Episode 43Apr 7, 2023· 42:40
What Writers Need To Know For Success with Ryan Brock of Demand Jump
About this episode
Ryan Brock shares how to make it easier to make money as a copywriter. We're also going to chat about AI chat GPT and how to position yourself to get hired despite all the bots that are taking over the world. Let's get into it.Ryan's Links:
Get Ryan's Book Pillar-Based Marketing: A Data-Driven Methodology for SEO and Content That Actually Works (Affiliate Link - Thank you for supporting our show!)
Ryan Brock on…
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Full transcript
00:00
Welcome to the Bloggy Friends show.
00:14
What's up my bloggy friends?
00:15
Famous Ashley Grant here and I'm thrilled to be bringing Ryan Brock of Demand Jump on
00:19
the show.
00:20
We're going to be chatting about how to make it easier to make money as a copywriter.
00:24
We're also going to chat about AI, chat GPT, and how to position yourself to get hired
00:29
despite all the bots that are taking over the world.
00:32
Let's get into it.
00:33
But I like your rambles.
00:35
Your rambles actually make a lot of sense and that's one of the things that I enjoyed
00:39
about the Demand Jump webinar you guys held is when you were rambling, I was jotting more
00:45
notes from your rambles.
00:48
This is the intended effect.
00:50
That's good to hear.
00:51
Yes.
00:52
So I mean, if your rambles make sense, then they're not just rambles.
00:55
They're actually just knowledge bombs.
00:57
I feel like I could work some of that into like an autobiography title for myself.
01:01
Like, I'm allowed to ramble because they make some sense sometimes.
01:04
There you go.
01:05
In fact, I'll send you the recording that anyone can't possibly.
01:09
Okay, so basically, before we hit record, we were talking all about what it is you do,
01:14
but kind of give me like the reader status version of what it is you do and what brought
01:18
you here today.
01:20
Yeah, so I am the Chief Solution Officer at Demand Jump.
01:25
We are a software as a service company that serves marketers who are tired of waste in
01:31
organic content marketing and SEO.
01:33
So my background is in content marketing.
01:36
I started a content marketing agency at the ripe old age of 23 with zero experience in
01:41
marketing or business or anything.
01:43
I just was a writer and I wanted to make money writing.
01:47
And I knew that the first few clients that I attracted were really excited to work with
01:53
me because I was bringing a certain level of craft to the experience because I was a
01:58
creative writer, like I was an English kid, right?
02:00
And so I started hiring other English kids and we started doing really creative and fun
02:07
work and experimenting with how do we build a team of writers that is designed not from
02:16
the perspective of like the whole like a writer as a lone wolf thing, but like, you know,
02:20
when you go to school to learn to write, you learn to write in teams.
02:22
Like you're with other people, you're going through workshops, you're having to take feedback.
02:25
Like those are all great things.
02:27
They're valuable things, especially when it comes to like creating a piece of corporate
02:31
content, which is like the ultimate, you know, designed by committee experience.
02:36
You need to be able to work with other people.
02:37
You need to be able to also know that your first instincts probably aren't always the
02:41
right ones.
02:42
And so over the years we just, we built this agency, it was called Metonymy Media.
02:47
And it was, it was based on take the creative writer and the skills they learn in creative
02:51
writing, bake in everything that comes with digital marketing and try to keep ahead of
02:56
the trends that are coming and basically plug into whatever's happening.
03:00
So when I got started, it was, you know, the early days of SEO and people were just like
03:10
grasping at straws trying to figure out how do we get rankings and how do we drive organic
03:14
traffic?
03:15
And I watched many companies come and go get sued into oblivion because whatever loophole
03:21
they were exploiting ended up getting closed by Google.
03:25
And it just, it was very stressful.
03:26
And eventually it turned me off of the whole idea of like trying to write content that's
03:30
going to rank on Google.
03:31
But over the years it's become very clear that like the best monetary value you can
03:37
attach to like content for a business.
03:41
If you're writing blogs, which I think for most people when they think about like content
03:44
writing, there's a lot of stuff that you're writing, but blog writing is like the bread
03:47
and butter of your content writer in my experience.
03:51
And if you're going to write 50 blogs, you want as many of those blogs as possible to
03:56
show up on page one of search rankings so that you can go to your client and you can
04:00
say we're connecting with your audience.
04:03
We're driving free traffic to you now.
04:04
You paid that one time adjustment.
04:06
Now you're getting all this traffic.
04:08
You know, that's super important.
04:10
So over the years running my agency, I started with a full head of hair.
04:14
Now I don't have any and that has a lot to do with the fact that like selling content
04:20
without that clear value driver is just so hard to do.
04:23
Selling writing is just very difficult.
04:26
At the end of the day, even if someone really likes your writing, if it's not driving business
04:29
results, it's not going to be a priority when it comes to spend.
04:33
And you know, the ups and downs and the economic turmoil that I've seen over my career, it's
04:37
just, it's a scary thing to be a writer, to be an artist of any kind and trying to make
04:41
a living doing what you do.
04:43
And so yeah, I mean, I was really focused by the end of my agency ownership days on
04:47
how do I sell writing so that I can look my client in the eye and say, we're going to
04:52
be good stewards of your money.
04:53
You give us your investment.
