[00:00:00] Arsen: And we are live. Awesome. Let’s give it a second for people to start coming in. Show up in your streamer. This is an example of click. Okay. Oh, let’s remove that. Awesome. So yeah, like, like what we were saying. So, you know, we, we, we we’re seeing this, this emergence of, of, of posts that I actually saw the other day where there is no recipe card, right?
[00:00:27] Arsen: It’s just a post. And they wrote about the recipe and there’s no recipe card there. You know, the, the, the standard check box approach for some of the queries, it just no longer applies because it was like, this is not what the user wants to see anymore.
[00:00:43] Katie: Hmm. It’s like old school back in 2020. I didn’t have recipe cards either.
[00:00:48] Arsen: Right, right. Okay. Awesome. I think we’re good. I think we’re recording. We got some people coming in. Everybody say hello. Hopefully we’ll be able to see your comments here. Awesome. So welcome to Top Head Chats. Today we’ll be talking about why brand is becoming critical in a AI driven search, and how brand and SEO can strengthen each other for long-term visibility.
[00:01:11] Arsen: I have Katie Trent from Fruit D Brand Labs. Hello Katie. Tell us about yourself. For those who don’t know who you are.
[00:01:18] Katie: Yeah, so I am Katie and let’s see where to begin. I, I’m a food blogger. IW have been writing a site a recipe site since 2010, so going pretty far back. I’ve worked with Rson before on a bunch of SEO staff trying to build that business.
[00:01:38] Katie: But the blog has always been a kind of side hustle for me because I had a full-time job working in brand strategy agencies for the last 15 years. And so doing brand strategy and building brand platform for big, big and small global companies. You know, everything from startups. I’ve built brands from nothing that didn’t exist, you know, created new products and.
[00:02:05] Katie: And service brands and and then worked with big established brands doing, you know, doing, redoing their brand strategy and brand platforms. And a couple of years ago, the conversation in the creator space really started to shift. It was all SEO up until a couple of years ago, and then everybody started talking about brand, and I saw this need for someone who spoke the creator language and the brand language to provide a service for creators.
[00:02:34] Katie: So that’s why I built Foodie Brand Lab.
[00:02:37] Arsen: Awesome. And yeah, you know, you, you’ve, you’re, you’re, you’re not newbie to the industry. You, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve been to all the events. You, you, you mm-hmm. You, you’ve kind of gone through through the processes here. Mm-hmm. Just like with all of our other episodes, we will be having a q and a at the end.
[00:02:52] Arsen: If you have a question do submit it in chat here. Make sure you put a queue in front of it so that we know that we know that it’s a question that you want us to answer. When people registered for this webinar, they submitted questions. What we’ve done is we’ve taken these questions and we’ve condensed them into topics, and we’re gonna go through these questions with Katie and she’s gonna answer them for us.
[00:03:13] Arsen: So we’re gonna jump right in. Katie, what makes brand identifiable today, especially when AI is everywhere?
[00:03:23] Katie: That’s a big question
[00:03:25] Arsen: right away. Here we go. I
[00:03:26] Katie: mean, I think you have to go back a little bit, right? And even establish what is a brand, because I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what we are talking about when we talk about brand.
[00:03:38] Katie: And when I hear people in the creator space talk about brand, they’re typically. Talking about brand identity or they’re talking about one aspect of a brand. So they are referring to their logo or their visual identity elements or their confusing niche and brand. And what I like to the, the kind of like high level explanation that I like to give people for what a brand is, is a brand is a tool that is used to shape perception and the work that we do of branding, like having a visual identity, having a brand tonality, having a brand personality is all in the name of shaping that perception.
[00:04:23] Katie: So the question, how does a brand stand out in this age of ai? It’s like what aspect of a brand? I think that what, what the question is probably referring to is in this age of ai, are people recognizing. My brand. And then the answer to that question is like, have you done enough work to shape the perception of your brand that it’s sticking out, that the robots and the, you know, the LLMs are
[00:04:54] Arsen: right,
[00:04:55] Katie: identifying, they’re, they’re grabbing onto those branding elements like your name, your logo, your personality to highlight you in the search results.
[00:05:06] Katie: And I think that yeah, our, our brand standing out, I think yes, they are not necessarily almost correctly. When I asked some questions, I got a really weird answer from chat GPT the other day and I was like, this is not correct information. I asked about a movie and it told me that, that like Katie Holmes was in it.
[00:05:29] Katie: And I was like, no, that’s not. True. And I know that without even looking at the answers. So whether they’re pulling correct information about your brand or not is, you know, another issue. But yeah.
[00:05:40] Arsen: Right. So what about like a person being a brand? Like, like you’re, you get, you’re not separating like brand from yourself as the blogger, as the content creator.
[00:05:52] Arsen: You have like a specific, but what if the brand is you? I am the brand.
[00:05:56] Katie: So I think that I actually did a webinar about personal brand a few weeks ago, and I think we’re gonna link to that. So there’s a recording that people can watch. And I do a deep dive into this topic because a lot of what I hear these days is personal brand is so important, especially because we’re, you know, as I’m a recipe creator, so this is what I’m referring to or my, you know, background and what we’re.
[00:06:22] Katie: We’re bumping up against is AI generated recipes, you know, these scraper sites that are taking entire sites and entire recipes and replicating them with AI written posts and AI photos and so on. And I think the conversation around personal brand comes from that place and around the need to be really human and relatable to kind of differentiate yourself from the robots and from the AI generated content.
[00:06:51] Katie: But I think that a really important piece of the puzzle that’s missing is that a personal brand is still a brand. So when we’re branding a person, it, if, if a brand is a tool that’s used to shape perception of a product or a company, a personal brand is a tool that’s used to shape perception of a person rather than a company or a product or so on.
[00:07:15] Katie: And I think that many creators have personal brands. And their site might be a personal brand or it might be a more traditional brand that they are the representative of. So they’re not necessarily always the same thing.
[00:07:31] Arsen: Right. Right. How do you know if you have a strong brand or not? I,
[00:07:37] Katie: the thing about brand is that our brands live in the hearts and minds of the people who interact with them.
[00:07:45] Katie: So our brand is actually up to the users, not to us. And having a strong brand, you know, there are signals to know whether you have a strong brand or not. And you know, one of them that’s really simple is like the amount of branded search that you have. Are people typing in your name or are they, you know, if, if it’s potato soup, are they typing in potato soup or are they typing in arson potato soup?
[00:08:11] Katie: I hope not,
[00:08:11] Arsen: right?
[00:08:12] Katie: Yeah. Maybe. Hey, nutrition lady Potato soup better.
[00:08:15] Arsen: I need, I need to see what’s there when people do that, but go ahead.
[00:08:18] Katie: Yeah, but, and actually recently, like shortly before Christmas, I think Google Search Console actually added a branded search filter. Mm-hmm. So I think that’s a really clear signal from Google of the importance of brands.
