box things that you're supposed to just use as they are. I never liked those. This Claude Code thing is kind of giving me that experience again of feeling like I really own this thing that actually is mine. It's my website.
Wil Reynolds (10:03):
Yeah. Yo, so I recently moved my personal site over to WordPress and I did it because I wanted something that had an MCP so I could fix it from Claude and their MCP is solid. Now I can go on a walk, I can talk about something I believe, something that I feel, something that's whatever. And then when I'm done going back and forth with Claude on it, I'll be like, put it in the drafts on my blog and it's like. And I'm like, here's a bunch of images that I took. Add those images in the right place. It's like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Then I can screenshot when the HTML's all jacked up and be like, this is what it looks like on my mobile. And it'll be like, oh, I see what it is. Let me go fix it. Refresh. Yep, fixed.
(10:45):
Because what happens is it's the fixing that drained me actually. It's like I just wanted to get my idea out and now I'm stuck in. I'm not good at HTML CSS stuff. So I'm like, now I'm stuck trying to troubleshoot this. And what I really wanted was the thing that made it as easy as possible to get my ideas out. And it's interesting that I got to be careful of hearing from the loudest voice in the room. I had a blog post. It was all my thoughts. It was a two-hour walk with Claude talking it out, whatnot. But I'm like, just write it up for me. And then I went through and I was like, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. Put my exact quotes in for this. I would say it was probably half Claude, 100% my thoughts, half Claude writing and people.
(11:22):
I told people, I let Claude write half of this because a lot of it was data and research. People are like, oh, it doesn't sound like you. I'm like, okay, that's cool. But then I'm thinking, what's the trade off? Is it better for me to get things I'm deeply thinking about the world out that could help someone or is the job to be done and not sound like AI? And it's like, I though the job to be done was to get this idea out because I literally think it's a new way of thinking that could help people. If there's a em dash in there, I don't care because that was never the job to be done. I think somewhere along the path, I'm struggling right now with this precipice of I have more ideas that I want to get out faster on my blog. I know the best way to do that is to let Claude take over some of the writing of it because that's not been my strong suit anyway.
(12:10):
But then you get this like, hey Wil, it looks like you wrote some of this with Claude or whatever. I just am public about it. I write it on the post. About this percentage of this post was written by Claude. But then I'm like, what's the job to be done? Is it to put more things out that make people think and give them a perspective, make them not feel alone, or is it to have something that doesn't sound like it was written by Claude?
Amanda Natividad (12:29):
Yeah, that's a good point. Or when it says, it's not this, it's that. I'm like, that was AI. And you're like, well, I believe in that. Okay, that's an LLM-y way to say it, but that's my belief. I did say that maybe not in those exact two contrasting statements, but I said that.
Wil Reynolds (12:52):
I
Amanda Natividad (25:44):
Believe in that. Yes. Those are the things that I edited. That's why it's not 100%. You know what? Man, people are so basic. What was the word that was used? There was a word that was used that was a dead giveaway in the early days of ChatGPT. I forget what the word was, but everyone was like, oh, don't use that. Don't use that because it's like a giveaway. I'm like, stop being so basic. Search your inbox for your sent items with that word. If you've been using that word, it's going to be natural for you to continue to use. But the word was one that I was like, damn it, I'll have to go back and remember. But I looked and I was like, you never have used that word in a sent item in 15 years of having this inbox. It is us. Don't use that.
(25:46):
So that's how my brain kind of manages some of this weird authenticity AI stuff. It's like if I authentically was using em dashes forever, don't stop using them because some people believe it might be AI if you're like, dude, I've been doing this forever. I'm going to be me. But if all of a sudden, I'm a comma guy and I'm a dot, dot, dot guy, I am not an em dash guy. So if you see an em dash, it definitely was AI because I never write like that. I'm an em dash girl, so yeah. See, so you feel it? And I own it. I'm like, you know what? Whatever. That's how I write. I write with tiny daggers at my fingertips. That's how I write. Too bad. Deal with it. Sorry. Okay. So I have a couple things I want to say to this. One is I think I decided mentally because there are times, and even now that I catch something that I think is AI written and I'm like, that part of your brain that kind of turns off, you're like, ew, I don't like it.