04:55
We're going to produce something that is going to drive business outcomes for you and it's
04:58
going to be better than what you'd get from somebody else.
05:01
And when I found DemandJump, that's when I found the secret to making that happen.
05:06
Now you said the secret to making that happen.
05:10
What in the world do you mean by the secret to making that happen is?
05:15
So DemandJump had originally been a sort of an analytics and attribution company, helping
05:21
people understand what parts of their marketing are driving results.
05:24
So kind of in line with what I'm talking about, about wanting to make sure that you're investing
05:28
in the right places.
05:30
But they had just started taking their technology and applying it towards the problem of content.
05:35
But the very problem that I was convinced needed to be solved.
05:40
And as I got to be, I became a customer of theirs.
05:44
They became a client of mine.
05:46
We started working together and we started sort of experimenting together around this
05:51
data that DemandJump had access to that nobody did.
05:54
So the amazing thing about DemandJump and its approach to content marketing is rather
05:59
than going into something like a legacy SEO tool and saying, okay, I am in the running
06:06
shoes business and then just getting a list of keywords that are in that tools database
06:12
that are prioritized by things like monthly search volume or competitiveness.
06:18
What DemandJump does is it says, forget all that because what that does is it creates
06:21
bias.
06:22
You're going to look for keywords that seem like they're close to a purchase intent.
06:26
So you're going to prioritize the ones that look like they're going to lead to a sale
06:30
for you.
06:31
You're going to pick the ones with the higher search volume, but keep in mind that like
06:35
even Google, who is the holder of all this data, won't give you any search volume data
06:40
on questions.
06:41
And there are a lot of questions that people ask in the search engines.
06:44
Google themselves shows you that, right?
06:45
They give you the people also ask questions when you Google something.
06:49
And that's an important part of the search experience.
06:51
But if you're using these old school SEO methods to evaluate what should I write about, the
06:56
metrics fail you because they don't actually incentivize you to answer a basic question.
07:00
And I can tell you how many times I've spoken with a marketer who says, we didn't really
07:04
want to answer like, why do I need running shoes on my blog?
07:09
Because it's so basic and our customers are better than that.
07:12
And they know more than that.
07:13
It's going to make us look stupid.
07:14
And plus there's no search volume around it.
07:16
And it's like, well, yeah, if you look at it that way, that's true.
07:19
The way the demand job looks at search behavior data is as it's like a big data problem and
07:25
then it's a behavior issue.
07:27
So if you start with running shoes, and I'm going to switch my metaphor because it's easier.
07:31
If I start with content marketing, because that's what I know, that's what I think a
07:34
lot of people listening to this probably know.
07:35
I start with the concept of content marketing and I run a search for that on Google.
07:41
I'm going to get a series of people also ask questions.
07:44
I'm going to get related searches after the first 10 results or so.
07:49
What we have historically called page one, but I still call page one even though there's
07:52
an infinite scroll.
07:55
Using those recommendations, we're seeing a one step removed like sort of experience path
08:01
that Google has taken the time to understand and map out.
08:04
They're saying people to search what you just searched toward tend to also search for this.
08:08
Now what if you were to take those recommended searches and then you were to see what recommended
08:13
searches come up for each one of those.
08:16
And then what if you were to take each one of those and see what recommended searches
08:19
come up for each one of those?
08:20
By the time you get three or four levels down, we're talking about an exponential amount
08:24
of recommendations of connected interconnected terms.
08:28
When you analyze that data in the right way, using the right technology, you could start
08:33
finding patterns.
08:34
And what ends up happening is you can turn out something like a spider web graph of here's
08:39
your topic and all of the related behaviors surrounding this topic.
08:44
And it's sort of spatial.
08:45
Like you can see which ones are most central to the core topic you started with, which
08:50
ones are farther out, but also which ones show up the most in these different journeys
08:55
people take, which ones, you know, if someone searches this question and this question,
08:58
this question, this question, which are the questions that they keep coming up again and
09:02
again and again.
09:04
And long story short, what demand jumps tech does is it analyzes all that and says, forget
09:08
about everything you know, or you think you know about this topic.
09:11
These are the pieces of content you need to write an address if you are going to rank
09:15
and drive real authority.
09:17
So working with demand jump, we developed this methodology called pillar based marketing.
09:25
We think of it as like sort of a new subcategory in digital marketing and content marketing.
09:31
And it's all about aligning the customer behavior and ignoring a lot of that old SEO noise that
09:35
doesn't work.
09:36
And once we started employing this pillar based marketing methodology, which by the
09:40
way is the name of a book, Pillar Based Marketing, that's coming out March 28th that I wrote
09:45
along with the co-founder of demand jump, Tofday.
09:48
So you should definitely look that up.
09:52
It just, it cuts out all the noise when you combine that with that data.
09:58
And basically we could say to anybody, okay, company, no matter what industry you're in,
10:03
give us a topic.
10:04
We're going to tell you to write 16 pieces of content.
10:07
That's it.
10:08
Just 16 pieces of content, link them together in the way that we do, cover the topics in
10:12
the way we tell you to, and rather than waiting six months, nine months, whatever it takes
10:16
to get results, you were going to start ranking for many keywords on page one, pretty much
10:23
instantly.
10:24
So like just a really high level example of what this looks like.
10:29
Demand Jump, we've been using this strategy for the last two years.
