NerdBrand Podcast
The NerdBrand Podcast is at the intersection of nerd culture, branding, and advertising. Nerd culture is no longer an isolated subculture; it’s THE culture of the day and makes its way into our daily lives through the entertainment we seek and the technology we rely upon. Listen as we discuss our views on visual design, branding, and advertising for movies, comics and novels, video games, technology, and other nerdy passions.
NerdBrand Podcast
AI Evolution: Redefining SEO and Mastering LinkedIn Networking
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Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the NerdBrand Podcast, where, once again, I'm by myself and I'm going to babble on about some SEO. But on this episode we're going to talk about is AI dying. Ha ha ha. See Plot twist up next. Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the NerdBrand Podcast. And is AI dying? Well, it is actually speculated that it's on that path. I know Wild.
Speaker 1:A lot of people talk about AI. It doesn't stand for Adobe Illustrator, for short, this is artificial intelligence. I just watched a lot of six seasons of Person of Interest. I know you're thinking, oh God, jason, you just really started chasing the rabbit from jump and kind of sort of. But this show was like. I think it went off the air in 2012, 2015. I have to look that one up.
Speaker 1:But it was all about AI and it was this AI machine that could predict people that would commit atrocities or not. Is it a perpetrator or victim? And so that's the job of you know, the folks there that were trying to help people anyways. So, looking back, look watching that and then looking at how ai's trajectory is now, there's some things that they kind of got right and there's some things that you know didn't age well, um, but for the majority part, the one thing is um, seo search engine optimization is it's in a weird place right now. It's in the weird time. It's like a prepubescent teenager at the moment where it's figuring stuff out. But you know, it kind of said it knows it all but doesn't really. I think those that have children out there know what I mean. And so there's been a skepticism that maybe the decline of SEO has been predicted for decades. By the way, maybe it's not, maybe not Because it's been dying.
Speaker 1:I guess I got into this business I want to say 2009-ish, ish. Anyways, I was in the business early enough where I was watching somebody optimize YouTube videos just to outrank um American Idol videos on on YouTube just for giggles. So you know this is in the days of buying backlinks and link wheeling and, um, you know phantom pages and just all kinds of shady stuff. That was done that. Now, if you do it, well, you know you're going to get blacklisted from Google, but it's sort of been a thing from Google lately where AI just seems to it's come in. I think, personally, it's got a complete seat at the table.
Speaker 1:With AI, everything is changing. How it changes and the direction it goes in is just how creative the person is that has it. You can use a hammer to smack a nail into the wall, but you can use it to pry a nail. You can use it for a lot of things. So I think that SEO is I wouldn't get it, I wouldn't call it done and by any means I just think it's going to be different, because a lot of the search engines and how they work, I mean there's this thing called retrieval, augmented generation, and in the world of SEO it's kind of a technique. It takes what the AI operates on, which is what you hear the term LLM, large language model it takes those and it gives an update, factually grounded answers based on the question you're asking the AI.
Speaker 1:So when you kind of consider that, it's like wait a minute, this sounds familiar, this sounds like the fax pages. So you kind of have to think about you know, a lot of people still like I want to do SEO, I want to rank position one on Google for number one, like got to get people to get out of that, because if you're in a business and you have 20,000 other competitors, they've been at it longer than you, they got more money than you, it doesn't matter that it's organic, it's still going to cost more, take more time. And also it just it doesn't make sense to take the time because you're never really going to catch up to them. If you think about it, they've already started the race. So you got to figure something else out, uh, and so now, with this, I kind of hope that everybody's coming in on the ground floor. And now that isn't necessarily a thing where XYZ company has been doing SEO, power generating, you know, generating content. It's optimized and it's helping them make sales and it's a complete channel dedicated in parallel to social media, google Ads, whatever, or paid advertising and all that. So it sort of gives you kind of the perspective I'm trying to communicate is that it's sort of you're now neck and neck with someone else. Potentially, if you're aware of this, there is a way to start planning for it, way to start planning for it.
Speaker 1:Um, so, uh, let's see a Googler, uh, martin split. He stepped in, he gave an analogy of some of the documents from this that that it could use to generate these from, and it's uh, he said, probably nowadays it's much better and you can just show that, like here, you upload these five documents and then, based on those five documents, you get something out of the bag. That was his analogy of what we're calling RAG, which is Retrieval, augmented Generation, off these large language models. And then a comment was okay. So the question is about how the thing knows its information and where it goes and gets the information. Years ago I had a mentor. He told me he said knowledge. He said wisdom isn't about what you know, it's knowing where to go and get knowledge. So that becomes now more and more relevant in this digital age.