(25:48):
But if I like the person, I'm like, you know what? I don't care. If they created this piece, I like them. I like what they have to say. I use these tools as well. So that would be hypocritical of me to be like, ew, I don't like it when someone else does it. So you know what? Get over it. I like this thing. So one is I'm telling myself, use your discretion, but also accept it. There's a part of me that's like, I don't care if that sentence was AI written as long as you, the publisher or creator know you said that or that you put that out, that's fine with me. Which brings me to my next thing, which is everyone talks about how in this post AI world, the
Wil Reynolds (25:49):
Thing that's most important is taste. And I don't disagree with that, but I think as these models are getting better quickly, and they are, I think taste is becoming less important. And the more important thing now is accountability. Are you going to review the thing that the LLM tool said that put out? Are you going to review it? Does that stand not by your standards of taste, but is that true? Is that authoritative? Would you have said that? Doesn't matter if it was watermarked to say quietly versus something. I don't care about that. It's are you going to stand by it because you believe that was true and that's what you could have said? So I care more about accountability. So you know one of the most fun things has been is I have an intern who didn't know what SEO was five months ago.
(25:51):
Cool. And he sits across from me and we just riff. And one day I was talking about something to somebody else and he overheard it and then started researching it using Claude and I was talking about a client issue. He found two gaps in my thinking. I've been doing this every day of my life since August of 1999 and a kid who didn't even know what it was four months ago found holes in my strategy. So tell me about taste. To your point, people are really good at thinking their experience is the equivalent to their expertise. And it's like, I've been doing this for 10 years, so world changed a lot in 10 years. I spammed the hell out of Snap and InfoSeek.That doesn't really help me very much when Google took over. So it's like, I don't know. I think that people hide behind taste, but they've never challenged themselves or have an idea, a belief, work on a project and then give somebody else the same project that has no experience in your space that's willing to use Claude and try to hammer at it.
(25:53):
How much of what you think is so unique about your skills and all your experience is just in the machine? I think most people have never tested that, so therefore they will continue to believe that that's not possible. And they'll talk about taste and they'll hide behind words like taste. And you're like, no, no, no. If you haven't tested it, you don't know. Somebody's going to come for you. And I think there's no value in sitting in a room telling somebody what can or can't be done or that your experience puts you at a certain level when you haven't checked that to see if that's actually true or not. And had somebody else, not you, someone else who doesn't know your industry or is just starting off check you and be like, I found some holes in what you said because you didn't realize that this thing changed on this date and that might have caused this.
(25:54):
And I was like, I got to set my game up. Wow. Knowing you when your intern told you these two gaps, you probably loved it.You're probably like, ah, I hate you. I love it. Tell me more. Yo. One, I was like, you're right. So I think the first thing is when you get owned by an intern and you are top speaker, stages, yada, yada, yada, you get so used to having your head gassed up and thinking that you're so good that you won't allow yourself to sit with the moment that just happened because you probably got lucky or that's not really whatever. For me, I loved it. You're absolutely right. Because one, I'm like, I get to work with you? Yeah. Awesome. Two, I get somebody that's going to challenge my thinking and make me better. Now I found a weakness in my six. Now I'm not going to ever make that mistake again.
(25:56):
You helped me to find a weakness in my expertise that I was not checking for this thing and now I'll never forget that again. So I think for me, I'm in this to be in the arena. So I love somebody in the arena trying to figure stuff out with me and challenging me. Yeah. Oh my God. I'm not in this game to be told how good I am. Now here you go, you speak at a ton of conferences, right? How many people when you get off stage tell you, you killed it? Okay, great. How does that make me better? Never does. So I'm like, can you find the one or two things that didn't make sense? Or what specific thing did I kill and why did I kill that? And you start asking people these questions and they're like, I just wanted to say you killed it.
(25:57):
And I'm like, okay, I want to get better. And I think that's it. That's why getting your ass kicked by an intern, I'm like, oh, that makes me get better. Yes. Versus sit over here, you don't know what I know, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't learn when I tell somebody just to listen to me all the time. Yeah. No, exactly. Are you able to elaborate on what some of those gaps were? Yeah, of course. It was something related to a core update. That's what it is. So I'm not the kind of person that sweats core updates because I'm like, well, if you're doing real company, you're not having to worry about core updates. But for this one client I was researching, I skipped right over that as a possibility of something that was happening. And he was like, same day as a core update.
(25:59):
And I was like, oh, oh. So at first I was mad. I was like, oh. And then I was like, I'm so glad I work with you. So yeah, that was it. And what's really cool, Amanda, I think so many of us came up as interns, had our moment doing entry level work, and now that a lot of those jobs are being automated and whatnot, we're not putting the ladder back down for the people that we told for years. Learn to do digital marketing. It's easy to get into. You can learn it yourself. And now it's like, I did all that. Are you going to help me? Oh no, those jobs got automated. It's like, oh, well thanks. Thanks for the inspiration, I guess. So I just love being around interns these days too, because it's very humbling. You get to feel like you're doing something with them.