[00:08:32] Katie: So you’re now able, I don’t think it has been rolled out globally yet, but some people anyways are able to go into Google Search Console and look at the volume of branded search that you have. And I think that that’s a really good indicator of a strong brand is if people are searching for you by name.
[00:08:51] Katie: And then if it’s not just branded traffic, it’s return traffic. So people who are re are loyal return visitors and direct traffic as well. Right. You know, I talked to, I, I was on, bjork’s podcast like a year and a half ago. And I was talking to him about this and he said that he had, at that point, I mean things could have changed between now and then that he had run the numbers and realized that they could lose all their organic traffic and they would be okay.
[00:09:19] Katie: And I think that’s a testament to how strong their brand is with Pinch of Yum. That they have enough direct returning traffic and branded traffic that, you know, of course they don’t want the organic to go away, but it could.
[00:09:31] Arsen: Right. You know, and with that it’s kind of creating that separation between like niche and brand and, and understanding what that separation is.
[00:09:38] Arsen: Right? Yeah. ’cause a lot of times you’ll be associated with like a, a, a specific topic, right?
[00:09:44] Katie: Yep.
[00:09:45] Arsen: And, and, and a lot of times the, the, there’s like what you said earlier, there’s confusion between brand and niche, right? So when you look at it that way how specific should branding be, how to clarify and tighten that brand niche?
[00:10:00] Arsen: Connection without shrinking your audience.
[00:10:03] Katie: I think that if you have a strong brand, you can have a narrow niche without shrinking your audience. And I think a really good example of this is the gym chain F 45, if you’re familiar with that.
[00:10:16] Arsen: Yep.
[00:10:16] Katie: I mean, they have a very niche offering, right? It’s, you go in, you do this 45 minute long program.
[00:10:22] Katie: It’s like a thing, it’s a product, but I don’t know if you’ve ever been into an F 45 gym. You go in there and who’s in there? Everyone, there’s like gym bros, there’s grandmas, there’s teenagers, there’s like literally, you know, you have the entire population in there interacting with this really, really niche brand.
[00:10:41] Katie: And I think that that’s a testament to how, you know, how good and how powerful that brand is. And I think that, so, you know, you can be very, very niche. And I think that in some. Situations like we, I think we get really hung up on niche in the food space. I don’t know how many people in your audience are in the food space versus, you know, other niches as well.
[00:11:08] Katie: But I think in the food space, people were told to niche down for so many years because it was a way to differentiate yourself. And a lot of people felt kind of like backed into a corner. Like they were sort of trapped in this niche. And I think the power of brand, if your brand is strong and you know who you are, you have a really clear brand position and you know who you serve, you know what your values are, you know what you purpose is, it kind of liberates you to grow beyond your niche because the only way as we know to survive in business and like online businesses, of course, more than.
[00:11:49] Katie: More than ever. Right now, the only way to survive is to change. And I think if you feel trapped by a niche that’s, you know, it can be kind of a scary feeling, but having a strong brand is like your compass for navigating change. And that could be change within your niche or it can be change, you know, tr trying to serve a new audience.
[00:12:08] Katie: I think like another example of this is like Stanley, the mugs,
[00:12:13] Arsen: right? Right.
[00:12:13] Katie: I mean, this was, this was a brand that served a niche, like it served construction workers and like old men that went fishing and then they, you know, had this idea to re-release this, this product. And all of a sudden, like every suburban mom has a Stanley Cup and.
[00:12:35] Katie: So this brand, you know, they haven’t changed and their core, their purpose and their values and their brand identity even haven’t changed, but they kind of pivoted into an entirely new audience. So I wouldn’t say their niche changed at all. They still make the same kinds of products, but, you know, having a brand that was strong like that allowed them to evolve and growth.
[00:12:58] Arsen: Right. And we see this all the time. We see brands shifting without, without moving away from their core. Right? Yeah. We see them shift and enter new audiences, new markets, and new segments. So, you know, doubling down on your brand or niche.
[00:13:12] Katie: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:12] Arsen: If you really want to strengthen that, right? Like if you really want to, Hey, this is me and this is what my brand is, and this is where we, this is like our, we, we, we a lot of times say this is our, our topical authority, right?
[00:13:25] Arsen: This is our topical depth. Mm-hmm. Like if you’re only writing about like, slow cooker or crockpot recipes, right? Mm-hmm. How do you double down on that without, without like sounding a, like a broken record? How do you like continue to present that and, and, and expose that into new audiences without like, just like, okay, we’ve heard the spiel already.
[00:13:43] Katie: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think that if you, and I do see these days you have a lot of creators that have multiple sites, right? So like, I worked with a creator who had one site that was kind of like California living. It was like a lot of plant forward recipes, a lot of Mediterranean diet. A lot of gluten-free.
[00:14:09] Katie: And then she was like, oh yeah, but I have this other site that’s only slow cooker recipes and I have another site that’s only air fryer recipes. And this is where each of those sites that she had was, had its own distinct brand and she was her personal brand kind of straddled if there was like a Venn diagram of all these different brands that she operated, her personal brand was the driver of all of them.
[00:14:41] Katie: And so I think that, you know, if you’re gonna go super narrow and be like, I am only gonna do slow cooker recipes, or I’m only gonna do like, I’m gonna have a dog bakery site, you know, I’m gonna make d dog treats. I’m sure there, there’s a site there that does that. Like of course you’re audience becomes.
[00:15:03] Katie: Potentially a bit more narrow, but your authority in that subject will only grow. And if you’re a, if you as a personal brand have that topical authority in more than one site, or more than one niche, then I think that that allows your personal brand to become more robust. I mean, topical authority is more your domain than mine.
[00:15:28] Katie: I’m, I’m in Brand Strat. I can talk about brand position and that kind of thing until the cows come home. But I think that that idea of, you know, being boxed in by a niche because you’re only focusing on one thing, I think you need to let the brand be in the driver’s seat. Right. In order to let it grow.
[00:15:51] Arsen: And this kind of like goes into our next question here, which has to do with AI because it’s, it’s about that, it’s about your brand positioning, right? And topical authority, and then that spread. Yeah. Like do who, are you only saying this on your own website, on your blog?
[00:16:05] Katie: Yeah.
[00:16:05] Arsen: Or are you being more, and they use this term a lot omnipresent, right?
[00:16:09] Arsen: Yeah. With your brand and what you mm-hmm. What you have to say. And the question is like, in the a drive, AI driven search environment where content is reduced clicks are reduced. What brand signals still matter and, and how do we intentionally build them?
[00:16:25] Katie: Hmm. Yeah. You know, I think that I, I, all the brand designers are gonna hate me when I say this, but to me, I was talking to someone about this the other day and I.
