Guardrails For Your Online Brand With Paige Donnell

We explore how digital PR, entity SEO, and shifting social algorithms shape reputation, discovery, and trust. Paige Donald explains why coherent signals across platforms now drive both reporter interest and AI overviews, and how to play the long game without chasing vanity metrics.

• personal speech risk and employer brand alignment
• entity identity across profiles and the knowledge graph
• echo chambers, LinkedIn’s niche pivot, and Reddit research
• newsjacking with intent vs vanity metrics
• LLM visibility, AI overviews, and third‑party authority
• long‑game PR, reporter relationships, and useful measurement
• analytics gaps and mapping content to real demand
• trust recession and multi‑channel credibility
• media training for executives and scalable video content
• agile startups outpacing legacy brands online

Guest Contact Information: 

Website: paigepr.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/paigepr

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With over 5 million downloads, The Best SEO Podcast has been the go-to show for digital marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs wanting real-world strategies to grow online. 

Now, host Matthew Bertram — creator of LLM Visibility™ and the LLM Visibility Stack™, and Lead Strategist at EWR Digital — takes the conversation beyond traditional SEO into the AI era of discoverability. 

Each week, Matthew dives into the tactics, frameworks, and insights that matter most in a world where search engines, large language models, and answer engines are reshaping how people find, trust, and choose businesses. From SEO and AI-driven marketing to executive-level growth strategy, you’ll hear expert interviews, deep-dive discussions, and actionable strategies to help you stay ahead of the curve. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 1:03 Personal Speech Vs Employer Brand Risk
• 5:05 Entity Identity And Knowledge Graph
• 9:20 Echo Chambers And Algorithm Blindspots
• 12:07 LinkedIn’s Algorithm Shift And Niche Content
• 15:40 Newsjacking, Intent, And Vanity Metrics
• 19:15 Beyond Google: LLM Visibility And AI Discovery
• 24:02 Why Digital PR Now Outweighs Classic SEO
• 28:10 Long Game PR, Reporter Relationships, Measurement
• 33:05 Commitment, Lag Time, And RevOps Alignment
• 38:30 Data Gaps, Analytics Setup, And Content Signals
• 43:45 Trust Recession And Multi‑Channel Credibility
• 48:05 Agile Startups vs Legacy Brands Online
• 52:10 Seeding LLMs With Flagship Assets
• 56:40 Media Training And Executive Visibility

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing. Your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_03: 0:13

Howdy, welcome back to another episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. I am your host, Matthew Bertram, uh or Matt Bertram. We've been talking a lot about entity SEO. We'll talk about that more as time goes on. Uh, I wanted to bring on a fantastic guest that I've had the pleasure of getting to know in the oil and gas space that really is a leader uh in digital PR. Um, Paige uh Donald, how are you? Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01: 0:44

Good. How's it going?

SPEAKER_03: 0:45

Good. And uh Paige of Paige PR, right? And that's how you're how how you're known in the kind of uh Texas, Houston, oil and gas arena. Uh Page PR is uh very well known uh from the standpoint of getting your brand out there. So Paige, um we were kind of talking previously, there's a lot going on in the news. Um, you know, how you were talking about how people are getting fired for comments on social media. I would love to kind of hear you did a post on LinkedIn about that recently. So I'd love to uh hear more about kind of your feelings towards that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23

Yeah, and um also just recognizing I have no intention of going down like a political rabbit hole or minefield, for instance. Um but I mean, obviously, I mean, in public relations, more so than marketing, we're dealing with perceptions, right? How you are perceived, how you want to be perceived, um, how others look at your brand. And so, kind of the topic I wrote about on LinkedIn yesterday is yes, we all have the right to free speech, and you can say whatever you want to say, as vulgar or as vile as it might be. That's protective. Having said that, your social media presence, what you post on any of the platforms, um, when you do that, even if it's your personal account, you are still representing your company. Um, you might be looked at as a brand ambassador, maybe you're head of sales, maybe you're an HR. I mean, no matter what your role is, it you know, in your social circles, meaning social media circles, you're connected with people that you do work with. And so it really doesn't matter if it's in relation to Charlie Kirk or just a regular Tuesday at work, you're responsible and you own what you post. And even if you take it down later, you know, it's out there for the world to see. And so, you know, it's it's just a great reminder to all of us. You know, I work with brands on their social and we always have defined strategies for each social outlet. But my kids are teenagers, you know, I'm an adult. What does my personal brand reflect? What do I want to post? What am I willing to post about? Um, what are topics that I avoid? And so, you know, I just think everything is online with your with your personal brands, it's the same way. You know, if if there's something foul you want to say, maybe just don't put it online because it's going to be there, it's going to live there. Someone will see it, someone will take a screenshot. Um, and it is an employer's right. It's a private company's right, uh, public company's right to let go of people that don't properly reflect their brand and their corporate values.