(26:00):
And he just got a blog post of his in search engine land, four months in the company intern. That's amazing. It's amazing. And it's so fulfilling for me because I'm like, I'm in the fourth quarter of my career. I've been on the stages I wanted to be on. I've done the things I wanted to do. I built the kind of company and the vision that I wanted, made my mama proud. And how about I use this energy to make somebody else's mom proud? So when he gets in the largest publication in our space as a guy that didn't even know what the space was five months ago, Brian gets to make his mom proud. And that content is not taken off anywhere, but I'm like, I've been recording a lot of content like, yo, I got this intern, it's crushing me on leveling me up and yada, yada, yada.
(26:02):
It's been really fun. It's been really, really fun. It's learning. It's just learning. And I love being in a position where I get to learn a lot. Yeah, it's been really fun. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't know. I mean, there are not a lot of people who can get a kick out of being wrong the way that you can or people like us. We'll just say people like us who, I don't mind being wrong. It's fine. I'm not going to cry about it, but I'd rather learn from it. And it's more fun to learn that stuff real time than to just be the thought leader that's correct all the time. I think I get a really big kick out of doing live presentations, whether it's a webinar or an onstage thing where I can tell people like, "Hey, you can react real time." Usually in a webinar, you can say, "Ask me questions throughout or if you think something's wrong, just say it.
(26:03):
I don't mind. Then I'll be wrong and then we can talk about it." I'll be like, "Oh, that was my mistake." I mean, fortunately it doesn't happen all the time because at some point you're like, "Well, I don't want to be wrong all the time." All the time. Constantly wrong, but just so loud. No, but I appreciate that back and forth because that helps me learn. It keeps me engaged because then I'm like, "Oh." Or even if it's just, "Oh, this example that I'm giving isn't clear. Okay, that's fine. I can learn from this." And when you see the faces in the crowd, they're like, "Huh?" You're like, "Oh, shoot. I got to make this better right now. I'm losing them." Yeah. Big shout out to Dana DiTomaso. Yeah. I've gotten off a stage twice and had her be like, "You know that thing is wrong, right?" And I'm like, "Thank you so much.
(26:05):
You said something I never thought of myself is I like having deep expertise in a space, and I also like being around people that can find holes in my expertise because that's part of the process of knowing that you're constantly trying to get better instead of relying on your years of experience as your entree in." It's like, no, the reason why I hopefully can create value for people is because I'm open enough to put stuff out that I might be wrong on to then be told I was wrong. Great. Versus trying to not get that feedback. Dana DiTomaso is so sweet and kind with her feedback, but you better believe. She's like, "Wil, you know this thing changed in GA two months ago or three months ago, so you can't do the thing that you just showed and not be like, Thank you so much every time.That's a blessing because I think what happens, honestly, most speakers go back in the speaker lounges like that doesn't know this and that and he was wrong.
(26:07):
And it's like, well, why don't you tell that person? They wanted to know. Why are you telling me? It wasn't my presentation, dog. Go tell a person who did it. And it's like, no, I just want to talk behind their back. And you're like, well, then you're not my kind of people. Yeah. No, I talk to my face. It's fine. Actually, the funny thing is that for them it's talking shit. For me, it's learning. It's like, no, I want to learn if I'm off. I want to be challenged on my ideas and you better come with your data. You better come and keep your stuff hard. But if I give you mine and I'm like, nope, you're wrong, boom, boom. And then they're like, no, you're wrong because of doom, doo, doom. I'm like, oh, oh. But I want to have that disagreement because that's where the learning comes from to me.
(26:08):
That's the thing I really, really appreciate about a lot of the work you do where you're constantly testing things and researching and even just seeing these things at scale where you're like, oh, I think this is right. Or I've seen this thing work. Let's run it 10 more times, or however many times you do these kinds of studies. And you're always willing to share along the way like, oh, here's what we got right. Here's what's still right a week later. Here's what's still right a month later. And then this thing is not so durable. And that's also helped me a lot. Oh, and if you watch the MicroConf YouTube video, I actually, it's towards the end, I do cite some of your research on - No way. Yeah, it's much later, but I talk about how you found, what was it? It was about a negative review being picked up by LLMs, but the way you can combat it and yeah.
(26:10):
It's funny. So I got a lot of presentations. You probably in the same mode right now, it's presentation season. Yeah. I just was cleaning up one of them and I'm like, yep, there's Amanda. There's her quote. There it is. It's like the one that I have about third party review sites. And you've been talking a lot about that. I'm starting to talk a lot about this concept that, especially for SEO, a lot of the wins were, how do I overcome the corporate inertia to allow myself to get this little block of space, the bottom of this page to put these words in? And if you could do that, you were able to run. Can I link to other pages from there so I can do my internal linking? I can change the title descriptions and I got this box of texts that I can put on.