[00:16:41] Katie: I, I’m kind of, of the opinion that, especially because I don’t know how it is in other niches, I know the food niche quite well and something like 70% of our users are on mobile now. Right. And I think even like that technology is gonna change, like will it be mobile in five years or will it be like on glasses?
[00:17:02] Katie: Are we gonna be, you know, seeing things? So I think that a lot of the branding elements that have felt so near and dear to us, like our logo and our graphic elements and so on, I think have become less important because of that change in technology. And then brand signals like your name that are gonna be memorable, that, you know, even if, if it pops up in an AI overview.
[00:17:31] Katie: I think an AI overview is not necessarily gonna surface your logo, but they might surface your name. They might surface your tone of voice or your you know, if you have a name for your brand and then you as the creator or author have another name, you know, they can be paired together. So I think those signals become more important.
[00:17:53] Katie: Then other things like visual identity that were previously quite important. I’m not saying that visual identity is unimportant, right? It is still a brand differentiator. Right. And like a visual cue. But I think like if I’m, you know, we’re talking about AI search and AI overviews and so on that. And, and mobile usage that those the kind of order of priority flips a bit there.
[00:18:16] Katie: I don’t know. What do you think about
[00:18:17] Arsen: that? Yeah, I, you know, I, I agree with you. You know, we we’re looking at an environment where a user is presented with information that the overview is, is a summary, right? It’s a summary, yeah. Of, of the topic that I’m searching for. So like, if I put in as an example, like Best Bikes for kids, right?
[00:18:35] Katie: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:35] Arsen: It’s going to give me that information. It’s not gonna gimme the full picture, it’s going to say mm-hmm. You know you know, according to this website, here are, you know, the best bikes are according to, but what it does is it’s collecting data from a bunch of places and it’s synthesizing, regurgitating that inform information to you, for lack of a better word.
[00:18:53] Katie: Yeah.
[00:18:53] Arsen: And, and. That’s probably going to be a zero click query for me, right? Mm-hmm. I’m going to read that information. I’m probably not gonna click over. I do see that on a side panel, who this is sourced for from.
[00:19:06] Katie: Yeah.
[00:19:06] Arsen: And I think for people like me, or people who are somewhat un un who understand the ecosystem that they’re in, in, in, in, in the search landscape, this, the, the platform and the surface they’re using, they’ll see like, oh, this is being sourced from like Facebook, or this is being sourced from a website, or this is being sourced from like a cycling magazine.
[00:19:23] Katie: Yeah.
[00:19:23] Arsen: So you kind of get a feel for like, okay, this information was synthesized for me. If it wasn’t, I would have to go through each one of these sources on my own and perform multiple searches to collect this. So then if I understand as a marketer, not as a searcher, the user journey, what would be my next query?
[00:19:41] Arsen: Right? So now that I’m brand aware
[00:19:44] Katie: mm-hmm.
[00:19:44] Arsen: From that query, I would probably do this versus this.
[00:19:49] Katie: Mm-hmm.
[00:19:49] Arsen: Brand versus brand plus something else. And most likely I’ll again be exposed. To, to an A IO an overview or a summarize answer if you’re in AI mode.
[00:19:59] Katie: Yeah.
[00:19:59] Arsen: So a lot of that exposure to brand initially happens without me even touching their website in the overview.
[00:20:07] Arsen: Yeah. And the information could be not even coming from them, from their website, it could be coming from third party sources, Reddit, YouTube, right? Yep. Probably not even, most of the time, not the actual brand creating the content, it could be third party generated. Right.
[00:20:21] Katie: Yeah.
[00:20:21] Arsen: So, and again, this is like that going back to, and I speak a lot about this like omnipresence right now, right?
[00:20:25] Arsen: Because if we do look at Aios and we pull that information like where, where else, especially in the food space.
[00:20:32] Katie: Yeah.
[00:20:32] Arsen: YouTube and Facebook are dominating that.
[00:20:34] Katie: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:35] Arsen: Right? So if you are in a part of, you know, brand. Presence and positioning is being across these social is, you know the old school way of thinking about it.
[00:20:44] Arsen: You want to be where your audience congregates for information, education, recreation. Right. So you wanna make sure your brand is present there. Yeah. And I think ai, at least in my view of this, the AI overviews and AI only mode inside of Google is where your audiences congregate for that information.
[00:21:01] Arsen: Yeah. Before they even click, or even before they become brand aware. Yeah. So yeah, that being, being across those platforms, and this, this leads us into the next question. Well, you know what, let me take a step back here. So like we talked about like visual, right? Mm-hmm. Like visual identity of that.
[00:21:14] Arsen: And we do see a lot of that in AI overview. There’s a lot of video that gets pulled into it. A lot of thumbnails. Mm-hmm. From, from from YouTube I haven’t seen in the food space, I haven’t seen too much of like processed photography or, or, or ingredient or flat lays. Yeah, surface in there. But a big chunk, if you do look at your analytics, a big chunk of traffic, not a big, but like a, a significant chunk, chunk of traffic does come from image search.
[00:21:36] Arsen: A lot of people are visual searchers, right? Yeah. So the question is great AI food photos versus reasonable, but real photos, like, I think there’s something to be said for like showing your, like, I think like dirty kitchen, right? Like that you actually made this right? Instead of this like very clean a presentation, the sterile presentation of your process photography, right?
[00:22:01] Arsen: Like, at least for me, right? Mm-hmm.
[00:22:04] Katie: Yeah, I agree with that. And I think that, I mean, from an SEO perspective, I don’t know the answer to the question. You know, really great AI photo versus, you know, like an organic. Real photo,
[00:22:20] Arsen: but for, for the user, right? Forget SEL right? User SE You don’t need the, you don’t need a photo to rank, right?
[00:22:25] Katie: No,
[00:22:25] Arsen: but for the user.
[00:22:27] Katie: Yeah. And I think that for the user more and more, because people are so skeptical of AI generated photos and AI recipes and so on, I think the more we pull as, as brands and as like personal brands, the more we pull back the curtain and do show that messy kitchen or you know, I think I can give the example of Pinch of Yum.
[00:22:50] Katie: Again. They used to shoot their pho photos in a studio. I think they probably still do, but there was a very tangible shift in their photography in the last probably 18 months to two years. Where rather than these polished studio photos, you can tell they’re like shooting over Lindsay’s shoulder and you can see her hair.
[00:23:12] Katie: Hanging down and you can see her sweater and her hands holding the bowl. And to me that was sending a very clear signal like, I am a human. I am in my home, I’m in my kitchen. I’m making this recipe, and you can trust me because I’m here doing this. And I think that we are seeing more, you know, less, less of that polished studio style photography across the board, even on Instagram and reels and things like that.
[00:23:37] Katie: It’s less of that like, I think there’s still very professional looking productions, but I think that more human and messy and relatable. And I think, you know, I have fought social media tooth and nail, like for my own food site. Like I was I’m like, I’m focusing on SEO and only SEO for so long, and now I’m like, oh man, I gotta start making reels.