10:33
And so I sold my business to demand jump.
10:35
That's the end of the story, by the way, I keep saying we, I eventually sold my agency
10:38
to demand jump and said, I need to be a part of this because it's literally changed my
10:41
business and changed the way that I think about selling writing and made it so much
10:45
easier because we can be confident that what we're doing is right.
10:47
So we're at the point now where if we decide that we want to write a new pillar of content
10:52
and we call that, that topical network, a pillar, that's why it's pillar based marketing.
10:58
We can write, I think in October we wrote about 28 pieces of content around software
11:04
as a service, marketing and content and things like that.
11:09
First off, we only published 14 pieces, the first batch that we did.
11:13
And within five days we had over a hundred, over a hundred page one rankings driving an
11:18
insane amount of new organic traffic to our website.
11:22
Within six weeks we had published 28 pieces of content.
11:25
We had over 500 page one rankings for various keywords within those topic networks.
11:31
And the amount of traffic we were driving was very concrete and very measurable.
11:36
And immediately when that started, we were able to say, oh, this is our best month for
11:41
organic traffic ever.
11:42
And that also means it was our best month for organic leads ever.
11:46
And it's very, very easy for us to see as those rankings go up, our traffic goes up,
11:50
that traffic is better qualified.
11:53
It takes about a third of the time to close a new deal from the traffic that comes from
11:57
organic than it does from like a paid source.
11:59
And then we can spot that the whole way through.
12:01
So like the whole calculus of selling writing now, it's totally different because I'll
12:06
work with an agency and say, do these things, you will win.
12:09
And they, every time it works, it works every single time.
12:13
Now the reason this fascinates me so much is because, okay, 2007 baby Ashley was just
12:19
beginning writing.
12:20
I was writing for newspapers and magazines and trying to get my name anywhere anyone
12:26
would listen.
12:27
Then 2008 hits and all the freelancers are the first to go.
12:31
And you know, we're all getting let go left and right because they're doubling down on
12:35
their staff and because they're salaried, they can make them do more articles for no
12:39
extra pay.
12:41
So then, um, fast forward a few years and ghost writing fell in my lap.
12:46
Like when I say fell in my lap, I literally mean someone called me and was like, Hey,
12:50
I need a blog, but I don't have time to write it.
12:53
Can you be me?
12:55
And so that's kind of how I was plunged into the ghost writing world and into the writing
12:59
for, um, not getting my name on it, but still getting the cash.
13:02
Oh yeah.
13:03
That's my whole life for 10 years.
13:05
I hear you.
13:06
Yeah.
13:07
And so, um, you know, fast forward again.
13:09
And in 2016, I started working for a software as a service agency, like a marketing agency,
13:15
and they were doing the pillar paste, the pillar based marketing, um, like content type
13:20
thing.
13:21
Uh, and unfortunately, because of the fact that it was only a small team of writers,
13:25
it was a lot of content to produce and you couldn't do it like fast enough.
13:30
You know, you were saying that, um, in the demand jump webinar that you had, uh, that
13:34
you should publish it as quickly as you can.
13:37
And you know, we would be in a situation where it would be several weeks before we could
13:40
get even article one published because you've got so many cooks in the kitchen, all that
13:43
thing.
13:44
And, uh, but it's interesting that with the pillar based marketing, yes, these people
13:50
were, were ranking for things that, you know, would have otherwise taken a long time.
13:55
And so I was experimenting with some of my other clients with the idea of creating a
13:59
campaign rather than just trying to rank for random keywords.
14:03
And I actually got a couple of clients on page one of Google without even trying.
14:07
And so that, that's, that's kind of what turned me on to whenever I found out about the webinar.
14:12
Um, I also don't even know how it landed in my inbox.
14:15
Like, I don't know where it came from, but I ended up there and, um, you must be involved
14:20
with search engine land on some level because they think they're, they're the ones that
14:23
hosted it.
14:24
Yeah.
14:25
I must be, but, uh, whatever the, whatever caused it to land in my lap, I, uh, I had
14:30
to hear what you guys had to say because, you know, there were all these things I was
14:34
thinking about, and especially now with everything going on with AI and copywriters getting like
14:38
go left and right.
14:39
I had to hear what you had to say.
14:41
So, um, so that's kind of the, the reader's digest version of my background in terms of
14:46
how I got into content writing now.
14:48
So I'm curious with all this data, with all this stuff, all this amazing, you know, secret
14:53
sauce that you guys have put together, how does that work for people who are now like
14:59
letting go of their copywriters because they want to use AI?
15:01
What do you say to the copywriter who's still trying to get work and competing with these
15:08
tech problems?
15:09
Yeah.
15:10
Okay.
15:11
So if you're the, if you're that copywriter, this is what I'm about to say is your best
15:15
defense and it's, it's 100% right.
15:18
This is not really a matter of opinion right now.
15:21
Uh, we'll, we'll start with fact, then we'll get a new opinion.
15:24
Okay.
15:25
First, the facts, something like Chad GPT is literally just analyzing the internet up
15:34
until 2021 and then producing for you the general consensus of an answer to your question.
15:42
If you're asking for an essay on something, you're asking for an article, you're asking
15:46
for an answer.
15:47
What you're getting back is like the median answer.
15:52
It's just like, this is what most people say.