SPEAKER_03: 3:39

And so um well, you know, the world we live in today, like with the internet growing up, is is so much different. I think I've talked to a number of people about how they're like so glad that social media wasn't around when they were growing up. And then when social media was early, uh, I I even have a Instagram account that's public and then a private Instagram account. Yeah, and you know, I posted more on my private account. I haven't posted as much on my my public one, but that goes for Facebook and LinkedIn, like entity, like you as a person, there's no uh who you are in private and who you are in public, it's who you are as an entity online. I'm actually dealing with Matthew, Matt, Bertram, as you can see in my my title here. I've been doing this a long time, and in the knowledge graph, as kind of we move into kind of some Google topics. Um, I am represented as two different entities. It's not sure who I am because well, we've changed the name of our company, I've had different roles, I've done different things. Um, and and so it just comes back to who are you? What are your values? What are the signals that you're giving off? And all these social media and AI all talk to each other, right? So you are a person of who you are, and you're representative online of that, and um you need to think about what you said, whatever you're posting is gonna get indexed and forever. So you know, you need to think through the things that you do and understand the impact of what you can have, and what what you're talking about and what you're saying is all a record of who you are as an entity, what you're associated with, um, what you're knowledgeable about, what you talk about, and and even you know, going in a little bit further, there is a personalization that starts to happen when you post to give you things that are more like you to like there's there's this homogeny that is is happening where you're gonna be seeing more posts like you post about, and you're kind of in an echo chamber, which which is which is problematic. Um, but when people are searching online, you got to be aware of people are gonna be able to find that if they're looking for that, and you might be around. I think people are so much in their echo chamber, just to talk about what you said, is that they think that this is yeah, I think this, and all the things I've seen on social media are this, so of course, everybody thinks this, and um, that's what your feed is showing you, and you're not aware that that might be a very small microcosm, uh, or or even like a silo of what the broader public thinks. And I think a lot of these people are uh like really taken back by that the backlash because they thought everybody thought the way they did because of how these algorithms work.

SPEAKER_01: 6:57

So this is actually a really interesting topic, and I I promise I'm gonna tie it back to work. But my job in PR, like I said, is managing perceptions, telling people stories. It's also watching the news and and following the reporters or the journalists that are covering the topics that my clients are most interested in. So when I tell you I devour the news, I mean the news is on all day. All the different channels, no matter how you think they're covering things, I'm watching it all, I'm reading it all, I look at all of it online, right? Because to exactly your point, and particularly if I'm representing others, I cannot be in an echo chamber. None of us should be. We should be evaluating and hearing everyone's opinions, everyone's different expertise and credibility. Um, but it's fascinating when you watch different outlets cover different things, which is why it makes it so important to not just live in your bubble. Um, sticking with what you were talking about uh with echo chambers, and I think you and I discussed this a while ago. So LinkedIn's algorithm has changed um really over the course of this year. I started digging into it. I kind of think what happened, let me give a little bit of background. I think what happened is when COVID hit and we were all working from home or we were kind of siloed wherever we were, everything was virtual, right? So all the messages that maybe you would have had or wanted to have over a lunch or a networking hour were put on LinkedIn. And all of our LinkedIn feeds just blew up with stuff that maybe we didn't necessarily care about, right? It just came in in order of like timing and we all moved on. Then Reddit, which has been growing and growing, you know, I love Reddit. Um, a lot of their statistics show that people go there before they make purchasing decisions because you can ask very specific questions and there's all these little subcultures within. I mean, it's mind-blowing. I have looked up mining questions, um, remote crypto mining work, mobile generation. Like it's crazy the topics that you're like, that would never be on Reddit. Yes, it is. And these are very much like B2B questions, and they have very serious, genuine answers. It's incredible, it's this incredible community. I think that LinkedIn started as that, right? It's our business networking community. I think during COVID, it just blew up in everyone's face because we connected with everyone. And the truth is, it's not Facebook, it was never meant to be. So their algorithm has been changing this year, to your point, to where um the things that you're starting to see in the top of your news feed now are very niche, very specific to your industry or your topic based on your profile. And the um posts that rank the highest usually have a very like personal or anecdotal type story. It's not how it used to be, where we would say, Hey, we launched a new website, you know, here's your call to action, click to learn more. Those days are gone. What LinkedIn favors and prioritizes are things that are applicable to you and ones that have like a more customized post. You can't just put whatever you want out there. And obviously, videos are prioritized. So it just seems like all of the platforms these days just kind of keep you boxed into what you know.