[00:24:02] Katie: Like I gotta put my face. On, on the brand now, because I think that my face love it or hate it, is a very important carrier of the Hay Nutrition Lady brand. Right. Where it wasn’t five years ago.
[00:24:16] Arsen: Right. Well, and you know, and I think, I think there’s, there’s that aspect to it because just like we are already programmed, like if you do a search in Google, you kind of like glaze over those sponsored listings.
[00:24:28] Arsen: Right. You don’t even, like, you’re like, you just scroll past them. Right. And I think that’s starting to happen with AI generated imagery. ’cause I think we as humans have been exposed to it enough now where we’re like you know, even if there’s a little bit of that, like potentially this is AI generated, I’m gonna skip over it.
[00:24:46] Arsen: Hmm. I’m gonna go and I’m gonna look even like thumbnails, like if we’re looking at recipes and surgeries, those thumbnails. Yeah. I talk about this a lot. You, you know, you wanna show some reality there.
[00:24:56] Katie: Yeah.
[00:24:56] Arsen: This actually leads us into, into the next section here. Okay. So social media.
[00:25:01] Arsen: Yeah. And we talked about omnipresence, like you wanna be on Facebook, you want to be on YouTube?
[00:25:07] Katie: Yeah.
[00:25:07] Arsen: And we see this, we, we, we fooled, we fool data. We pulled I think over 50,000 keywords from in the recipe space from all recipes and some larger sites. And we ran them through a bunch of tools just to see where there’s an a IO present and if there is an a IO present AI overview, present what sources are being pulled in.
[00:25:33] Arsen: And we can, we, we can see like percentage wise, right? Yeah. There’s hundreds of these sources, but we can see percentage wise where. Content or information is being pulled in into that a IO into that synthesized answer that’s not coming directly from the publisher’s website. From the, from the Content Creator’s website.
[00:25:53] Arsen: It’s coming from YouTube and it’s coming from Facebook. And earlier we talked about this you want to be, if you, if if you’re a brand and they think you’ll agree with me, if you’re a brand right now, you need to be on social. You can’t avoid it.
[00:26:07] Katie: Yeah, I agree. I don’t wanna agree.
[00:26:11] Arsen: And Google, Google also came out and said this.
[00:26:13] Arsen: They had, this was, this was a, I think like third quarter of last year Google did come out and say, Hey, in on the first page of search results, we are going to be in insert, this is not even algorithmic. We’re forcing this into the search result template. There’s going to be user generated content.
[00:26:31] Arsen: Reddit, right?
[00:26:33] Katie: Yeah.
[00:26:33] Arsen: Forums and. Short form user generated content videos. Mm-hmm. Rather. Right. So with short form video everywhere.
[00:26:44] Katie: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:45] Arsen: What platforms are actually worth investing in for long term brand building? I think YouTube is, well, I think YouTube, I think YouTube is, is is one. ’cause they are pulling, we, we know they’re pulling from you.
[00:26:56] Arsen: They’re pulling because it’s their own property, right? They’re pulling from YouTube into the search results. They’re pulling from YouTube into the a IO you know, we’re seeing this happen. We’re also seeing Facebook. But when you work with a brand, like let’s say somebody came to you, how would you position them?
[00:27:11] Arsen: What would you say is like, are the must places to be?
[00:27:15] Katie: I, I think that’s a really hard question to answer because it changes all the time. And, you know, I like these platforms evolve and change so much. And I can’t tell you like how many creators I talked to recently who have been like. Man, my reach on Instagram has all of a sudden I used to have, you know, 10,000 views to a story in the first hour, and now I’m getting like 20.
[00:27:43] Katie: And I think that that
[00:27:48] Katie: algorithmic vulnerability, you know, it’s really hard to say you should be here, you should be there. I don’t know, is it Instagram? Is it TikTok, is it Pinterest? Who knows? I do think that what you’re saying about YouTube is super valid. I mean, it is Google’s own property, so of course they’re prioritizing YouTube.
[00:28:05] Katie: Right? I, when we were at Tastemaker in January one of the speakers, I don’t remember her name, I think a colleague of yours was saying that if you embed a YouTube video in your recipe post that Google can crawl that and pull information from that better. Then, you know, the words in writing that are on the page.
[00:28:32] Katie: And so I do, to me, and I don’t have the receipts for, you know, to back up that statement. Maybe you do. But I’m regurgitating it’s like third hand information probably, you know, misinterpreted. But to me that just shows the importance of Google and those, or sorry, YouTube and the right, the shorter form video on YouTube.
[00:28:57] Katie: And like integrating, like seeing your brand as an ecosystem. And I think for a long time we’ve seen it as like, this belongs over here. There, there’s a recipe post and a recipe card on the site. And then I’ve got my YouTube video on YouTube and I’ve got my TikTok and I’ve got my Pinterest and I’ve got my Instagram.
[00:29:14] Katie: But I think that statement to me said that the ecosystem is evolving in such a way that these things need to need to come together.
[00:29:24] Arsen: Absolutely. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s, and it, it was Carolyn, she, Shelby who, who was the speaker.
[00:29:29] Katie: Yes.
[00:29:31] Arsen: And what she was saying is that it’s, it’s powered by Gemini now.
[00:29:34] Arsen: And Gemini is multi-model. So like, it modal, it’s, it’s inputs. So you can literally load a video into Gemini and it will understand, that, will understand what’s in the video. And, you know, that, that totally makes sense. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really like you have your, like, check marks in terms of like, these are the places where I need to be as a brand, because it’s a requirement from, not a requirement, but like a best practice, let’s say.
[00:29:58] Arsen: Right? Like from through the lens of, Hey, I need to have a, a, like, I, I fought this for a while for us to like, I don’t wanna have a channel, right? Mm-hmm. On, on YouTube because I don’t wanna deal with the comments. I don’t wanna deal with like, all of that stuff. But you kind of like fall, like we started doing the webinar.
[00:30:13] Arsen: I’m like, okay, now we need to have a channel, right? Like you’re kind of like, yeah, you have to be there. And it, it, it goes into, into, into like, okay, so like, now that we have this, like, okay, we have our blueprint. Like we want to be on, on Instagram, we want to be on YouTube we want to be on, on TikTok, let’s say.
[00:30:31] Arsen: Right? And, you know, Google pulls in, Google is pulling in business profiles from Instagram into search results, also doing a little bit better job with Facebook than YouTube excuse me, than Instagram. When you work with brands mm-hmm. Do you, do you, do you talk about like the type of content that should be created, like, like short form video, long form video, how it should be positioned, maybe which platform should be should be used for what?
[00:30:56] Katie: No, I mean, kind of, I, when I work with brands, the. Work that I do precludes that conversation. So what I’m working with is the brand strategy and it’s like, you know, the backbone of the brand where we’re talking about defining your position where you, you know, what market you operate on and how you are defining that market, what your purpose is, what, how the brand expresses itself.