(26:27):
And I'm really starting to contemplate how in an AI world, oftentimes it's trying to validate what you say about yourself with third party sources that Google never did. If your domain authority was high enough, you could put content at the bottom of a page and rank for all kinds of stuff you never did. And I got tons of examples of this, that in an AI world, that brand can't show up at all because they never really did it. And I think there's something to be said for, we're about to enter a world where a strong optimizer, AI specifically, will have to be really adept at working across divisions because now you need to go get receipts. And the review example for us was me doing that for my own business. I went and said, oh, so there's a review that says we have high account manager turnover.
(27:17):
First thing, I don't know if that's true or not. Not being defensive. And also I know who wrote the review. It's only one, but it's like maybe that was their experience, but that's not who we are, but yet it was showing up for 38% of my prompts. So you're like, all right, I should probably take a look into this. So then I went and actually ran my account manager turnover for my HR team. So now to create the win that I created, I had to jump out of SEO spaces and go into the HR space. What do our numbers look like? Most SEOs can't talk to the HR team, but if something's showing up in AI says something bad about your company and you can't talk to the HR team to get content from them to then put on the page to then own the answer, you can't change it.
(27:58):
I think we're going to become assemblers of the receipts that validate the statements that we're putting on our site. And so often you're going to have to do that across social and so many other places. So it's just something I've been gelling on a lot that I've been like, man, you can't just put the text in the box and get really good at how many times you need to interlink it to win. You're going to actually have to say, is the thing in the box true and how would I go and find the receipts and make the receipts that when they validate it, they're like, yeah, that's probably true. This
Amanda Natividad (28:26):
Kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier about this post-AI world where it is nice to be seeing competition again, to be seeing products getting better. This for me is the whole thing with AI visibility now. Now people care more about that, but to have better AI visibility, a lot of it is having those third party reviews and public evidence about you saying those things. So it's like I do appreciate that the interest in AI visibility is actually interest in good content marketing, good PR, good product marketing, better positioning. It's just kind of a new way to look at it or measure it.
Wil Reynolds (29:09):
Girl, especially I think with my favorite thing is query fan out. I'm like, "Oh, they're putting brands in the fan out. What are we doing to become a brand that it's hardwired to know is associated with this topic?" I can't, here's your box of text my way into re-hardwiring the brain of AI or ChatGPT in this model to be like, "Because I put this text box on the bottom of my webpage that now says, Seer Interactive is great at this thing, I can win now." And it's like, "Nope, nope. We're doing fan outs with other brands that we already believe are good at that thing." You know what AI does? AI pretty much sits across from you when you make statements, not for every example. I know Rand's going to hear this and be like, "I got five examples of that not being true." I'd be like, "I know there's bad examples out there, but AI kind of sits across from you after you're like," I do all these things great and I'm great and I'm great.
(29:57):
"And it's not impressed, right? When you're searching, it's like, nah, you said you're great at this thing, but I already know that these companies are. I believe that these companies are great on it based on my training. So you're going to have to prove to me over a long period of time that I should replace these five default hotel brands for luxury brands with your new upstart. And I'm sorry, you can't go acquire a domain or acquire a company with a huge domain authority, switch all the content and just drop luxury all over the damn thing and win. I'm sorry, you're going to have to win that legitimately. Go win some awards. Go do things that make people want to review you and say great things about you. I just wrote an article about a hotel I stayed at in Mexico City because they were freaking amazing.
(30:41):
So be amazing and people will write stuff about you.
Amanda Natividad (30:45):
Yeah, that's true. It's zero click marketing, friends. It's that easy and it's that hard.
Wil Reynolds (30:53):
But it's like, I love having to own your shit. You know what I'm saying? For so long, companies didn't have to own their shit. If they just had a big enough domain authority, they could say whatever they really wanted and win. And if another company wasn't willing to put a block of text with a bunch of words at the bottom, they lost. And my favorite example of this is if people go and search for ethical genes and you do the search, you see Banana Republic is number five or six. And you're like, nobody thinks of Banana Republic as an ethical jeans company. So how did they get there? And you scroll to the bottom and you're like, internal linking box, big block of text. If we just say ethical, ethical, ethical enough in the text and put it in the title in the H1, we now can be an ethical jeans company.