Speaker 1:I think when we think about, like, trying to get things Moeller fully explained, he said I found it useful when talking about things like AI and search results or combined with search results for SEOs, I feel initially where they think about this topic and they think, oh, ai is this big magic box and nobody knows what's happening in there. And he's very right. It's just there's always this magic box syndrome that everybody kind of goes under when they're in their business and they want to grow it and they think, well, I've tried marketing and I've tried paid ads and I've tried social media, I'll give branding a shot. And it's like wait a minute, you've already got, hopefully, a brand. Maybe it just isn't recognizable. Maybe it's not trustworthy. I mean, if you see Coca-Cola or a major sponsorship done with a major brand, you're probably going to give a little bit more time to reading. What is that event about? What is it that they are sponsoring or selling? The name really lends credibility to the thing and I think that's how it needs to be taken here, but anyway. So SEOs are afraid of AI. I don't think they should be. I think they just need to kind of keep their eyes open and, you know, take away from that, look for ways to creatively use it, like I talked about a hammer. Wish I had a better analogy than a hammer. I do, but this is what you all get when it's just me and I don't have Jacob or John or Mitch here. So, anyways, that's my hot take on SEO.
Speaker 1:Recently, I've had a lot of conversations as well about LinkedIn, and now some of them were talking about LinkedIn and talking about networking online. But let's stick to LinkedIn for a moment. Linkedin gives you first, second, third degree connections, and so I'll give a free shout out to a networking group called Third Circle. That happens at Dave and Buster's here in Louisville, kentucky, every other Friday, and it's a great networking group to attend Kentucky every other Friday and it's a great networking group to attend. If you hear this podcast and you hear me say this, go to Dave at Make and say, hey, I heard about this event because of the Nerd Brand podcast and I don't know you might get free hugs.
Speaker 1:I don't really have any offer, but the thing is, is that that third circle thing and how they treat it and what that means? So let's try to frame that in the sense of LinkedIn, where they have degrees, not circles. I see a person that I'm a third degree connection to like degrees, like having like six degrees to Kevin Bacon. You may have heard of that, if not, look that up, it's fun and my first degree connection has a connection that's now a second degree. So you can't really leapfrog because the first degree may not know the third but they know the second, the second may know the third. It takes a lot of digging to kind of figure out the breadcrumbs on how to follow that if you really want an introduction to that person. But you also have to think about this before you ask for an introduction or give a referral to anyone. Is it a fit? People ask all the time, like what do you guys really when getting a door? Like what is it some of the meat that you do other than you know the marketing stuff and the creative? Well, it's a lot of this consulting that you're getting here.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this podcast, if you're a brand that sells meatball bowls, are you a fit for a shoe company? Maybe, I don't know, it's very unlikely, but you know, some things have off of you credibility to them, so that both brands are elevated and therefore revenue comes from that companies we work with. But the people that I know Jacob knows Jonathan and Mitch and all the boys have known a lot of people over the years. Easily, you're talking between all four of us, I'd say 60, 70 years of combined experience and connections, and a lot of those connections do overlap, which helps, and so we can know when we get together like, hey, this brand would be a good fit for so-and-so if they want to put their product in this store and kind of show it or do an event, blah, blah, blah. You just want to be careful about that and the strategy for that.
Speaker 1:So when you're reaching out on LinkedIn, what are you offering? Obviously you want to make a sale, but you can't make it about that, even though we all know that's what you're trying to do, because all of us need to buy bread. At the end of the day, though, are you solving a problem for them? And if you can't solve a problem, then don't pursue them. I don't believe that you should manufacture a problem, unless you're like the blacklist and you want to be that villain where you make a problem for them and then solve it, and then they become your best friend. Sure, but now you've got a relationship built on unstable land, but I mean, I guess it could work Not saying that I've done that, but you know.