[00:31:24] Katie: And then when that strategy work is in place, then we can take it forward and say, okay, now it’s time to develop a channel strategy, which is what you’re talking about. And right. Brand then should exist here, here, here, and here. And not only should it exist here, here, here, and here, but this is how the brand behaves in each channel.
[00:31:46] Katie: ’cause it’s not necessarily the same.
[00:31:48] Arsen: Right? Absolutely Each, each channel should be treated differently, right?
[00:31:52] Katie: Yeah.
[00:31:53] Arsen: What would be like the actionable steps what are the first highest important actions creators should take now in this ecosystem? Yeah. To strengthen their brand. And we’re looking at this through the things of like things to check, things to implement you know AI buttons, AI prompts community building.
[00:32:12] Katie: Yeah. I think that the top to me, the top priority, the correct order of operations is sort of getting their brand in order, like figuring out what a brand is first and foremost when you’re talking about brand, being really clear on what a brand is, and then being super clear on what their brand is. I, I had a call with a creator shortly before we jumped on this call, and she said to me.
[00:32:41] Katie: I think that I have a personal brand and I looked at her site and I was like, no, you don’t. This is not operated like a personal brand. You are the ambassador of this brand, but this is not a a personal brand. It’s a traditional brand. And we realized as we went through the conversation that her role in the brand was as its guide.
[00:33:05] Katie: She had this, this concept and I was like, you, you are inviting people into the brand and you are their guide. That’s your role and figuring that out. Was this sort of aha moment for her, for taking it forward to the next step. So I think being really clear on that, like what kind of a brand do you have?
[00:33:24] Katie: What is your role within that brand? What is your purpose, what’s your position, and so on. And then you move forward into the tools and things and like, should I have AI buttons on my site? I don’t think that’s a brand question. I think that’s a business question. Like do you, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that.
[00:33:44] Katie: I think that’s again, your your domain.
[00:33:46] Arsen: Right? Right, right, right,
[00:33:47] Katie: right. I mean, it’s a brand question in terms of how do I want people to experience my brand? And when the website is a core touchpoint of the brand, one of the main interaction points, the question to have AI buttons or not is a question of the experience.
[00:34:08] Katie: But I still think it’s primarily a business question. And then, yeah, I’ve said a lot of words I like, forget the question that I’m answering.
[00:34:16] Arsen: No, no. You, you, you, you, you, you’re on it. So like, okay, good. You know, let’s, let’s, let’s look, let’s look at it from, from like a, a, a, a standpoint of, of brand building, right?
[00:34:24] Arsen: Let’s say I am a content creator. I’ve been doing this for about four or five years. I’ve mm-hmm. I’ve, I’ve started during the pandemic where RPMs were, were amazing and every, you know, everybody was making, was making money and content con content, content was, was easy to rank and Google was playing along.
[00:34:41] Arsen: Yeah. And I’ve kind of survived on that, right?
[00:34:44] Katie: Yeah.
[00:34:44] Arsen: Fast forward, we have AI overviews, we have the introduction of a helpful content system where it’s like, Hey, you know, your, your templatized content is not standing out for the user. Yeah. And the feedback’s been as such, right?
[00:34:55] Katie: Yeah.
[00:34:56] Arsen: So now I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m in this position where I am.
[00:34:58] Arsen: I’m, I’m meeting with Katie and I’m like, look, the stuff that I used to do is not working anymore. Right?
[00:35:04] Katie: Yeah.
[00:35:04] Arsen: I need to figure it out. I need to figure out like, what’s my brand? How do I take this? Which, what positioning I take third party validation. Am I doing press releases? How am I getting in front of in front of people who can, you know, get me on podcasts, on webinars like what are, you know, some of the stuff that ’cause a part of, of SEO is that brand aspect, right?
[00:35:24] Arsen: Yeah. We want that expertise, authority, and trust. And a lot of times when we work with, with, with bloggers, we’re like, Hey, I want to take a look at your, about page.
[00:35:32] Katie: Yeah.
[00:35:33] Arsen: What is it really telling me? Right? You’re, if you’re blog, if you’re about page that says, hi, I’m this person, here’s the stuff I, I, I wrote about and just links to your own content.
[00:35:43] Arsen: That’s not telling me much. Right?
[00:35:45] Katie: Yeah.
[00:35:46] Arsen: So we say, Hey, have you been interviewed? Have you, have you been on podcasts? Have you, is there, is there any kind of news coverage? Have you contributed content? Have you published recipes and other websites? Where did you go to school? Which have you spoken at conferences?
[00:35:58] Arsen: That information should be on your about page, not only from the con from, from a, from a connector standpoint. Entity connectors. For, for SEO. For For, for the knowledge graph. For Google.
[00:36:09] Katie: Yeah.
[00:36:10] Arsen: But also for the user, because sometimes they’ll look at your recipe and they’re gonna click on that about link.
[00:36:15] Katie: Yeah.
[00:36:16] Arsen: So, so like, like how, like what would be those steps? And that’s kind of going back to like, what are the steps, like we we’re starting do do, do I do a press release? Like what do I do? Like how do I approach this?
[00:36:28] Katie: But what do you think about, if I can just like flip a question back at you? I think that there’s a current recommendation which I, I’ll preface this by saying I’m a fan of it.
[00:36:39] Katie: You know, we had about pages for a long time and now the recommendation is to have an about page and an author page. And I think that that’s really for brand building. I, I believe that this recommendation was rooted in SEO, but I think that for brand building it’s really powerful because you can then separate.
[00:37:02] Katie: Yourself from the website, right? And you have about, you know, I have my food blog, hey nutrition lady. So now I’ve got an about, hey nutrition lady. It was founded in 2010. It focuses on vegetarian recipes. We have a lot of beans, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then there’s about Katy Trent. I’ve got two degrees in nutrition.
[00:37:23] Katie: I’ve got a background in creative writing. I, you know, these are all these things about me. And I think that the, those two pages to me work together to build brand authority because it’s about the site and about the creator behind it. And that paints like a more holistic picture of the brand. And I, I do think also, I remembered when we were talking about AI buttons and stuff, you also mentioned community.
[00:37:50] Katie: And I think community has become so important. And you know, when you have this sort of. If you had that creator who started in COVID and they followed a template and they were doing really, really well, and now they’re struggling, well, it’s because you’re doing what everybody else is doing. So you’re not doing anything to differentiate your brand from everybody else.
[00:38:12] Katie: And when brand suddenly has become so much more important, and especially with the Ai o reviews, if they’re only serving up a brand name or like a glimpse at a link, if you see that name enough times, you’re gonna remember it and you’re gonna come back to it. Right. And I think that if we look at the s the intersection of SEO and brand, SEO to me is what cracks the door open.