SPEAKER_03: 10:37

Yeah, I mean, they're trying to keep keep you on the platform and engaging, so they're gonna feed you more of what what you like or you know what you share, like so. There's uh a point system associated with it. Um, and I think that really the the news and whatever your target persona that you're going after is, you can build a structure where you can kind of news jack, I think it's kind of a term that that's used sometimes and and ride the wave. And certainly in the podcasting world, that is what certain podcasters do. Uh, if if there's a lot of search volumes or something, they jump on it, they bring on guests, um, and they ride that wave. And I think that if you're a kind of web 2.0 or social first company, um you can get proficient in this, and it's very valuable to post about the news. I think you and I are talking about people that are not intentional about what they're posting, and they just become the news story, but but there is ways to do that, uh, and and follow the trends. Like Google Trends is free as a way to see what's going on. You can see uh, you know, where where the uplift is happening from a PR standpoint, set up like a Google Alerts is another free way to see what's going on with your brand or your industry, and and become relevant into what's going on, but you have to be firmly mapped in who you're trying to talk to and what you're trying to communicate, and it and it needs to be intentional. And I've seen people on Facebook and LinkedIn do it fantastic, and um, they are on top of everything, uh, and and they know how to post. And I would encourage people, if they want to get into that, look at what's being done, uh, look at the engagement rate and look at how specific it is. There, they usually tie it back to maybe a personal story or something about what they sell. Um, you know, they're they're usually tapping into the emotions and and they're really just hijacking interest uh of what's going on. And I I have mixed opinions uh about it because I I'm seeing a lot of posts, and I feel like some people are are are doing it for for likes, but uh or engagement, and and that is a vanity metric. I I think that it to each to own on whatever you you want to do and whatever you're looking for, but I can tell you that just because you're grabbing attention and you get a lot of engagement or likes, that will help your next post um and and kind of your overall average get pulled up. But I've seen in the B2B world the smallest post targeted to the right community with almost no engagement, and also we know that most people don't even engage, right? Like only a small fraction actually engage, and you can get more leads and connect with more of the right people by by being laser focused on that. And when you talk about the news, okay, and you talk about things that are outside, if you think of like a plot graph, a lot of these things, if if you don't do it a lot, are outliers and the algorithm doesn't really know how to handle it, and then it kind of mixes up what you're doing. I'll give you a perfect example. Um, the people that are successful on Facebook stick to only posting about a topic, it's like they don't blend their their personal post as much with their business, and they're laser focused on whatever they're talking about in particular. And the algorithm knows okay, I need to show this to more people that like this and and engage with that. And you know, for everybody listening, this is a SEO podcast, and well, 50% or more of all the traffic has now left Google. Okay, it's all over the place, it's on Reddit, it's on social media. That's where people are starting to find out about brands, and so the the optimization game, I'm calling it LM visibility, right? And it maybe AI visibility and AI discovery, like I have an AI discovery framework, is much broader. But guess what? All these social media sites are they're LLMs, like Google's just a big LLM. Um, it it just has you know kind of different put uh inputs, and it you know, there it's weighting things a little bit differently, but you're speaking to AI that is trying to speak to humans. Um, there's a little bit of a bifurcation that's happening of of how you need to do things, but the search game, the discovery game, the visibility game, uh the positioning like depends on your your bent has completely changed. And now you gotta optimize everywhere. There's all these different words for for everything. I I feel like LLM visibility is is really like the laser focus of of where I see the market going. Um, but there's a lot of other things being talked about, and PR and other votes for you and other people saying things about you impacts the LLMs, impacts how people view your brand, and is critically important. I actually saw a study recently, or actually it was a survey, and marketers thought that digital PR was the number one most important thing today.

SPEAKER_01: 16:23

Yeah, it I mean, it has to be. So there's I meet a lot of interesting people in my specific career and also within the industries and the sectors I work, right? Because I I think we can collectively say oil and gas, you know, traditional energy, the industry in general just moves a little slower than some others. So you have a lot of people that don't know what PR is and don't see the value. That's just kind of those historic, historical mindset or or stereotype of a lot of people that I have interacted with. And let's just assume someone I'm talking to today, that's been their mindset this whole time until 2025. You can't afford to do that anymore with um AI overview and AI mode. It is tanking websites. Um, so if you're not, this is the other part that we can kind of tie into. People spend tons of money launching a beautiful new website, which is incredible, and then they're like, okay, I'm done, we did it. And it's like, no, that is just kind of like the central hub, but it's like again, if you are not actively posting on social, if you're not um writing your own content and having that live on your website somewhere, and then if you're also not getting that third-party coverage and some type of interviews written online, otherwise, your website is just sinking. And I think the stats are maybe since the start of this year, website traffic is down. Oh my gosh, you might know this better than me. I think it's 37%.

SPEAKER_03: 18:08

So it depends what you look at. Um, I have seen studies that it's down uh across the board on publishers 58.5 percent. Yeah, so if your website is not down that much, it's kind of like how you're doing above the average, you're actually doing good if you've been able to maintain uh that traffic and that positioning.

SPEAKER_01: 18:30

Yeah, so Google is punishing websites that don't stay current or up to date or fresh, totally cool. But if you are a company that you know was kind of standoffish or reluctant to do any sort of um PR efforts, marketing efforts, what have you, well, you're gonna be punished before. Now you're really gonna be punished. And it's such an opportunity to kind of move up or even get your your coverage or your text into that AI overview. Like it's a it's gonna it's gonna kill companies or it's gonna kill business because, and we see this especially in oil and gas, right? We have this great crew change where where the older generations are retiring. Well, every I like to think I'm super young, by the way, everyone that's our generation that's kind of like moving up in managerial roles, the first thing we do when when we need to buy something or we need to look a company up, we go search it. We search it up, we see what everyone else says about it, we look at all their stuff. So, you know, if you're still kind of operating like it's 1990, this is just gonna be the thing that that really kills your motivation.