(31:39):
And they get away with that on Google. And on AI, I have run that prompt probably 500 times. Banana Republic has never shown up because they have no receipts that say they actually care about the environment at the same level as a bunch of other people who spent all their time caring about the environment and figuring out how much dye they used and how that affected the environment and how much CO2 is used and whether or not people are getting paid a fair wage. They did the actual work to be ethical. And because they didn't just go to the bottom of their pages and go ethical jeans, ethical jeans, ethical jeans, ethical jeans, we're ethical, we're ethical, we're ethical, ethical. They went out and got the awards and got the certifications that they were doing things right and they treated people well and they did social media around how they treat people in these different countries who make their jeans.
(32:22):
And you got beat by Banana Republic because they had a SEO team who could just put the word ethical jeans at the bottom of a page that nobody sees. I'm taking AI search all day over Google search for that. You know what I'm saying?
Amanda Natividad (32:36):
Yeah. Thank you for that. That is the current example of why I didn't understand SEO for a long time. For a long time, I understood it, but I also didn't get it. And this is kind of how I came up in content marketing in the way that I did over the past what, 10, 12 years, which is I knew of the things like, oh, put it in the H1 header and then hide it in the thing and then blah, blah, blah. I knew of those black hat tricks and stuff and people were like, that's how you do SEO. When people have talked about doing that, I've been like, then I don't understand SEO because I don't get it. Why would you want to do that and try to trick people if you don't actually create ethical jeans? Then why do you want to attract the person who wants ethical jeans when you don't even make that?
(33:31):
But then they're going to find you out some way at some point, but I don't understand it. And I think that was the thing that I would say to teams and teams would be like, "What is wrong with you? Just your job and shut up." But I don't get it. Why do you want that customer? If you are not an ethical jeans maker, doesn't have to mean you're an evil jeans maker. Maybe you're a value driven. That's okay. Old Navy makes some really, really great soft, comfy, value cheap jeans. There's something to be said for that. And there's a market for that clearly. But I'm like, "But why would I want to capture the ethical people if I make value focused jeans? Don't I want the value people? I don't understand. Why do we want to rank for this thing?" And people are like, "Because SEO." And I'm like, "I don't understand this industry
Wil Reynolds (34:21):
Then." No, everything you're saying is true. I think unfortunately our KPIs have led us to a series of tactics and activities that for a lot of folks, me included, not holier than that, did stuff that you're like, "Ah, how long do I have to do this before I get rewarded for trying to do something bigger than this?" And people love to show their little Google search console graph, "Ooh, look at my impressions and my traffic. So I'm good at SEO." And you're like, "But did the people buy stuff? Is that really what they do?" And it's like, "Oh, shut up. I did a programmatic. Let me show you my freaking agents." And you're like, "Eh, Jesus Christ, man." And that's one of the things I really love about AI search is I really believe that it is going to force a large subset of SEOs to have to reevaluate everything that gave them expertise.
(35:18):
So when people say SEO and GEO are the same, I'm always like, here's the Banana Republic example. Explain yourself. If they're the same, explain this because why isn't Banana Republic showing up since they're the same? Because it's like, no, they're not the same. There are nuances. So there are parts that are the same. And this is also the thing that gets so many SEOs in trouble because they try to say it's all the same and then they're taking that up to an executive who's like, no, it's different. Answers are different.You look at visibility. I'm working on a slide deck right now and it's like, man, you're starting to see the word not in front of brands and you're like, ChatGPT is starting to say, don't use this brand, but you're visible. Your visibility metric went up. What percentage of your visibility metrics are coming on things where it's saying not to use Airbnb in front of your prompt?
(36:09):
There are certain cities and certain locations across the United States where ChatGPT, the newest model, not Astra, the five, six or whatever, will say, don't use Airbnb in this region. But if you're doing their visibility, you're like, you're visible because the word Airbnb showed up in the answer.
Amanda Natividad (36:28):
That's such a good example. That really goes back to you have to know why you want to be visible and when and to whom. What is this for? What business purpose is this serving?
Wil Reynolds (36:41):
Yeah, we're finding all kinds of crazy stuff that's happening right now.You're just really having to take a step back and be like, there's less magic server dust that I can just sprinkle across your website and all of a sudden, oof, you're just showing up for stuff. It's like, oh no, we have to do the hard work of earning the right to show up for this. And of course Listicles worked until they started putting brands in fan outs. And you could see, they have unlimited compute. It was interesting. More shortcut shit. It was like they have unlimited compute. We can all see the pattern of the new directory that you set up and we can see the new pages you added. We can see that you added them all on the same day. You don't think that these companies with unlimited compute can find that and go, that's not what we really want to reward.