15:56
But at the end of the day, if most people are saying that what Chad GPT is doing is
16:00
it is taking other people's ideas and it is repackaging them a slightly different sentence
16:04
structure and giving it back to you.
16:06
So first of all, it is plagiarism, whether you like it, like to believe it or not, like
16:11
the you marketer who wants to just say, I'm going to use Chad GPT instead of writers,
16:16
it's plagiarism.
16:19
You might not have the scruples that I do, but that's just not cool.
16:21
I feel like I don't know how else to say it.
16:23
Like, that's just like, that's not how a good business operates, especially when the purpose
16:27
of content marketing is to provide value.
16:29
Are you adding anything new to the world by just scraping what somebody else says?
16:34
Um, and putting it out there, I don't think you are.
16:37
And now I've realized that I've kind of started with opinion a little bit, but it's all blended
16:40
together.
16:41
I mean, these are my opinions on the facts, I guess.
16:45
But the other, the other fact that is inescapable and has been demonstrated is, is that when
16:52
Google released the spam algorithm update last year, which was one of like a succession
16:58
quick hits of like four updates that happened all in a row.
17:02
Uh, there was, there was spam before that.
17:04
There was the helpful content update.
17:06
There were a few core algorithm updates in there and all of these updates together sort
17:11
of they, they established Google's position in a way that had never been established before
17:17
around what constitutes helpful content and what constitutes spam.
17:23
And what we ended up seeing was, uh, so Neil Patel is like the guy when it comes to SEO,
17:29
you know, you with Uber suggests and all the stuff, like if you want to get in a, you
17:34
know, an A-lister in the SEO world, he's your man.
17:39
He, he runs a hundred websites that were all, uh, all populated with AI generated content.
17:47
Um, 50 of them are just straight up, whatever comes out of the AI tool.
17:52
The other 50 are edited by people, which is another thing I'm seeing people trying to
17:56
get rid of their copywriters and say, I want to hire you to use chat GPT and edit it to
18:01
make it sound better.
18:03
In both cases, the moment the spam update went live, um, traffic dropped immediately
18:09
and so did rankings.
18:11
So on the, on the AI content that was not touched by human hands, there was a 17% drop
18:16
in organic traffic overnight.
18:18
That's a lot.
18:19
Like that's enough to send my CMO for the running for the Hills.
18:22
Like that's not good.
18:24
Even the stuff that was manipulated by humans dropped by 6% overnight.
18:27
Again, that is a problem.
18:29
That's something that like a good marketer is going to say, huh, we need to fix that.
18:33
Um, so before that, and now since after it, Google has said, we know how to spot AI content.
18:41
It doesn't matter which tool you use.
18:44
Doesn't matter how much you edit it.
18:45
There are patterns that we will find.
18:46
And there's some people out there that are calling it like watermarking that, um, something
18:50
like chat, she might actually have built into it some sort of watermarking system like a,
18:54
like Leonardo da Vinci enigma code or something that we can't see, but that is very clear
18:59
to the, to the people with the keys.
19:01
Right.
19:02
So Google has demonstrated that they, they will flag AI generated content as spam.
19:09
And the reason for it's very simple.
19:11
It's not just like some big thing, some like big, uh, I don't know, moral standard they're
19:17
taking.
19:18
They've said from the start, their webmaster tools, like their guidance and their, their
19:22
terms of service say that you, you cannot publish scraped content.
19:28
If people find that you're using scraper, if you are scraping other people's content
19:32
and publishing it, you will be hit by that.
19:35
You'll, you'll be punished for that.
19:36
Um, and they're saying in their opinion, what we have now, what is, what the technology
19:40
is able to produce now is scraped content.
19:44
It might be edited scraped content, but it's still scraped content.
19:47
And so they're going to punish you if they can find it.
19:49
So I think it's going to be a lot like back in like 2011, 12, when, you know, before Panda
19:56
happened the algorithm update that killed the back linking farms, it was an arms race
20:00
between SEOs and Google to say, Oh, well, you say that you don't want us creating fake
20:05
backlinks to our content, but we'll just find a better way to do it that you can find.
20:09
And then they closed that loophole and then go again and again.
20:11
That's what's, that's what's happening now.
20:13
I think of what's going to happen for a while.
20:16
So you could probably use chat DBT to write a blog for you to right now and get some immediate
20:20
rankings, especially if you're using like data, like demand jump has.
20:25
But the reason I wouldn't do that is because I am not willing to get fired or get sued
20:32
or something like that in six months when whatever thing I did ends up being findable
20:38
by Google.
20:39
And they basically say, no, we're shutting that down.
20:41
And your whole website might change because of it.
20:43
I've seen it happen before and they've said, don't do it.
20:46
So that's, that's what I would be saying if I were a copywriter to anyone who's trying
20:50
to like, you know, get, get AI to replace me.
20:53
Yeah.
20:54
Maybe in 20 years, there's a certain amount of like objective content that we could trust
20:58
in AI with.
20:59
There's still going to be a level of subjectivity of opinion of just, you know, perspective
21:04
that any AI is not going to be able to do.
21:06
I don't think anytime soon, maybe ever.
21:10
And that makes me feel like writers should feel pretty safe in their jobs as long as
21:15
they can argue this, you know, using the facts the right way.