SPEAKER_03: 19:43

Well, if you're looking, yeah, if you're looking to be found, right? And that that's how you uh at people people found you through through paid ads or seo or social media, um, the game is changing. If you're you haven't and you've operated the old good old boy way, old school way, and I I will say, even people that don't publish anything or companies that don't publish a lot are saying something by not publishing as well. But I won't go go down that rabbit hole. But people discover you or get referred to you, and these buying committees are um, you know, a lot of different people that search a lot of different ways, but they do a lot of that research on their own. So even if they were handed the name of your company, you're gonna go get found, and they want to see what you're saying, they want to see what people are saying about you, they want to see who is saying what about you as well. And you know, okay, we're talking SEO, we're talking okay, we got some guest posts, we got that. What you do is real PR, okay, is like you know, you're getting in the top publishers that have a lot more value that help you that tell the story that people when it's on their platform, people stand up and listen and take those words with a lot more credibility, and that's what the AI searches, that's what the LOMs are doing, is they're waiting who is saying what. Because if you're just on some random website or uh that doesn't have a lot of prestige, it's gonna carry about that much weight, like there's parity in that. And um, so the higher, the the better, more recognized, I mean not better, but like more recognized, more prestigious publishers are gonna carry X amount more weight, like multiples more weight. And um, that's also gonna influence decision making. And so if someone's looking for your brand, one, you're not gonna get discovered in the AI overviews and in the LMs, you're not gonna get surfaced or get any visibility. So you're not gonna be get found, you're gonna miss out on that. Uh, I can tell you too, if someone's been given your name, they go search you or they ask, you know, chat GBT or or um, you know, co-pilot or whatever, and your name comes up or doesn't come up, that moves you further down the buying funnel. I can tell you when our name has come up, when people have been given our name or they've searched Google, like I've had people call me, Matt, like, you know, I was searching for this thing, I wasn't their first call. You came up, they recognized my brand, and they're like, Oh my gosh, you're crushing it for you know, X-related services. Um, let me tell you about my project, and it's almost like a done deal, right? And so even in these smaller circles that you operate, how people view your brand online or how online views your brand reflects how people respond. It's it's the LLMs are are just like with Google, people would skip, or 80% of people would skip the ads. Um, and if you showed up at the top of Google, there's like some kind of value associated with their ranking organically, there's some signals here that I should listen to. And I feel like with the LLMs, as people use them more and more, like that is your trusted co-pilot, that is your trusted partner in your ideation. And so if you're not getting surface in there, and the thing about what's happening now, Paige, is the spine is hardening of where you're gonna sit in the rankings, and it's like wet cement. Okay. I actually stayed up super late last night, and I, you know, drank a bunch of energy drinks, um, and I was working and I wrote like a little manifesto uh on on Matthewbertram.com, and I just think people don't get it, they think that AI is some kind of bolt on, and I think it's a sea change, okay? And everything is opening up and like get ready, everyone. Get ready.

SPEAKER_01: 24:05

Yeah, well, and and just to kind of add to that, you know, I feel like I see that on the PR side when I'm when I'm pitching. So, you know, we always have people that come in that, you know, I think I've told you my favorite is when people are like, we want to be in the Wall Street Journal. And it's like, well, you and every you and everybody else, but if you read the Wall Street Journal, you would know they don't exactly do features. So, you know, like what is a industry trend or what's some kind of trend that's happening right now that that's applicable to your business or your product or whatever we're whatever we're talking about, but to your point, you know, I work with a lot of reporters, I have a lot of contacts. They get thousands of pitches a day, they don't want their time wasted, number one. And number two, I'm not just throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks, right? So to your point, if you're not being strategic in terms of all of this, so whether it's a it's a PR pitch for a news story or a really pressing topic or what you're doing with social and SEO and everything else, they're they're not going to be interested when I'm sending them a pitch or it's like, hey, I've got this really cool story or article idea for you. It is, and I think people lose sight of this, it is such a long game to, you know, what we're doing is shifting perceptions. We're also building relationships with reporters, right? So that whether or not I'm pitching something, if a if a topic or something comes up, they know to call me or they know to call my client because they know it's it's an expert or a source. They're not going to take you, you know, always on the first or second email that you send them. It might take six months before a door opens. And it's like you have to keep playing this long game. And you're exactly right. The people that have been doing this well are going to continue to do it well, and the people that buckle down and commit to it are going to see results. But it's the people that are kind of like on the fence, you know, they've never really tried it. Maybe they try it once or twice and they don't get the results they want, and then they throw in the towel. It's like that is the worst possible thing you could do. Like you have to stay committed to this. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03: 26:23