(37:31):
So yeah, it was like, no, let's go, let's go, let's go. And now a lot of these companies who were basically doing glorified listicles, especially some of the software companies, they did the whole like, oh, we're just tracking." And you're like, "Yeah, but the way you're marketing your stuff is for people to build low quality pages. I can smell it." And now they're all like, "We're offering services." And it's like, yep, because the old stuff doesn't work. It just doesn't work because they're like, if you type in, "Hey, I'm looking for top SEO consultants, whatever these days." It's like, "Oh, I'm going to query fan out, Lily Ray, Mike King, Lill Reynolds, sometimes still ran Fishkin." But you're like, "Oh, so I can't write a top article and work my way in because these names have already been hardwired into the fan out." And you're like, "Yeah.
(38:13):
Well, how do I become hardwired into the fan out? Well, all of us have spoken at 10 or 20 conferences a year for 20 years. Do you want it that bad? No, I just want to build a page that lists all you guys and me above all of you." Those don't work anymore. I'm sorry, bro.
Amanda Natividad (38:29):
Doesn't work anymore. You can't do that. Too bad. So sad.
Wil Reynolds (38:33):
You got to earn some gray, baby. You got to get on some flights, baby. I'm sorry.
Amanda Natividad (38:39):
I love that. Okay.
Wil Reynolds (38:40):
You got to help some people.
Amanda Natividad (38:42):
Yeah.
Wil Reynolds (38:42):
So for me, my favorite metric in the world is for each piece of content I post, what percentage of that content gets more traffic from social than from algorithmic proxies for trust? Social and direct is like, I emailed this thing to Amanda. I sent it to her on WhatsApp. I sent it to her on Slack, direct, direct, direct, direct, direct. Because real people, I love traffic from Teams, Notebook LM, Calendars, Google Docs, internal learning knowledge platforms, because you start finding somewhere someone curated answers and resources and thought we created some content that was worth them curating. Google and AI are just proxies for human trust. I'd rather know I'm earning human trust than to try to win for the proxy of human trust because then I got a chance to potentially win both.
Amanda Natividad (39:39):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we do and do not think of it that way at SparkToro. We don't have an AI strategy or AI marketing strategy, but we do and have always done the things that matter to us as marketers and business people, which is creating content we believe is helpful, creating research we believe is helpful, getting on conferences, getting mentions in publications, all those things. And then now we have pretty solid AI visibility with respect to audience research or where we want to show up. It's on purpose, but also not on purpose. We never though, how do we show up here? It was more of like, well, we want to help people be credible, do good work. We want to move this conversation of audience research and better marketing forward. And we're doing it in all these ways, AKA marketing. And then the AI visibility piece comes in at the end as the latent signal of, oh, those things you've been doing for the past six years, it worked.
Wil Reynolds (40:43):
Question for you. Have you ever contemplated if someone was starting SparkToro without Rand's distribution off the rip, how much longer would the journey be to show up in AI search? Have you ever tried to unpack or process like, wait, the value of a personal brand being connected to a brand is now exponentially higher because that person has instant distribution that changes how we get to show up because they're already going to the conferences, they're already trusted. The AI already sees them as a trusted name. They're already in the fan outs and knows to look for their opinions. Have you ever guys have ever thought about trying to separate those two things? Because a lot of people are starting things from scratch and they don't have that distribution. So for some people they could be like, well, we just did all the right stuff and it's this, but it's like you can do it faster because you, Rand, have distribution as do I, that makes it easier because our names are in fan outs already and whatnot.
(41:39):
Have you ever thought about that or tried to unpack that?
Amanda Natividad (41:41):
I have thought about it. I've never tried to unpack it. I would like to.
Wil Reynolds (41:45):
That would be
Amanda Natividad (41:46):
Super interesting.
Wil Reynolds (41:46):
It feels almost impossible, but the way you would test it is you'd almost be like, all right. I mean, but you have to find a competitor or something. But let's say you acquired, let's just make this up. You acquired a competing company and you're like, I'm going to keep Rand attached to SparkToro, but this competing company that's been out for a year or so but doesn't have our distribution, Rand doesn't attach his name to that really, doesn't do distribution at all. How long does it take for them to eventually come up to be in FanOuts and things like that without the Rand connection? It would just be such an interesting test. It'd be really hard to test.
Amanda Natividad (42:17):
It would be hard.
Wil Reynolds (42:19):
It'd be hard. It'd be hard. Why would I acquire a business and then not use my distribution to help it be successful for the sake of a test? So really what I'm saying in it is I believe that there is a higher value for people like us in a post AI world because we bring instant credibility. Wil Reynolds was like, okay, fine. Yo had to build domain authority. It's like it's different. I'm now baked into the thing for certain types of words that then make anything that I touch easier to show up in AI than if I didn't have that.
Amanda Natividad (42:51):
That's interesting. I want to figure out how to measure that in some way, how to unpack that.