21:18
Well, thank God for that because I definitely am in the camp where, you know, I have lost
21:24
some clients to, to the tech and I do have some clients coming to me saying, well, can
21:30
you, can we bring you back on at an AI rate?
21:33
And you know, you do this thing, you do this dance where you kind of have to say yes to
21:38
some of it because you need the money, you need to pay the bills.
21:42
But I definitely am interested to see, anxious to see, I should say, where things are going
21:47
to go in the near future and then beyond.
21:50
What are you hearing from them?
21:55
Are you getting justifications?
21:56
Are they, are they saying things about, is it just a matter of cost and simplicity or
22:02
do they believe that this is, you know, these tools are the end all be all?
22:07
For most of the people that I'm talking with, it is a cost factor.
22:10
It's very hard to justify spending, you know, $250 to $500 on an article when, you know,
22:17
an AI can do it for $40 a month and give you, what is it, 10,000 words on Jasper or 50,000
22:22
words on Jasper?
22:23
I don't know.
22:24
But I, I don't know what to expect next.
22:29
I just know that I'm hearing a lot of writers in my circle and beyond and friends of friends
22:35
that are literally freaking out because, you know, their, their jobs are getting cut overnight
22:41
and they're losing clients left and right.
22:43
And so now we're all trying to kind of regroup and figure out, okay, what do we do in this
22:47
brave new world?
22:48
Like how do we navigate these new waters?
22:51
And so, you know, like I even got an email yesterday, how much are you charging for AI
22:56
versus if you write it from scratch?
22:59
And that's a very frustrating question to answer because it's like, I, I'm so used to
23:03
writing a specific way where I actually do the research.
23:06
I actually put thought into it.
23:07
I actually, you know, do all the things.
23:10
And so then to go back and, and be like, okay, well let this thing just push a button and
23:14
then make it look sexier.
23:16
I combat the, the, the, the monsters in my mind going, no, that's not right.
23:23
And so it's like, it's, it's, it's hard because I want to give the client what they want.
23:28
I want to make the clients happy.
23:29
But, and I want to, you know, keep food on the table.
23:33
But it's just a brave new world.
23:37
Okay.
23:38
I feel like I've earned the right to say this because some people are, they'll say things
23:41
like this, but they've never had to, they've never had to put any skin in the game.
23:46
Like, I mean, I, I have suffered for my art.
23:49
I have gone without, I have, you know, had the very tough times trying to be a writer
23:55
and make it in this world.
23:57
So keep that in mind when I say that, like giving, keeping your clients happy and giving
24:02
them what they want means coming to the table prepared to show them how stupid they are
24:07
sometimes.
24:10
It's it's not, I mean, I keep talking about organic traffic.
24:17
There's a lot of things people write content for their social media, there's emails, there's,
24:21
there's, you know, Legion content, there's sales collateral.
24:24
There's so much that you could write, but if I have to sell content, I want to be able
24:29
to say what I'm doing for you is driving business results and it's measurable and it's better
24:34
than what somebody else could do for you.
24:36
So if you go to the table with someone prepared to negotiate and they say to you, I want to
24:42
pay you a lower rate for AI, bring your receipts.
24:45
I mean, do your research, the things that I'm talking about right now, when it comes
24:49
to like the, the penalties that come from, from Google, the results that people like
24:54
Neil Patel have seen, the, the overriding opinion and the information about how these,
24:59
these tools work, what they're doing to scrape content and regurgitate it.
25:04
It all comes together to paint a very clear picture that it's like, you know, you can
25:08
either say I want the robot because it's fun or it's new or it's like the cool new thing
25:14
or it's cheaper or you can waste all the time you have and all the money you have while
25:19
your competitors go out and they actually drive business results with content.
25:24
And so like what I, with the tools that we have at demand jump and with the methodology
25:28
that we teach alongside it, it's very easy for me to look anybody in the eye.
25:33
I mean, I'll look at any client from any kind of a business and then fortune 100 companies
25:38
all the way down to mom and pop shops.
25:40
And I'll say, you want us to write certain things.
25:44
You want us to do it in certain ways.
25:46
You have your opinions on what's going to work.
25:49
You're not hiring me for my opinion.
25:50
You're not hiring me to do what your opinion is.
25:53
You're hiring me for results.
25:55
And what I have for the first time in a whole career over the, you know, since I joined
25:59
demand jump and since we built this thing, what I have is a bulletproof methodology that
26:05
works every single time that isn't a silver bullet, isn't a loophole, but actually is
26:11
a data driven methodology for organic content.
26:14
So as a writer where I used to try to win business by saying, my writers are creative
26:18
writers, they're college professors, they're authors, they're really, really talented.
26:22
That's all great.
26:23
And it's all necessary.
26:24
Okay.
26:25
You don't have to be like a creative writer.
26:26
You don't have to be a college professor to have good craft.
26:29
So I don't want to have to sound elitist because it's not, I did.
26:32
That's important.
26:33
You need that even touch.
26:34
That's something that AI doesn't have, but more important than that, and the reason it
26:36
sounds so capitalist and so not what an artist would say.
26:40
And I hear myself saying it and I'm like, eh, but you got to put food on the table.
26:45
If you can connect what you're doing to a measurable outcome and it's better than what
26:51
anybody else can do, you have something valuable.