So, so a hundred percent, a hundred and fifty percent. I find so many people that um want to test the waters, right? And we used to offer these smaller SEO engagement packages because we didn't want to have people have to commit to a year or 18 months because we're building a relationship, but the way that online's been saturated since COVID, everybody's online, like pay per click is is really not um the economics don't even work anymore for a lot of these campaigns because it's a a pay per click bid system, it's been bid up so much. I remember when it was a couple cents a click and you could you could really do a lot. Now you have to be very strategic to break through the noise. And so if people want to run ads or people want to do SEO, everybody's doing it. So, what are you doing different? What are you doing standing out? What is newsworthy? What is something that's valuable that that people or the algorithms will will latch on to? And and you need to really think about how you're you're you're seeding that online and you need a strategist to help you do that. But the commitment that I'm seeing is either you get it or you don't. And that that's kind of like I I actually we backed away from um like this podcast, of course, is um like I mean, I've seen hundreds, if not thousands, of campaigns where digital marketing 10x is plus a business. Okay. Yeah, but it doesn't happen immediately. It's almost like the first six months you're building up, you're starting to get some success. Maybe you get a quick win, and then it's it's on the back end where where you start to get that that compounding, where you get this um escape trajectory on what you're doing. But but so many people either don't have the right strategy, right, going into it, so or they give up too soon. Or what I've found is a lot of times if we've done these shorter engagements, uh, even Google says that they don't sandbox, but they do. Um, they they they they wait to release stuff and and publish stuff and give it visibility unless you're really hitting it with the PR signals more like a lot a lot quicker. And what will happen is the work that we did now, like by the end of the year, will will start to have an impact. And they've moved on to something else, and then they're like, Oh, this is the thing that's working because everybody's used to like Amazon Prime, and you know, they want it immediately. Um, I mean, even paid ads, I haven't seen real results where you can even measure anything for about two weeks. So there's there's this lag time, there's this startup piece that that really impacts um the success. And and then the other thing that I would love for you to speak to is I'm seeing more and more kind of a RevOps model where you got to speak in terms of you know, what are the dollars and cents? Like, how does this tie to the bottom line? How is this gonna grow my business? And and we've started to put together more case studies where we articulate what that growth looks like, but again, it's gotta be an investment and it's not a quick turnaround, like it's like we got to get going and get the wheels cranking, and then we got to prove to Google consistently uh in the LLMs that we're doing. This and then that success starts to happen, but it it doesn't happen quickly, and so there's a lot of like belief that it has to happen along with the right strategy, along with the right partner. And I just think people have been burned so much that um you know the trust building to know that you're the right partner and that you've you you have the proven methodology that's gonna work and and you know what's gonna happen, like you know the reporters, you have a relationship with them, you've pitched it, like you know this story will not land, or I can get this story here with confidence. And that's a piece, and we're talking about a lot here, we're trying to unpack a lot in you know a few a few minutes, but but once you even get that placement, there's there's that's the beginning that like it's the repurposing of that placement to make sure it's being shown and seen, just like the analogy of the website, it's the starting point. And so I think that there's a lot of factors that people deal with that like when I talk to them, uh, if they don't know who I am, they haven't like listened to the podcast, read my books, like it heard me talk, whatever, they're they got like a wall-up and they got some baggage about what happened. And and a lot of times there's a little bit of counseling that's going on of like, okay, what did you do before? You know, let's look at it. I can look at the data, I can kind of see what's happening. And and there has to be a real commitment and buy-in for it to work now more than ever, because well, it's so much harder than it used to be.

SPEAKER_01: 31:49

So I feel like you touched on um a lot.

SPEAKER_03: 31:53

I know. A lot.

SPEAKER_01: 31:55

So sorry, I'm just jutting down a couple notes that I want to touch on. So let me start with maybe one piece and then I want to move to another. Um, I think we talked on a different podcast recently about how uh PR is measured, right? So way back in the day, 20 years ago, before online was even a thing really, um, say you got something in the Houston Chronicle on the cover page of the Sunday Business edition, which is the most read, just so everyone is. So you would cut out the cut out the news story and you would measure it with a ruler, and then you would match it up with um your advertising rates. Um, the truth is it's a very terrible way of measuring the value of something because it's not an ad, right? It's this big feature story on the cover, there's a ton of eyes on it. So I think the ad equivalency method was like the best we could do at the time. And today we have similar things, a lot for online. You touched earlier about how things rank, like when you get published on a third-party site with an interview and article, how they rank on Google. Um, you're exactly right. Different outlets and websites have domain authorities, and the higher your domain authority, the more credible you are, the more visitors you have. So, for instance, USA Today is going to rank a lot higher than like, I don't know, sittinginachair.com or whatever random website you throw out there. So all of these are ways to measure PR, right? But it's also a little bit abstract because PR is not necessarily used for sales, it's not tied in with sales the way you may say, um, you know, we have 10 people click on this keyword, drove them to the website, and then we and then we got a call. What typically happens with PR, right, is it's about opening doors. So if it's a case study that's relevant to someone, maybe you get your front, your foot in the door with a major because they saw that you were proving, right? Or maybe you're you're speaking or you're getting published and you're thought of as an expert. It's very rare, it has happened, just like you were saying, that like I myself have published something in the business journal, or I've had a client that did an interview and they immediately got a phone call. And when that happens, it feels amazing, by the way, um, because usually there's an email or a voicemail that's like, hey, I read your I read your piece. Do you do this kind of work or that kind of work? But what typically happens in my space is you're working on building this credibility over time. So maybe a potential client sees you speak at a conference, and then they see you publish in a trade magazine, and then they see you interviewed on a podcast, and it's like all these different touch points in the sales cycle. So by the time they call, in most scenarios, they're not saying, I'm hiring you because I read your awesome case study. I wish they would say that more. But it's typically a whole host of things, right? So in addition to all of the marketing um touch points. So when we go in and people say, you know, how are we measuring success or how many leads is this going to kind of deliver? It's a little bit of a red flag. We want to deliver them, but it would almost be um, it would certainly, I mean, I don't know if I call it line, but it wouldn't be authentic and and transparent if I weren't like, that's not how we measure things, right? Like we want to get X member of placements, you know, we want to be talking on certain topics, we want to see web traffic go up. Maybe we're kind of steering that social strategy, but it's not, it's it's very difficult to say, like, oh, we're gonna get you an interview in the chronicle, which is probably going to be an industry type story, and then someone's going to hire you. It doesn't necessarily work like that. So people can be really misinformed on that, which is fine if they're open to number one, being committed, right? Just like you were saying, we have to give this a while. It's not going to be one or two quick wins and you're off sailing. Um, but we also want people that are comfortable working with an agency or that kind of are willing to be a little bit educated in this space if they aren't already. Um, and then the other thing that I was just going to talk about, and it kind of leads into this. We work with companies of all sizes. So we work with energy or energy tech startups that are$50 million,$150 million, all the way up to, you know,$10 billion companies. It really just depends. Obviously, the larger companies are going to have a larger internal team that's managing all of these components of marketing of PR together. You would be shocked at how many, I'm going to say two to three hundred million dollar companies that don't have analytics set up on their website. They aren't monitoring these things, they aren't measuring these things. And so, you know, when we're hired and we're kind of mapping out like, well, what's happening this year, or what are the trends, or what do we want to talk about? There's this whole other side of, well, what has the most engagement on social, right? What are people searching when they're going to Google and typing in search terms? And what is the traffic doing on your site? What products or services are they most interested in? And so, I mean, just last week I had a client that thought they had analytics set up on their site and they didn't. And so we got them set up. And no, I don't have a ton of insights to go after a week of just seeing what's happening, but I can see the product pages that are most frequented. And so, okay, if that's what your customers are most interested in, what what can we write about? What can we talk about? What can we pitch? What should we be pushing out on social? Because there's clearly a level of interest that like y'all don't even realize, you know, you may be over here talking about red shoes, and the fact is somebody wants a basketball and you sell both, but like you're not even tied in with like what your client, you know, what your customers or clients are telling you behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_03: 38:19