[00:38:38] Katie: And brand is what brings the user back, what captures them and adds them to your community and
[00:38:44] Arsen: keeps them a hundred percent. And I’m, I’m, I’m happy you framed it that way because you know, it’s the SEO is the discovery. Right. It’s, it’s the, the you know, you’re, you’re, you’re going to Google, you’re going to search because there’s a need.
[00:39:00] Arsen: You’re looking for something you know, today I’m going to make mashed potatoes, right? Mm-hmm. I’m gonna go look for, you know, unique mashed potato recipes or variations, right? Yeah. I want to spice it up somehow. Right. And again, and we, we talked about this, like you’re going to be exposed to potentially to an AI overview, which is there to save you a lot of time.
[00:39:20] Arsen: Yeah. And let’s say you don’t click right away. You’re like, oh, there’s, you know, mashed potatoes with chi Cho sauce making stuff up. Don’t know if that’s actually good. Right. Could be good. Mashed potatoes with chi cherry sauce. Right. And you’re like, okay. Ingredients for mashed potatoes with chi cho sauce.
[00:39:37] Arsen: Mm-hmm. And now you’re exposed to another, but let’s say your site is showing up there over and over and over, and your little brand logo and all of that.
[00:39:46] Katie: Yeah. And
[00:39:46] Arsen: at one point, through that journey, through these zero click queries, you end up at a point where you’re like, okay, this is good. I’m going to now click on that site.
[00:39:57] Arsen: Yeah. You’re gonna land on that site and now you have that other part, right? Like
[00:40:02] Katie: Yeah.
[00:40:02] Arsen: The retention mechanism, the brand, you know, and, and we, we teach like, hey, don’t spend too much time above the fold at the opening talk, giving people a story, tell ’em what they’re about to learn, and then establish some kind of like, why listen to me?
[00:40:15] Arsen: Yeah. Like, right. You know, we like, tell me why. Right. And I think that’s where the brand tone and voice Yeah. Needs to surface at, at the highest volume. Right.
[00:40:26] Katie: Definitely.
[00:40:27] Arsen: And that’s that. And, and, and that needs to have continuity
[00:40:30] Katie: Yeah.
[00:40:31] Arsen: Throughout your content. Go ahead.
[00:40:33] Katie: Yes. I, I always say that a strong brand, especially a strong personal brand and in the creator space is one that.
[00:40:41] Katie: People resonate with, remember, and return to. And I think resonance is so important there. And if we have your mashed potato example, right? We could have two sites that both have mashed potatoes with chimi tree sauce, right? Like two identical recipes. And why do I return, why do I resonate with one and not the other?
[00:41:02] Katie: And that’s that brand tone. And you know, if I have one person who’s talking about mashed potatoes with chi cherry sauce from the perspective of, I don’t know, 30 minute meals and another person who’s talking about it from the perspective of gluten-free recipes we’re serving, we have two totally different perspectives and a different type of audience is gonna resonate with either of those brands, right?
[00:41:27] Katie: And then, so it’s like, what, what do you wanna be remembered for? And how do you get people to return? And it’s, you know, those return visitors. In this day and age are very, very important. I think it’s, you know, that community
[00:41:40] Arsen: well, there’s also that, that building, building a connector, building a connection with the brand.
[00:41:46] Arsen: I, like, I relate this, this, I relate to this person. I re I relate to this. And that’s, you know, that’s separation of, of website brand and author, publisher, right?
[00:41:57] Katie: Yep.
[00:41:57] Arsen: A lot of times, like the SEO root of that is we want to, like, if it’s a multi-author blog, right? Or when we pull back and, and look at entity data, right?
[00:42:11] Katie: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:12] Arsen: Reverse lookup, who are people searching for? Are they searching for the author like arsons, mashed potato, mashed potatoes? Mm-hmm. With, with Jimmy Hur or you know, amazing Potato blog mashed potatoes with Jimmy Hurri, right? Like, yeah. How is that, how is the audience, how are people who are aware?
[00:42:33] Arsen: Searching for you, right? Yeah. And if there is presence, if we’re seeing that, yeah. Look, there is volume for this, for your brand. Yeah. Not you as a person for your brand. We definitely want to have that page. We want to build on that, right?
[00:42:47] Katie: Yeah.
[00:42:48] Arsen: But we also need to have that, that person, because Google needs that.
[00:42:52] Arsen: Google doesn’t want, right. Google wants to know there’s a per, there’s a human being behind this, this, this mashed potatoes with chip recipe. Right? Yeah. So it’s not really much, you know, we, we do need it, but a lot of times the brand is the, the, the author. Right. A lot of times the, the brand, and we, I wanna say about 80 to 90% of the bloggers the brand is the author.
[00:43:14] Arsen: Mm-hmm. Right? So, going back to what I was, where I was kind of leading us with this is, is I need to start putting myself out there. Mm-hmm. I’ve, I’ve understood the value. Now I know that the way I was approaching things no longer works. So some of the things we say like, Hey, you know, you can do really cool things, right?
[00:43:36] Arsen: Like, and this was, these are like link building techniques, right? Like so. Mm-hmm. So it’s not, it could be pr, right? If you’re doing it properly, but it’s like, hey, publish a quick, like a digital guide on you know, making desserts with kids, right?
[00:43:50] Katie: Yeah.
[00:43:51] Arsen: With your kids. And then like, make a big fuss about it.
[00:43:54] Arsen: Do a press release. You know, go, go to, like, do like a, a a a class at a local, something at A-Y-M-C-A, right? Like do that, announce it reach out to local, local, you know, the PR aspect of it, right?
[00:44:08] Katie: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:09] Arsen: All of that work creates noise. In the, in the search space, you do, you do a press release.
[00:44:17] Arsen: Press releases are, are, are very important. They, they get, there’s a good spread if you’re doing them properly. They get picked up by different news publications. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a loud signal, but it’s a very short signal, right? It doesn’t live, it doesn’t stick out. Long press releases get picked up by a, a o is also because there’s authority, the channel on the, on the places where they get published.
[00:44:36] Arsen: So. How would you, like, what, what would you say like, are the important things, like, like for a blogger who’s, who’s like kind of like, I don’t know in which direction I need to go. Like, I’ve established that I need to brand, I need to build a brand.
[00:44:49] Katie: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:50] Arsen: I have an audience, I have a blog. What do I do with this now?
[00:44:52] Arsen: Like, what would you say, like what are some techniques that people can, like let’s say, you know, I’ve learned this from Katie. Like, what, what would be like Yeah. And I know there’s a separation between PR and brand, right? Like, there, there’s a huge difference there. Right? Right.
[00:45:04] Katie: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, I mean, if you don’t, if you’re like, oh my God, I need to do something with my brand, but I don’t even know what it is, then you need to get back to basics.