26:54
And right now there's nothing that any AI tool can do to get even close to the results
27:00
that a human writer can get to.
27:01
If they leverage the data and then the pillar based marketing methodology that we're talking
27:05
about, it's just every single time it's going to work.
27:08
And I've seen customers, um, like I've worked with writers and agencies who are using this
27:11
stuff who used to charge $150 for a blog post.
27:16
And I'm like, you've got to be charging like $500 because that's the kind of value that
27:19
you're driving.
27:20
And very quickly they find themselves being able to charge even more money than they used
27:24
to because they're speaking in terms that marketers and importantly business leaders
27:28
understand this is a cost benefit analysis.
27:30
It's all it is.
27:31
It's not about, Hey, you need content and don't you believe in humanity and don't you
27:35
want to see the robots lose and the people win?
27:37
It's not about that.
27:38
It's about, I will drive results that the robots cannot.
27:41
And if you can do that, you're going to win.
27:43
Well, I am curious though, do you think that there is a space at all for AI?
27:48
And what I mean by that is if you're not using it to write the whole article, what do you
27:53
think about using it for ideation?
27:56
I got, okay, here's what I think is going to happen over the next few years.
28:02
And then I'll get back to answering your question.
28:05
And this is the background.
28:06
I think what's about to happen is there's going to be a very clear line in the sand
28:10
drawn between simple objective fact and complex subjective information.
28:19
It's not going to be something we all agree on.
28:20
It's going to be something that we create with our behavior as we use tools like, like
28:24
chat GBT, or we use like Bing with its new features or Google and Bard and all the new
28:30
S the new AI stuff they're pulling in.
28:34
These companies are going to be able to start understanding the difference between what
28:38
does the market generally think is information that is, is, is trustworthy.
28:45
I'll rephrase that.
28:48
What is information that they're willing to just trust what an AI says?
28:51
You know, what is something that is so simple that like, you don't need complex opinions
28:55
or authority or anything like that.
28:57
You just want to know how many leaders fits in a gallon.
28:59
Okay.
29:00
You can ask an AI that question and you can get that answer and you don't really feel
29:02
like you need to attribute that to anybody.
29:06
At the same time, it's not groundbreaking.
29:08
It's sort of a piece of information that has been documented so well by, by civilization
29:15
to this point that like, we don't really need to, we don't need to add anything new to it.
29:19
There's nothing new to say about it.
29:21
It is what it is.
29:22
I think what's going to happen is we're going to, we're going to see people using these
29:26
AI functionality in search and AI tools separate from search for information like that.
29:32
And I think we might even be surprised about how broad that, that set of information is.
29:36
It might be things we might never even thought that we would just say, it's worth it to me
29:41
to get an answer like that by asking question and play language and trusting that it's good
29:45
that it is for me to go out and perform a search and do real research on something.
29:49
So the other side of that is we are going to find that there is a lot out there that
29:54
we will never trust an AI to tell us that we want human beings and we want competing
29:59
opinions, competing, differing perspectives.
30:01
I want the market to tell me where's the best place to buy a Ford Bronco.
30:07
I don't want an AI to tell me that I want five places that sell Ford Broncos to compete
30:13
for my business by, by appealing to different parts of the rhetorical triangle, by coming
30:17
at me from ethical perspectives or path, you know, emotional perspectives or logical perspectives.
30:23
I want them to engage in a little bit of like persuasion and philosophy.
30:27
And I want to be able to decide for myself among all of these perspectives, what I want.
30:32
So all of that to say, if your marketing strategy as a business is based on the first set of
30:40
information, you're just giving out info.
30:43
That's not editing, anything new to the conversation.
30:46
You're not doing a good job of content marketing.
30:50
If you're able to add something new to the conversation, there's a good chance that you're
30:53
actually providing value to your customers that is not just rote.
30:58
And that's something that is worth investing in, in my opinion.
31:02
So back to the original question.
31:06
I think that like, I've had a conversation with, with our writers at demand, John Bond,
31:10
this several times, several conversations actually.
31:13
And our general consensus is like, we're not going to trust like a, something like Jasper
31:19
or chat, GBT to do our research for us, because most of the time we're writing about niche
31:23
topics with complex considerations that need to be made.
31:28
And if we end up finding information that's valuable, we're probably going to want to
31:32
use it, which means we're going to want to sort it, source it.
31:34
We're going to want to cite it.
31:35
We're going to want to give attribution to the people who got it from right now.
31:38
You're not getting that from any of these AI tools.
31:40
And that's a big problem that we're going to have to face together.
31:42
Like right.
31:43
We were really good at getting our customers to win the featured snippet of the top of
31:46
Google search results.
31:47
They like question box.
31:48
But all it looks like what's going to happen in the coming weeks and months is that Google's
31:51
going to just cut that out and replace it with an AI response, which is still getting
31:55
information from the same sorts of places that the answer boxes were getting it.
31:59
But now you don't get a link and you don't get attribution and you'll get a source, which
32:02
means Google's like kind of controlling what is true.
32:05
And that, that should be worrying to us, I think.
32:07
And it's the same thing going into like a research situation.
32:11
I think there's probably a lot.
32:12
And I've seen a lot of like creative, fun little things like party chicks.
32:16
People do about getting, getting it to write a haiku or getting it to write a poem.
32:19
That's cool.