So the data is so powerful when I'm on teams of like traditional PR, uh, like uh I not no traditional advertising, not PR, but like uh, you know, newspapers, um, terrestrial radio, TV. I I usually uh represent the the digital piece of it, and and I'm working with some traditional players that have you know that like I don't want to move into terrestrial ad buys or anything like that, but they asked me for the data, they ask me what's going on with the data. Those insights are real valuable, and that helps you guide the decision making maybe for the next quarter or whatever campaign's gonna run next that you might not see or know. And going back to what you were saying previously, you know, only like four percent of people are ready to buy. I saw uh some data that said there's 30 touch points now uh for the B2B buying sales sale, 30, not 11, not seven, 30. And and we we operate under this framework that I've mentioned before 7114, seven hours of content consumption, seeing your brand or logo 11 times on four different channels. Like you spoke to that, you know that because you've been in the industry and the how the buyer behaviors change, they don't just see something and buy anymore. And and I think pre-COVID, we were getting a lot of those like one-off wins because we would just catch somebody or we would kind of target a little niche and we know we could get them a lead, and we were like, Hey, let's show them some success, and then they'll engage us for longer. And you know, really, there's so much ramp up that has to happen, and the stars have to like almost align to make that happen. And now people are pulling back, uh, the economy is a little bit slower, budgets um are are taking a little bit longer to spend, and so um Euro thinking that if you're thinking about purchasing these kind of services, but your customer sales cycle is lengthening to they might not be in the market, and so um to to to have that quick win to make that happen, it it's more about like you were saying, what's the conversations we want to be associated with and be involved in to get that brand uplift to be there when someone's ready to make a purchase and stay visible on different channels and different places because there's trust, okay. Um, there was a study um that I had a guy on a long time ago where we had a lot of these psychological conversations about buying behavior, and he sold billboards, okay. And he said there was nothing more than when someone saw your uh brand on a billboard of of cementing in this company has made it because they have the money to buy a billboard, built like a massive amount of trust, and also there's so much noise online. Like, I I believe that people are glued to their phone, but man, when they look up from their phone that they've seen you on and they see you in the newspaper, uh, you know, on the front page of an article, uh, they see you on uh you know a news channel, right? Like Fox and Friends seems to be like a good placement point, and and like or a billboard, it adds a whole different layer of trust. That that's what we have. We have a uh a uh recession, a trust recession, uh right now, and and you have to build that confidence up if you don't have the logo that people are backing. I've seen this with salespeople so many times, they chase a comp plan, go to a smaller company, and all their relationships and all the doors that used to open, they thought it was them, and some of them was them, but a lot of times it was because of the logo and what was being carried. And now they're in a position to say, okay, how how do I get in the door? Well, guess what? PR, online marketing, social media that's what gets your brand noticed. And I'm seeing this erosion of big brands that have not stepped into the web 2.0 game and we're already moving to web 3.0 or whatever. Yeah. Um, and uh their brand was carrying them, but smaller companies that can navigate and move and understand um you know the new environment are are winning and are getting in the door and are are are competing against the bids. And now the this kind of safe harbor of everybody always hires IBM or whatever the the ad is, um, is there there's high trust in some of these unknown brands that have dominated online, on social media, uh in PR, uh across these different platforms. And I'm telling you, surfacing in the LLMs, you know, LLM visibility is not big today, but it's growing massively. Yeah, and as people trust their their personalized trained AI, if you're not surface there, you are not even one of the potential selection choices.

