My Weekly Marketing

Managing Your Brand on Google with Jason Barnard

• Janice Hostager • Season 1 • Episode 84

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How much control do you really have over your brand’s online presence? In this episode, we’re joined by Jason Barnard, CEO and founder of Kalicube, to uncover the strategies behind shaping how Google perceives your brand. Jason is an expert in helping people and businesses take charge of their digital narrative, and he’s sharing tips that anyone can put to use.

From managing Google Knowledge Panels to refining your digital footprint, this conversation is packed with actionable advice to help you build a stronger, more consistent online identity. Jason’s practical, down-to-earth approach makes it easy to understand how you can align your brand’s online presence with your vision and goals.

Whether you’re a small business owner, a marketer, or someone with a multifaceted career, this episode has something for you. Tune in to learn how to stand out online, educate AI about your brand, and stay relevant in a world where digital impressions matter more than ever.

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Janice Hostager:

I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business and life in between. Welcome to My Weekly Marketing.

Janice Hostager:

As a business owner, you've no doubt heard a ton about branding, am I right? And you've probably also heard a lot about SEO or search engine optimization too, but where do the two overlap? On Google, of course, my guest today is all over that. Jason Barnard is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker and an award-winning writer. He's a CEO and founder of Kalicube, a groundbreaking digital marketing agency based in France. Jason specializes in online brand management and his superhero skill is the ability to influence and reshape Google's focus on an individual or company. Oof. Wouldn't you like to reshape Google? And that bio I just read, it came directly from Google. Jason has learned how to finesse search engines and AI to create an online brand that he controls. In our conversation today, you'll learn about Jason's hub-and-spoke model to take control of your online brand and use it to build a strong personal or corporate image and in today's world, as he likes to say, your brand is what Google says it is. So let's dive into my conversation with Jason. Hey, Jason, Thanks for being here today. How are you doing?

Jason Barnard:

I'm doing absolutely wonderfully, Janice. Thank you very much for having me. I'm delighted to be chatting and hopefully helping entrepreneurs, business owners, with managing their corporate and personal brands in Google and AI without being geeky.

Janice Hostager:

Geeky works for me, so there's no problem with that. So you definitely came from a tech background. How does somebody with a tech background, where's that overlap with personal branding? So tell us your story a little bit.

Jason Barnard:

Well, the story is a bit wilder than that, indeed, because, before being a geek, I created two cartoon characters with my ex-wife and we became or I became a geek because I built the website that we made for these cartoon characters, who were called Boowa, a blue dog, and Kwala, a yellow koala. I built the website up to be one of the 10,000 biggest sites in the world in 2007, with a billion page views, and a lot of that success was driven by my ability to rank at the top of Google.

Jason Barnard:

So I learned geek by being a blue dog, which is an interesting way of putting it, and then that career ended for various reasons and I pivoted into becoming an SEO, helping people get to the top of Google, and I got clients to the point where they were ready to sign, and then they didn't sign and the reason was that they were Googling my name and it said at the top Jason Barnard is the voiceover artist for a cartoon blue dog, and I had no credibility. Google was giving me no credibility as an SEO digital marketer. So I thought I have to be able to change how Google represents me when somebody searches my name. This is my bottom of funnel audience. That result is key. I've made all that work to get them to the bottom of the funnel and I'm losing them at the last step because Google doesn't understand and cannot represent me as an authoritative figure in my field. So I figured out how to do it, and so personal branding and corporate branding as represented by Google and AI, that's now my business.

Janice Hostager:

Oh, I love that. I love that also that you made that shift. I mean, I used to have a design agency and now I deal with the tech side of marketing, so I encountered that same issue. All my design work came up when I Googled my name and it's taken me years to kind of move past that a little bit for the same reason.

Jason Barnard:

Right.

Jason Barnard:

And sorry to interrupt, but you mentioned years and it took me a long time to figure out exactly how to do it. But now we can do that pivot in three months. And we have a client, Jonathan Cronstedt, who is the president of Kajabi, who said to us I want to be presented by Google as an investor and business advisor and I don't want Kajabi to dominate. Job done.