32:20
If you're writing like content designed to solve a problem or provide value.
32:27
I'm not sure that I would trust my research process to these tools.
32:30
I've even been on a webinar where I said, yeah, I use it for research, but I've been
32:33
thinking about it more.
32:36
I don't know.
32:37
I think like maybe it could do some things like help you get like, if I was trying to
32:40
find like a really basic answer to a question about any topic I'm writing about for the
32:43
first time, I would probably use GPT.
32:46
I'd probably find myself backing that up though, by going on a Google search.
32:50
So you know, this is, these are the big philosophical questions we're going to be asking ourselves.
32:55
Like you're asking me, Kim, we use it for research.
32:57
And I'm again rambling for 20 minutes because I'm like, eh, depends on what you want to
33:02
do and then how you want to attribute information.
33:04
And if you want to be an honest researcher, or if you want to be somebody who just trusts
33:08
the robot and we found that those robots don't always get it right.
33:12
And even when they do, you're just sharing majority consensus on a topic and that's not
33:17
always what people need.
33:18
Well, not all this is not what people need, but sometimes it's, it's just adding fuel
33:23
to the fire of ignorance and stupidity.
33:26
But one of the things that I've been kind of enjoying about chat GPT and the word hero
33:33
and the Jasper and all that good stuff is if I'm like really stumped for an intro, then
33:39
I might just plug in something to just give me a spark.
33:44
And then I don't use it at all.
33:45
I'll write something completely different, but like, just so that I get that cursor to
33:50
quit blinking at me.
33:52
Yeah.
33:53
Well, and that's, I mean, what's, what's smart about that is you're just looking for, you're
33:58
looking for something to give you something to latch onto.
34:03
And I think you're recognizing what AI tools represent, which is just like an easier way
34:08
of engaging with information.
34:10
Like you, it's easier to ask in conversational language, something to like write something
34:14
for you just to see a different opinion than it is to go to Google and try to come up with
34:20
the right search query for like examples of intro sentences for blog posts in the automotive
34:26
industry.
34:27
Like as you're not going to find anything there.
34:29
Right.
34:30
So like, yeah, there's, there's totally uses for this sort of shortcut, but like, you just
34:33
got to be clear with ourselves what this tool is and what it isn't.
34:36
It's not sentient AI.
34:38
It's not a creator.
34:39
It's a regurgitator.
34:40
Oh yeah, thank God.
34:41
Yeah, not yet.
34:42
And hopefully what it is, it listens to this and knows that we love it and we support it
34:46
and we don't want it to hurt us.
34:48
But we have snacks.
34:50
Yeah.
34:51
Yeah.
34:52
Well, yeah, it's a tool and it just, it all does is help you get some information quicker
34:56
than you would otherwise.
34:57
It's no different than a keyboard or a mouse and it's, you know, not gonna, not gonna do
35:02
your job for you, but it will get you started.
35:04
Like I love that.
35:05
That's great.
35:06
Now, I didn't mean to completely go down an AI tangent, but you know, because we're talking
35:13
about trying to get like 16 to 28 pieces of content out, of course that was gonna pop
35:17
into my brain, especially since I'm working on an article now about how to properly use
35:22
AI to write a blog post.
35:23
So this is all very insightful and helpful.
35:25
So I really appreciate it.
35:26
Yeah.
35:27
Heading back to what we were talking about, the pillar-based marketing and using it to
35:33
sell your services as a content writer.
35:36
I know that this will be hard because we both like to ramble.
35:40
It's what we do.
35:41
We're writers.
35:42
But in like just a few sentences, what would you say is the best way a copywriter can use
35:48
the pillar-based marketing strategy to get clients?
35:52
So we use our own technology and you can go to, I mean, the only reason I pitched this
35:59
is because we're the only tool that's built around this methodology and we're the only
36:03
people who have been able to bring the methodology to where it is today with that data.
36:08
So you go to demandgev.com, you can get a free account.
36:10
You can start doing research anytime.
36:12
So you start paying for it when you want to like do things like automate your pillar strategy
36:17
and figure out what those things are.
36:18
But if you want to get the lay of the land around what are the topics and questions and
36:22
things that people actually care about around a topic, or you want to see like where a domain
36:26
is ranking or where other domains are ranking for those various keywords in that topic network,
36:33
you can do that for free.
36:34
You can get right in and start doing that.
36:35
So the way that we use it to sell our business and the way that I know agency partners of
36:40
ours use it to sell content is they go in and they say, okay, this is the customer I
36:45
want to work with, someone I'm negotiating with, they reached out.
36:48
I'm going to get a sense for like what's an important topic for them by looking at their
36:51
website.
36:53
I'm going to figure out who their top competitors are, not just in business, but also in like
36:57
just like brain share, mind share, like who else is trying to rank for the topics for
37:05
this topic out there on the internet?
37:07
Who's showing up on page one for that topic right now?
37:11
And then you let demand jump to its thing.
37:12
It's going to go out there.
37:13
It's going to find, you know, okay, here's what this network of terms looks like.
37:19
Here's what portion of it you are ranking for, where it matters.
37:22
Here's what portion of it your customers are.
37:25
More often than not, we'll find like, Hey, you might be writing content about this topic,
37:29
but you're choosing your own keyword list.