Wil Reynolds (42:58):
If you want, I would do something with you. I would literally, I would try, I'd be willing to torch a site. I'd be willing to just start something from scratch. I'd be willing to put some money to acquire a site that we're like, we found a site, we had to go pay five grand for it, but we paid for it, got it. And now we're not putting our name behind it, but we're doing onsite optimizations that somebody else who would not have access to somebody like us. Or has it become like, no, you buy the site and you buy some other influencers in the space, but I mean, you're probably getting hit up a bunch. The influencer shit's crazy, girl. Yeah,
Amanda Natividad (43:29):
It's crazy.
Wil Reynolds (43:31):
Nobody asked me AI search. They're realizing you create value by connecting your name closer to these topics. So the fact that people are getting paid 1,000, two grand for LinkedIn posts, dog. I'm like, that wasn't happening pre-AI. So now all of a sudden the market has spoken and said, no, no, no, no, no. You little Amandas and Wil's and people like you, you got distribution that helps us to show up in a lot of places. We're trying to piggyback off your authenticity, the brand that you built. 2,500 bucks for a post on LinkedIn to me is insane. I
Amanda Natividad (44:06):
Mean, that's what my starting rate is if people ask me because I'm also like, it's my credibility. If you have a crappy AI tool, I'm not going to just talk about that like, oh, try this cool thing because what if I think it sucks? I'm not going to do that.
Wil Reynolds (44:21):
Well, then you lose the thing that they came to you for in the first place. Yeah,
Amanda Natividad (44:25):
Absolutely. And that's not worth 2,000 or $3,000 to me. It isn't. So I'll tell people like, oh, my rate starts at 2,000. Let's talk though.
Wil Reynolds (44:40):
It's so crazy that to me, it's very post-AI world. It's funny, in a Google world, the number of requests that I got to do a post on LinkedIn, zero. In a world where you just couldn't SEO your way in and you had to earn it through things like people talking about you and AI, I guess, all of a sudden they show up multiple times a week and I'm like, that's an interesting shift.
Amanda Natividad (45:04):
That is interesting.
Wil Reynolds (45:06):
While companies are pretty much ignoring the people in their own companies who already are passionate, they're going out and talking to me. It's like, no, take the person and build them up and build them a profile over time.
Amanda Natividad (45:14):
Right. But then
Wil Reynolds (45:15):
They don't want to do
Amanda Natividad (45:16):
That. What if they leave the company?
Wil Reynolds (45:19):
And my boy John Shahada said, next time somebody says, what if they leave? Ask them, what if they never join in the first place? And I was like, he's right. Oh, you're so worried about people leaving. What if they never join you in the first place and we already know what that looks like? Three grand of LinkedIn post, dog. You've never rewarded people to stay with you and to come and bring their skills and talents to you. So now you're selling out 30 Gs a month to get 10 different influencers to freaking talk about it. You maybe should have just incentivized somebody internally, but you were so worried about them leaving that now you got to pay me. Come on to Papa so I can donate this money to this freaking nonprofit.
Amanda Natividad (45:57):
I love this. This is a good point to end. We're coming up on the hour. This was great, Wil. Dude, talking to you gives me so much energy. Since you're hiring, I am curious about what this means for you now in this stage of your career life and the stage of where Seer Interactive is at. Because I imagine for you, hiring someone now versus hiring someone 15 years ago are two very, very, very different roles. So I'm curious about how you're thinking about it, the kind of person you want to hire. Curious about all
Wil Reynolds (46:29):
That. Okay. Yes, I know exactly. So it's the same person as 15 years ago. It's not the same person as 10 or five or three. I am now realizing I am trying to recreate the company I built and I'm trying to figure out, it takes a lot of work, but I look back at the people I hired when I started this business and I see what the damage they've done. They were beasts after they left and they stayed here for a long time and you're like, because you know what? We have all this process in place now on this is how to do this and how to do that. When I hired people, when I hired people and I was like CEO over a 30, 20, 30 person company back in 15, 18 years ago, I would sit in interviews and be like, yo, this is why I fire people.
(47:17):
So if you do these things, don't come here because I'll fire you and go to sleep instantly and not feel bad. So don't leave your current job and come here because I can't handle this. I needed people who were like, yo, I want to be in the mix. I want to be in the arena. I don't want anybody telling me how to do my job. I want to be able to prove my value with data and not that my boss likes me and like that. And they didn't want to work on ops. I was like, yo, we just landed this client. We got to go win for them. Well, what does that look like? I don't know, but I'm here to help. I will help you. I will never leave you behind. I will always help you to figure out we're going to go win for this client.