[00:45:17] Katie: And I think one like very simplified definition of brand is that a brand. A solution to a problem. And I think you need to ask yourself what problem your brand is trying to solve for the user. And a brand can be a solution to a problem in such a simple way. And I think it’s like that brand recognition, you know, it eliminates, there’s so many options.
[00:45:45] Katie: Like there’s so many chocolate chip cookie recipes, there’s so many mashed potato recipes. How do, how do I know? Even on like the, you know, if the AI overview is spitting them out, or I’ve got the top page of Google and there’s 10, like, where do I click? How do I know? And you know, an example that I always give is like, I, I am a, I’m very, very loyal to Chapstick brand.
[00:46:08] Katie: Chapstick. I will not use anything else. I can’t even get it in this country that I live in. So I bring it in, I import it, chapstick brand Chapstick because I think anything else, I’m not even gonna try other things. I just know that it works. And I don’t wanna spend time testing other products, and I don’t wanna waste my money testing other products.
[00:46:29] Katie: I have one that I like and I will return to it over and over and over again. And it’s the same with search. If I have a relationship with a recipe site and I’ve established trust of established that, that creator’s recipes, they’re consistent, they work, they’re simple. I’m not gonna waste my hard earned money and time on something that is not gonna turn out well.
[00:46:56] Katie: They have then solved my problem. If it’s, you know, I need a mashed potato recipe, like right now, that brand can solve a problem. So I think that like getting really, really basic is asking what problem your brand is exists to solve. And then. Starting to define from that, you know, what is your niche?
[00:47:18] Katie: Who are your users? What position, what market do you operate on? Because like the internet is so vast, there are millions of food blogs. Do you know the number now? Like 30 million or something? Like I, it’s just massive. I looked it up a couple of years ago and it was mind blowing. And there’s so much content and so many recipes and how do you filter through it all?
[00:47:44] Katie: And I think you have to put yourself in the user’s shoes and be like, how, how am I gonna stand out? How am I gonna establish trust with this user so that they return to me? And like, the very basics of brand should answer that question. Brand is unfortunately like. It’s very hypothetical, you know, it’s like this, it is like a thesis.
[00:48:07] Katie: It’s not a, it’s not a install this button, use this formula. Right. It’s much more you know, there is, there is a formula that I work with when I work with people. I have a model that I use called a brand platform and with, you know, there’s like models within the models, but the, in order to even work with that strategy and populate the models, the, like, the seeds of the questions are very, very high level.
[00:48:36] Katie: So you have to be able to like, you know. Put yourself a bit out there.
[00:48:41] Arsen: What do you, what do you, what do you get that data? Like, how do you know, like, like I have an email list. I have, I, I have Google Analytics that’s been running for a while. I have comments on, on my pages how do I like, understand, like, who is my audience?
[00:48:52] Arsen: Like, where do I resonate most? Like is there like a, a, a, a process that you go through to identify like, like, I don’t know, like, like I don’t, I don’t know who, who, who’s, who, who is, who’s interested in what I have to say. Right?
[00:49:03] Katie: Yeah. I think that there, I mean, there’s certainly, there’s so much data out there that we can look at, right?
[00:49:10] Katie: You can get into your Google analytics. I am personally, I can’t use GA four. I don’t understand it.
[00:49:16] Arsen: Hate it, right? The worst thing ever. Right?
[00:49:19] Katie: Oh, it’s like, I don’t know how they could have made it any more unuser friendly. I used to be able to understand my analytics. Now I don’t, right. So I’m kind of guessing, you know, but I, I can see that there is a demographic of people that are coming to me.
[00:49:33] Katie: And I also, I mean, I collect data from my audience. I send out surveys and questionnaires and I ask them what their pain points are and you know, put survey boxes on Instagram stories and things like that. And actually you know, I think that like actually going to your audience and to your community and asking those questions is a really powerful place to start.
[00:49:56] Katie: And then there is, you know, we do have the data. We have Google Analytics, if you can understand it. And there is you know, analytics on the other platforms as well. Like Instagram has a lot of information about the users and so on,
[00:50:09] Arsen: right?
[00:50:09] Katie: But like understanding their specific pain points, I think you have to A, ask them B, look at where the traffic, what kind of posts are the traffic going to, because those are the ones that are obviously solving the most problems,
[00:50:22] Arsen: right.
[00:50:23] Arsen: Right. And you know, that, that really understanding, you know, Microsoft Clarity, really good tool to use on this to really understand where, where people are spending time on your page, right? Yeah. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve looked at some of the data we noticed that, that the flat lays of ingredients is where a lot of, a lot of time people spend, you know?
[00:50:42] Arsen: Yeah. And we don’t know whether they’re doing this in a supermarket. They’re looking at it like, well, they’re, while they’re shopping, what have you. But Yeah. You know, collect the data, ask the, ask the question survey if you have an email list. We’ve been talking about email list, I think through the, from the first episode of our, of our CCC CO for bloggers back in, in 2020.
[00:50:59] Arsen: We said email list is, is is your, you know, there’s no algorithm. Yeah. It’s, it’s a captive audience. Right. You
[00:51:04] Katie: own it. Mm-hmm.
[00:51:05] Arsen: Right, right. Speaking of questions we have, we have a few questions here. So Cheryl is asking, when do you know. You’ve done enough work on branding. What are the metrics?
[00:51:16] Katie: The bad news is, Cheryl, that it never ends that branding. You know, you do, you do brand work and then you have to constantly revisit it and reevaluate it and refresh it. I mean, there’s big companies will hire brand agencies to update their brand strategies and their brand identities every couple of years.
[00:51:41] Katie: But I think the metrics are what we’ve talked about before. What with the volume of branded search, you have people searching for you by name, the amount of direct traffic that you have, the community that you have, you know, those loyal return visitors and so on. I think that and brand mentions as well.
[00:52:00] Katie: There are brand tracking tools out there, like Hootsuite and let’s see. I had a list of them open. But there, there are brand tracking tools where you can actually like monitor brand mentions of your, mentions of your name, your brand name, your personal name, and so on, and see how often you’re being mentioned.
[00:52:19] Katie: And I think that’s a really interesting way to see how strong your brand is as well.
[00:52:26] Arsen: We have another question here. I’m building a hub site to connect several sister sites, but one of those sister sites is the strongest brand. How do I structure and, and, and message this so that the relationship is clear to Google and readers without diluting the strongest brand?
[00:52:45] Arsen: Yeah,
[00:52:48] Katie: I mean, I think that what you are looking for is a brand architecture. Project where you go in and you look at, if you have a bunch of websites that are connected in some way and there’s a website that’s gonna connect them all, you need to study the flow of information between the sites and the relationship between them.
[00:53:16] Katie: And if one is stronger than the others, why is that and what problem is that site solving? I mean, without really, this sounds like a fairly extensive brand strategy project to be honest. And without really digging into that, it’s hard to answer it, but that’s like it, it is like a brand architecture and I, I, working with big corporate brands, you’ll often have these.