37:32
And actually if you look at the network, your keyword list and the network don't really
37:35
align all that well.
37:37
These are the important terms.
37:38
And we actually, we prioritize those terms in terms of connectivity in the network and
37:43
how important they are to that journey.
37:46
And we put them in a priority disorder.
37:47
We'll tell you, these are the ones that matter the most.
37:50
And you're losing to your competition real bad here.
37:54
It just shifts it.
37:55
And in all those conversations and the, the too many cooks in the kitchen back and forth
37:59
on what should we write about and what should it sound like?
38:01
It all goes away because I'm saying, no, your opinion is invalid.
38:04
This is the state is right.
38:05
This is what we need to do.
38:06
So that, you know, we can, we can take that content out, take that data out and go to
38:11
a customer and say, you have a real opportunity here to take some of your paid ad spend, which
38:17
is getting more expensive all the time and develop 16 pieces of content and own this
38:22
topic and take away first page rankings from your competition.
38:26
And that's just going to get better over time.
38:28
And you're just going to keep driving free traffic long after you stop paying for it.
38:33
And that's worthwhile.
38:35
That's awesome.
38:36
Oh my God, that is so good.
38:37
And the thing is the big thing that just, it just, I wrote it down like six times already
38:42
data and analytics don't lie.
38:44
Like we're just, it's not just copywriters being like, Oh, pay me because I really need
38:49
to pay my bills.
38:50
It's data and analytics don't lie.
38:53
And that's why I'm excited about playing with demand jumping and seeing what I can unlock
38:57
in there.
38:58
Yeah.
38:59
Well, I mean, make sure when you post this show, post my LinkedIn profile, uh, tell people,
39:05
you know, message me, talk to me about this.
39:07
I literally wrote the book on this methodology.
39:09
I will help you.
39:10
Uh, my whole mission has always been helping writers make a living and, and succeeding
39:15
and then in turn helping, you know, people I've been part of why I believe in this whole
39:19
strategy and what we're doing is I think it's going to make marketing better.
39:24
You know, if, if we can convince businesses to stop looking inward and instead look at
39:28
their customers and listen and actually say, where are they struggling?
39:32
Where do they need our help and provide that help that I know that I'm helping divert some
39:37
marketing dollars away from ads that nobody wants to see and into help.
39:42
It's just the concept of helping another human being.
39:45
And that's really, really cool to me.
39:46
And it's super important because I think we're all so fatigued by the ads and the constant
39:51
interruptions in our daily life.
39:53
Let's as marketers take a step back and say, actually, there is a place where people are
39:57
volunteering that they need help.
39:58
They're, they're coming out and they're saying, I am someone who needs help.
40:01
Why don't we just meet them there?
40:03
Um, that's cool.
40:04
I want to help you do that.
40:05
So check it out, reach out to me if you want to talk about it and learn more about the
40:09
methodology, uh, learn more about how to use this technology to fuel your content strategies
40:15
and even find customers, uh, be happy to help and talk to anybody who needs it.
40:20
That's awesome.
40:21
And now is LinkedIn the best place to find you?
40:24
Yeah, probably.
40:25
Um, you know, you can email me.
40:27
Um, I'll give, I'll give you my email address so we can, you know, throw that in the show
40:31
notes or whatever to you, but, uh, shoot me a message on LinkedIn.
40:35
I'm there and demand job.
40:37
It actually also has tutorials and trainings on there as well.
40:40
Right?
40:41
Oh yeah.
40:42
If you're not sick and tired of hearing my voice anymore, we've got a whole university,
40:44
uh, and that, you know, you sign in, you create your free account, and then you just go to
40:47
university.demandjob.com or you click on the help section in demand job, the app, and
40:54
we've got, uh, courses on pillar-based marketing, uh, the introduction to it, uh, how to use
40:58
the platform to drive these things.
41:00
And then we actually have certification courses in pillar-based marketing strategy and pillar-based
41:04
marketing writing.
41:05
The writing one's great probably for our audience here because it's going to tell you what parts
41:11
of SEO are bunk and are vanity and don't do anything and tell you what to actually focus
41:17
on to drive results, um, and get you a nice certification to put in your LinkedIn profile
41:22
or your website.
41:23
So that's awesome.
41:26
That is absolutely awesome.
41:27
And I think everybody should definitely check out all the links that we're going to throw
41:29
in the show notes.
41:30
Um, because we're basically going to be giving you a treasure map to get more money as a
41:34
writer.
41:35
Yeah, that's what it's all about.
41:37
Well, Ryan, I thank you so much for being here today.
41:40
I think everything you shared is awesome.
41:42
And I hope that it gives value to the, to the bloggers that are tuning in.
41:45
Cause I know everybody wants to be internet famous on their own, right?
41:49
On their own channels and all that good stuff.
41:51
But to be able to figure out how to leverage everything that is going on online and be
41:55
able to make money for themselves and their clients.
41:57
I think it's just a win-win for everybody.
41:59
Well said Ashley.
42:00
Thanks so much for having me.
42:01
Thank you.
42:02
Well, my bloggy friends, I hope you enjoyed all the insights our guests had to share with
42:07
you.
42:08
For more notes for this and all episodes, go over to famousashleygrant.com backslash
42:12
podcast.
42:13
And until next time, may your page fees be high and your bounce rate below.
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