SPEAKER_01: 43:39

Yeah. Well, and I know, like just using some of the, you know, I just told you I work with some startups, uh, and then I work with some of these massive companies. You're exactly right. Startups are some of these, I hate to say smaller companies because the$50 million company is still really big. Um, but they can move so much faster. And the fact is they are getting in there and doing the exact same pitches and competing with all of the big guys. You know, sometimes it may come down to just like capabilities, you know, can you do everything that the client asks? But I don't think, you know, in so many things that I've heard, I don't think it's um, I don't think they're losing out because of expertise per se or anything like that. Because, like you said, I mean, if you're a smaller company and you don't have that name recognition built up already, you have to be doing all of the marketing things. Otherwise, you're just going to, I mean, you don't have that big name at that point to kind of carry you through. So you've got to do all you can to hustle and grind and stay relevant while the others can just kind of skate by on their coattails.

SPEAKER_03: 44:50

And and I think that one of the biggest things that I've been approaching with my like L invisibility framework that that I've built out and we built some use cases for it is you got to find like a white paper or something of high value, right? That that press will pick up. We're not talking a blog, we're talking, you know, a very uh, you know, uh a multimedia piece, like something that has significant value um to seed the LOMs as a as a foundational point to build your brand on. And the more kind of um seeds or kind of uh like points that you can lodge in and and map around your brand, uh those those weighted points are are really, really critical because there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of AI generated nonsense that that's happening. Um, I can tell you, even going back to my story, I've been publishing stuff and the the labeling of what I did, it doesn't even know that I'm the same person, right? And it's like the names change like how you build your brand today is is so critical, and there's all these things to consider because there's this digital world that's trying to mirror and map the real world, and so if you're doing things in person and you're not publicly doing a press release and highlighting those things and taking pictures and sharing those on social media and tagging it where the LLMs understand, it's like it didn't even happen.

SPEAKER_01: 46:39

Yeah, so there's two issues I see pretty regularly. And again, it this part doesn't matter what size your company is, a lot of people don't know what is newsworthy. Um, and I mean that in two ways. They don't understand what the press will pick up. So for instance, I'll say, Do you have any case studies, any white papers, you know, awards, you know, awards, yeah. Women in the C-suite that we could really spotlight. And no one ever, no one ever knows anything, and they're like, no, we don't have anything, we don't have anything to talk about. I can sit through one staff meeting and I'll come out with like 10 or 15 things. And it's like half these people are sitting on gold mines of things, you know, newsworthy things they should be sharing that they just don't even realize. So that's one massive problem. Um, and and it's more so again, with whether it's myself or their internal team, like not allowing marketing or PR to like be a part of that C-suite or a part of those bigger conversations. Um, the other part of this is with podcasts and with so much digital, it is so easy to hop on a podcast or commit for an hour, and then you're and then you're done, right? And so many people are reluctant, and yet we know that videos are prioritized and rank the highest on social outlets. Um, most people engage with the videos over anything written because no one really reads anymore. And so, and they give you that instant credibility, even if no one picks up the coverage, it's something you can put in your newsletters or emails or your website to send out to your clients. And people still look at podcasting and almost feel like it's too risky, or or maybe they just don't want to take the hour out of their day. I'm not sure why, but like that's such an easy, massive win. And then the clips can be broken up and you've got content and marketing material for days, um, and people will still blow it off. It's crazy to me.

SPEAKER_03: 48:44

Well, I think some of the bigger companies, right? On and with the other podcasts we have, there's like a legal element that it has to get run through legal. Um, also, I think executives need some PR training, right? They need to understand um that as an executive, one, your brand needs a spokesperson. And if you're the CEO, you're you're the spokesperson, or if you're on in the C suite and you want to build your personal brand and be, you know, uh, you know, uh, what is it called? Like just like in, I can't even think of the word, but you like where you are uh invaluable, that's the word, invaluable and and and grow grow your career options, you need to be online. So we're seeing a lot more um uh inbound interest from a brand consultancy standpoint of executives uh building their voice online, how to manage social media, how to post, um, you know, putting together uh books where you can take even interviews and turn into a book, but that is so critical in YouTube, okay, and podcasts and YouTube. YouTube is is picked up as brand lift, one of the top um kind of kind of components of of share a voice when when you're trying to get out there and YouTube, the access to people that brands back in the day would die for you have for free, and no one's taking advantage of it. And to your point, I think that a lot of these brands need to have a strategist or bring in an outside consultant so things are not stale, and to work with their marketing or sales team or executive team to understand what they should be doing because corporate training and and maybe they have the team internally to do it if they're a bigger company, but the execution of what I've seen of some major brands they need to be training, things continue to evolve, and so having the right partner or advisory person that you can go to to look at things, they don't have to be doing all the execution, but they can that I mean that's what I've been engaged for twice in the last month is coming in, they have a big team, helping them train it, organize it, build the workflows, get them uh up to date with the uh the best technologies. I mean, there's technology now that you can take an ad before you run the ad and run it through a synthetic audience or you know, AI, and figure out based on that target persona how this ad will land without spending any money. Like you can start, I mean, you can start doing like there's a lot of things of market research, like go to market research that can be executed quickly. There's McKenzie style reports, and like there's a there's an article I read, I should have reshared it, but it was like uh existential crisis by the big change management companies because what you can do with uh LLM like we wonder Cracker Barrel should have used it before they went on their whole rebrand.

SPEAKER_01: 52:00

I wonder what the results would have shown.