Speaker 1:So there's something to think about the degrees of connections, and, with LinkedIn, it's a lot of work to market on there. You eventually will have to engage with LinkedIn paid tools, not just ads the paid sales tools, because you're going to hit a wall pretty quickly. It takes days to just do sales research for people that you might talk to, and then you may have it not pay off at all. You may spend three days going through your linkedin and other people's connections, working this strategy to get those um, you know in, uh, you know introductions, only to find out they don't need you or worse, they do need you but you don't get along, and getting along with your prospects that you hope to become a customer is so important. Not every agency is a fit for everybody. There's a lot of cool brands I wish that we could work with, but we just simply can't because we're just not a fit. We're just not a fit. We don't really have a lot in common. We don't get along, and that's okay, you know, as long as it's amicable.
Speaker 1:So really think about your strategy there on that side of things, whenever you're doing things like that too, you're going to obviously create content. You hope your marketing team is supporting you. Marketing and sales really need to be in alignment here, because when we dovetail back around to SEO, it's going to become important, because SEO is content. What kind of content are they making? Are they making podcasts? Like, what is the message that they're out there talking about that? You hope your sales teams are in sync with so that when prospects engage with them, whether it be through LinkedIn or whether it be face-to-face, the message is clear and it's the same. These are also areas we help with, so we can help your sales teams. Now, we are not sales consultants. We're not Carnegie right, so we understand that. Do we recommend that? It just really depends on the size of the business and the need. Where we sit is the materials that they use and even how your salespeople dress.
Speaker 1:Salespeople, if you're going to go in front of C-suite, if you're going to go in front of people that run multi-million dollar companies, iron your shirt, make sure you got a haircut shave. Think about how you're dressed. I know it sounds so superficial, but it really will make a difference when you walk into that room, because the moment you cross that threshold you're judged. Now I don't have to say this much to the ladies. We all know they try really hard and us men are very thankful for that. But we could learn a lot from them in observing how much effort they put into themselves before they walk into a room, and I'm guilty of not doing that, to be honest, a lot of times in my position I'm kind of a CEO, that kind of steers from the back.
Speaker 1:I don't necessarily go to networking events. I don't. You know, if I go to a big meeting like that, yeah you bet I'm cleaned up and I'm fine when I get in the room. But it don't mean fine, like yeah, fine, uh, I mean it's um, I understand that I need to watch vocabulary, cadence of speech. I also need to shave. I'd understand that. But you have to be aware of that with your sales teams. It becomes sort of part of the brand because literally they're an expression of it, just like your logo or your website. That salesperson shows up. You kind of want to know, you kind of get to familiarize yourself with them and the brand and you're like, yeah, that's kind of how these guys present themselves. So these are very important things to kind of consider.
Speaker 1:So for this episode, ai is kind of coming under some possible ends. I mean, if you think about these language models, you think about all these tactics I've been talking about, like how people network and sales. Honestly, I don't know we are going to find ourselves doing that more than relying on AI for those things. I think AI will help us filter better and use as a great tool. I don't think AI actually see it resurge because now it's starting to get the footing under it with AI on what it can do with it. Um, the technical side of the conversation AI is in Google's ranking algorithms already.
Speaker 1:Uh, you, if you don't think that then you should go read their own blog they have and get it from a horse's mouth, or you can go to our friends at searchenginejournalcom and read up on it. Um, they've got a great article there about this topic, about how seo has been changed by ai, about organic search is kind of. The search result pages are kind of obsolete. In one opinion of one of the articles, um interviewers and natural language and search queries are profoundly. They change what it means to be relevant, and relevancy is very important. Like you know, you want to focus on rank, focus on relevance. Just a little hint, um, and so it's a. It's a very interesting article.
Speaker 1:Um, you know the the internet is going through massive changes right now. We are all witnessing this. So you're ready, kids, it's gonna be a crazy year 2025. I hope isn't what we've seen in the past, but it did start off pretty rough. Obviously, I think we all know as of this episode, but hopefully it's going to be a year of transformation, but in a good way, and hopefully we see some good things. I think we're all ready for some positive vibes coming up, and so, if you've enjoyed this episode of the NerdBrand podcast, you know where to go. Go to nerdbrandagencycom slash podcast where you can listen to more shows you can like and subscribe. If you head over to your favorite podcast channel, whether that be iTunes or Spotify, you can just search for NerdBrand and find us there, or search for NerdBrand podcast on Google and you'll find it. Don't worry, it's there. And if you see Jacob out in public, you know. Let me know if his shirt's been ironed. All right, well, other than that, keep it urban and strong.