[00:53:41] Katie: Big companies that have acquired many smaller companies, and then they go through this process as well. And the question is like, what do you do with all these brands? Do you become a house of brands or do you become a branded house? And you know, a house of brands is a house that has many brands that lives within it, and they may relate to each other.
[00:54:02] Katie: And then you have to decide, like, how do you make sure that those brands are not cannibalizing from each other and it’s supporting each other whereas a branded house becomes where you kind of like absorb all these sub companies into one brand. And there isn’t a right or wrong answer for like, do it this way.
[00:54:21] Katie: It’s correct, it’s different in every case. It’s the, like, it depends. Answer that you want.
[00:54:27] Arsen: Right? I like it. You know, we’ve, we’ve done this work. From the SEO perspective, a a lot of times we do this on the enterprise side of our business frequently. Yeah. Where, you know, and this happens a lot with like studios and video game companies and, and even financial institutions, we work with a lot of them who, who buy other, other brands.
[00:54:46] Arsen: Yeah. And a lot of times there’s this like merger that happens where we bring multiple brands under one website, right? Yep. And you see this like frequently, if you look at like, like the, the Walking Dead franchise, you know, they, they have multiple even like Comedy Central has that one giant website with all of their individual Right.
[00:55:05] Arsen: Projects. So there’s, there’s value in that, right? Because you can, you, you don’t have to build a hub. Another entity that’s going to be the connecting point in the middle.
[00:55:15] Katie: Yeah.
[00:55:16] Arsen: You can bring everybody under one umbrella and create those relationships through proper, but then that’s just the s se, that’s just the SEO side of that.
[00:55:23] Arsen: Right? Yeah. There’s the, the messaging aspect and how do you, how do you, how do you properly adjust it for the audiences that, and, you know, there, there could be a cross ball nation between those audience spheres. Definitely, you know, definitely. Right. Based on interest you know, psychographics, demographics, whatever have you.
[00:55:40] Katie: Yeah.
[00:55:40] Arsen: But it’s, again, I think it’s really understanding who the audiences are, right? Yeah. And what works. And, you know, everything from like format, longer format, shorter format, we talk about design.
[00:55:52] Katie: Mm-hmm.
[00:55:53] Arsen: Recently design of your blog being a part of it. It is a part of your brand because if you have a, if you have, if you have a theme that looks like everybody else’s theme.
[00:56:05] Arsen: And when a user who’s not brand aware lands on your site, and the only difference between you and a hundred other food blogs is just a different logo and maybe the color of your font.
[00:56:15] Katie: Mm-hmm.
[00:56:16] Arsen: The user is going to say, I’ve seen this show before. Right? Yeah. And if they had a bad experience with that show in the past, that bad experience is going to transfer over to you even though they’ve never seen your site.
[00:56:29] Arsen: Right. So there’s that like, differentiator, right? Like, and if you look, if you look at what’s ranking and you see who’s, who’s there in the top top positions you’ll start noticing there’s, there’s a huge difference between how stuff is designed. Mm-hmm. We’re almost done. We have another question.
[00:56:47] Arsen: Kate is asking, I just looked at what the AI overview said about our website. Not only was it what I expected, but also had three questions and the answers that were quite intriguing and gave us more ideas on how to expand on those ideas, concepts, how to validate your content and pillars and best formatted for ai, SEO.
[00:57:08] Arsen: So just like more of a, more of a SEO question. Mm-hmm. In the, in the very, very long one. But yeah, so like you know, the way you, you really wanna understand your, your audience’s discovery journey, and I don’t wanna sound like a broken record. Everybody talks about user journey, discovery journey, but it, that’s what it is, right?
[00:57:26] Arsen: And we talked about this like you know, variations of mashed potato recipe, right? Mm-hmm. Like ingredients for this and this. So there’s, there’s queries. That are non-brand aware, so like, not like preppy kitchen cupcakes, right? Mm-hmm. ’cause that’s somebody who’s aware and they’re searching for brand plus topic.
[00:57:45] Arsen: This is somebody who’s not. And if you are able to really understand your user journey and look at it from a jobs to be done, right? Like, I, I’m going to make something. I don’t know what I’m gonna make, I’m going to search for it, I’m going to understand, then I’m going to do a little bit of more research.
[00:58:01] Arsen: What’s involved? Can I actually do this? And once I figure that out, I’m going to click through and actually see the process of doing this. Right? So there’s a step that a users take before they identify you and land on your site and get to know the brand, and then there’s steps that they take afterwards.
[00:58:15] Arsen: Hmm. If you’re able to effectively predict that and answer that and satisfy that journey with your content, not only on your site, but across other platforms, right here are, here are you know, create a a, a Facebook post. About, like, here’s what I serve my mashed potatoes with Chimichurri other, you know, how do how I serve it?
[00:58:38] Arsen: That’s all you need to put, you don’t have to put the entire recipe on Facebook. Right? Yeah. So once you understand that ecosystem, you’re able to function with that ecosystem fairly easily.
[00:58:48] Katie: Mm.
[00:58:48] Arsen: Awesome. Katie
[00:58:49] Katie: yeah.
[00:58:50] Arsen: We know you had a a, a webinar. I’m gonna drop a link for the replay. Tell us how people can find you.
[00:58:57] Katie: So there’s a few ways people can find me. My website is foodie brand lab.com. And on that website I’ve got a newsletter you can subscribe to called Brand Bites. It goes out twice a month and it’s bite-sized brand strategy content. The webinar is a really great, it was a deep dive into personal brand.
[00:59:19] Katie: It was. It was harnessing the power of personal brand in 2026, I think was the title of it. And so it goes really deep into that topic. The difference I saw Cheryl’s question up there. It was the difference between personal brand and traditional brand is covered there in depth. Instagram at Foodie brand lab and I’m also dropping bite-sized brand content there all the time.
[00:59:41] Katie: So those are the best channels probably. And I know I’ve gotta start a YouTube channel ’cause Carolyn
[00:59:46] Arsen: said it gotta do it. You gotta do it. Right. Awesome. Thanks for coming along. Thanks for I I I, I enjoyed this ’cause this was, this was great. This is really awesome.
[00:59:53] Katie: Yeah,
[00:59:54] Arsen: it was super, it wasn’t all SEOI, like, I really enjoyed it.
[00:59:57] Arsen: Thanks for coming. Don’t go on your, we gotta wait for this thing to, to finish recording everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We’ll send out an email recap of this and we’ll have a replay up on our website. The replay is also available on YouTube as soon as we, we end the stream. Thanks for joining us.
[01:00:11] Arsen: Have a good rest of your week.
[01:00:12] Katie: Bye-bye.
[01:00:19] Arsen: And stream. Here we go. Done.