SPEAKER_03: 52:03

Well, that's the thing. If you want to do this, one test it out in a small market set, right? In in in a uh uh like there's some homogene to maybe the bigger market, like a microcosm, but you can test it synthetically now before you do it. I'm not saying that everything's perfect, but it will give you an idea of like, hey, maybe you should reconsider this because this doesn't align with your target audience. So I mean, same thing with Budweiser, like um, you know, like there are things that you can do and you can move quickly. Like, I know a lot of people are like, oh, we got to get to market, like within a month or six weeks, you can get strategy-level engagements where it's not gonna be a ton of interviews and and a bunch of stuff. You want to certainly confirm some of that data, but yeah, but I can tell you that um a lot of internal companies when when they engage us or we start to have conversations after conferences or speaking talks, like they're open to it, um, and they know it's moving quickly. And you know, I I I also hear from a lot of executives, right? When I'm speaking, oh, we got a we got an internal team, we got it, we're we're good, we're good. And then like, you know, if you go look at who they have, they maybe have a uh, you know, a generalist and a couple VAs or something. And and so I think that there's this mindset shift between, you know, uh having a a consultant or or working with a like a brand building consultancy uh or a PR company in where it's it's so critical today. It is so critical to to be involved with everything because it's changing so fast. And the people that are winning are taking advantage early. The early adopters are the one that's winning, and I'm just starting to see this big shift of like the big brands that like have just like horrible websites that that don't think it's important that this is a sales tool, this is a PR tool, this is an internal training tool. Um, this is your brand online as representative and should mirror who you are and who you want to be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 54:27

So just quickly, I don't know, I don't know how much time we have left. Um, so a couple of things. I think you know we do media and presentation trainings, which there's a lot to impact there, but on the on both sides, right? I mean, you're getting people ready or getting executives ready to speak on whatever type of medium is being asked for. Most people need it, even the most confident speakers need it. Um, what's interesting is so many are averse to it, they're risk averse, and yet I think studies show that uh like you can't move up in your career unless you're doing some sort of public speaking. So, like your younger professionals today that you're kind of looking at, or perhaps you're grooming to be upper management later, they should be doing all the speaking, podcasting, and webinars that they can do, right? It negatively the studies show it like negatively impacts your salary if you're not doing public speaking. Again, because of the networking and the credibility that you can lend back to the brand. Um, I'm actually doing a big, I'm doing a presentation training for um a group. They're doing their big investors day coming up, and I think I think there's 10 of them. They're all used to speaking, very comfortable speaking on different mediums, but they want someone to come in and kind of critique or coach up those little nuances that maybe each of them have, which frankly is something all of us need. But it does go back to, and I was I was talking to someone the other day, when you have a decision maker or an executive, and let's just say they hate public speaking because like 75% of people hate public speaking and and all these things. What you're asking people to do, even on something like this that's like off the cuff and fun, not everyone views it as that. And you're asking people in a way to be vulnerable, even if they're experts in something. And then, you know, when we come in and we're we're helping coach them up, what we're really doing is critiquing them, right? And these are people mostly in positions that don't like to be critiqued, and they've you know built this big career. So the the media training and the presentation training is a lot of fun, but it always comes with that like 5% bit of stress on my side. But again, it's like if you're not doing it, you should be doing it. If you're not comfortable doing it, get coached up for it because you're missing these massive opportunities. And especially for these like younger professionals, it's going to negatively impact your career. So it's like, you know, get the ball rolling now, or or maybe you're identified on the team as like the up-and-coming engineer that wants to be the spokesperson because no one is volunteering, like nobody wants to go out and do these things. I feel like a lot of times I'm like dragging people's feet to the fire, like, come on, this is easy, let's do it.

SPEAKER_03: 57:26

So yeah, Paige, we we are almost at time or we're wrapping up. Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you want to make sure to highlight? And also, what is the best way to follow you, get in touch with you, find out more about your services and what you're talking about online?

SPEAKER_01: 57:43

Sure. Um, nothing else. This was a fun conversation. You know, I always love kind of diving into the details. The best way to reach me is email page at page PR spelled P-A-I-G-E. Um, I mean, calls are great. I don't know about you. I'm overwhelmed with spam these days. So calls are probably reaching out on LinkedIn. Um, I'm sorry, emails are reaching out on LinkedIn. Anything written, a text is great. Um, just the phone calls. If you call, leave a voicemail.

SPEAKER_03: 58:14

Real people, real people.

SPEAKER_01: 58:17

Real people. Um, by the way, on that note, I think there's some technology coming out that's gonna filter all the spam out for us for those of us that have our cell phones out there on the internet.

SPEAKER_02: 58:30

In Texas, there's some state laws that are are coming down the pike that I think are dreaming of the day.

SPEAKER_03: 58:36

Well needed. Um, well, Paige with Page PR, thank you so much uh for coming on. If you enjoyed this conversation, please leave us a review. I would really appreciate some reviews uh or share it. Shaiko us, share like, follow. Um, and um, you know, we uh this is podcast is sponsored by EWR Digital. I don't say that a lot. EWR Digital, um, a great brand consultancy. We do execution as well, being around 25 plus years. So check it out, check out Page PR for PR, check out EWR Digital for strategy, uh, SEO, paid ads, etc. Um, until the next time, my name is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for now.