(47:49):
That was the early years. Then you realize that's not good. My way of running a company is not good for long-term growth and profitability because think about what I just said to you. Yo, you want to go buy a website for 5Gs? Let's go do it. Let's go test it. I'm a tester, an experimenter, and a learner. And if I got to drop 5Gs, it's like a whatever. That's not good. There were times where I had Red Bull bills that were like a thousand bucks a month and you're like, how are spending a thous buck a month? I forgot. I bought some Red Bull for some people that liked it in the fricking fridge. I'm not good at running a business. So what happens is 15 or 18 years ago, it was intense because I like to win and I like to surround myself with people who want to win.
(48:29):
And then you realize that level of intensity that got us to a decent place start to become a liability and was like, ooh, I'm flattening the business out. I'm not focusing on the right things. And then luckily I had a team of people that'd been with me that kind of took it from there and then it grew like crazy. And now I'm like, oh, the world is completely new again. 18 years ago, search was new. Today, AI search is new. Oh snap, something's rekindled in me. I love when the world changes and I'm starting to snap into the guy that I was back then. The guy that I was back then was just like, like I said, I would sit in interviews because I was like, I'm a CEO. I'm running this company. I don't have time to spend all my time trying to interview people and getting it wrong and I'm getting it wrong a lot.
(49:15):
So what's the best way to do it? Scare somebody out of not coming. Don't come here if you do these things because they don't work for me. I'm like, so do an honest assessment of yourself and if you're those things, don't come here. I can wait and take business on later. I have no investors. I don't need to take this business on. What I don't want to do is be reminding you to do your job. And I've always said, I don't want my job to ever be checking in on you to see if you did your job because then my job sucks and I'm the CEO. So I think that I'm back now in that mode of like, oh my God, the world has changed. It reminds me of 2008 all over again. It's like the world has changed. We seem to know a thing or two about the way this thing is going that's resonating in the market.
(49:58):
And then you got to find a bunch of change loving to work with. And a lot of people that you hire, especially coming out of the pandemic where things were crazy, they were built for ops. How do I operationalize all this business that we're getting? It's very different person and people and things that they love than, hey, I love when the entire world has changed and nobody knows where they're going because the whole game got reset and now none of your experience matters. It's all about who wants to learn this stuff the best, the fastest and wants to win. It's very different than everyone knows all the rules. Everybody knows how all this works. How do we operationalize this thing to be better than other companies that don't? Those are different skill sets. So yeah, I think for me, it literally is a rekindling of this thing that I was like, okay, search, got it.
(50:49):
Trying to move it forward. And then the world changed and I was like, oh, I didn't realize that's where I spike. I spike when the world changes. And that's been the thing. So I'm looking for the same person today. That's why I talked to you about the intern who's in search engine land in four months because that's what we did for our employees back when it was just me. I'd be like, yo, I'm bringing you along. You're blogging, you're writing. If somebody tries to recruit you, good. You know why? Because I would rather have a company that people want to recruit from than one that nobody knows. And you're like, I'd rather people know you're great because then it forces me to be a better CEO to you. Why should you bring your skills and talents here if now all these people know how great you are?
(51:24):
Great. I'm going to learn something. It's all learning. I think that's the theme of this whole thing. It's like, if I lose you because I allowed you to write publicly about some banging then I learn from that sting. The thing I shouldn't learn is don't have your people write. It's be a better CEO that makes them get that offer or get that opportunity and go, no, I'm going to still ride with you anyway. Cool. And if they leave, that's part of your job. Make them more employable.
Amanda Natividad (51:51):
Yeah. It's a company. It's not a family.
Wil Reynolds (51:54):
It's not. I had to learn that in early days. I used to be like, we're a family. And then one day I was like, oh my God, we're like a sports team that people assemble to win a championship. And then some people get offers with other places. And I just love watching people win. And I think it's been really easy for me to also watch people leave Seer and be really happy for them. All right, that was it. Thank you for that question. That was really good. It was a really good question. It really made me think a lot.
Amanda Natividad (52:18):
Good. Thank you. I love talking to you, dude.This gives me so much energy. You're fun.
Wil Reynolds (52:25):
We get to do something that we think is fun. We happen to get paid for it.
Amanda Natividad (52:31):
Yeah.
Wil Reynolds (52:31):
And we also get to bring a lot of people along with us and that's fun.
Amanda Natividad (52:37):
It is.
Wil Reynolds (52:39):
All right.
Amanda Natividad (52:39):
Okay.
Wil Reynolds (52:40):
Thanks for being a good human. Later.
Amanda Natividad (52:41):
Thank you. Thank you for listening or watching Zero Click Marketing. We'll see you next week.