Janice Hostager:

Really. Okay. I love that. So you can control your brand, basically through Google, is what you're saying. So what does that look like? Where do you even start with something like that? Is control possible, or is it just that you well, I'll let you jump in, because I'm learning right along with everybody else here.

Jason Barnard:

Total control, almost. It's indirect control and it takes time because you're dealing with educating an algorithm. So the whole process is to say the algorithm, the algorithm wants to represent you the way you want it to represent you. You just have to teach it. It's like a child. If you can teach it, it will say what you want it to say.

Jason Barnard:

And the algorithms are quite slow. So Google's search algorithms can take a couple of weeks, the knowledge algorithms will take three months and the AI algorithms will take a year. So you have to be patient and you have to understand.

Jason Barnard:

It's a long game, especially for the AI, and you can control indirectly what they say by painting the picture you want across your entire digital footprint and they will understand because they're analyzing your entire digital footprint, not just your website, and what that means as the bonus is because you're cleaning up your digital footprint to be clear to the machines and having a clear brand narrative with your credibility built. You're also doing that for your audience, who are looking at you on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on Forbes. com and on your website, so you get the double bonus. Your audience, who are probably bottom of funnel or mid funnel, are seeing an incredibly consistent brand message from you and that increases your conversion. And the AI and Google learn about you and they will represent you better for the bottom of funnel when people search for you, which increases conversions.

Janice Hostager:

Gotcha, gotcha. So walk us through the process of, let's say, I would imagine we start with like an audit, right? Of our personal brand or our presence online, and then I have questions from there. But what is the process that, where do you start with something like this? You Google your name, I'm guessing.

Jason Barnard:

That's a good start, exactly because your brand is what Google says it is, and from there you can do an immense amount of work. And it's a very simple starting point. You Google your name, corporate or personal and you look at the results. What do you want to see there? What do you feel represents you? In my case, it wasn't the blue dog. So I set about thinking what do I want to see here? And then I can start thinking about how I can build that in the machine's brain and that starts with your own website, of course and then building that out across the digital ecosystem.

Jason Barnard:

So you need to initially know what you want to communicate. Who am I, who do I serve, how do I serve them and why am I a credible solution for them? You identify that. You write it on an about page on your own website very clearly, and then the machine will start to understand that that's what the message you want it to replicate. Now, it won't believe you just on your own good word.

Jason Barnard:

So what you can then do is go around your entire digital footprint and replicate that message across every platform you're already present and any platforms where you should be present where you aren't, then you have a hub, which is that about page that explains who you are, what you do, which audience you serve and why you're credible. You have a wheel which goes all the way around, which is your digital ecosystem, and you simply connect the hub to the wheel with links so you link out to all the sources that corroborate what you say and, if possible, you link back from those corroborative sources to the hub. That will make the machine understand and, as you can see, because I've corrected everything around my digital footprint in that wheel, my audience is seeing a consistent message all the way across the internet every time they encounter me and when they come to my website, they see that same message. They're super, super comfortable and if they search my name, they're even more comfortable because Google says the same thing. Google recommends me.

Janice Hostager:

Perfect, very good. So what do you do about those pages that like, for example, because I had a design agency, I have a portfolio out on Adobe and it still pops up on my search results? I don't do that work anymore. There's no way to make it go away. I don't want to delete the page. Is it just that because I haven't updated, it's going to fall down further and further in the search results.

Jason Barnard:

That will happen, but I would advise you to be more proactive than that. If you do update it, it will immediately become fresh, and that gets Google all excited. So don't do that.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah yeah,

Jason Barnard:

But what you do want to do is do what I did with the blue dog. I didn't delete anything about the blue dog. I didn't say the blue dog never existed. What I did was create relevant, helpful, valuable content that my audience engaged with, around my new persona, which was expert digital marketer, SEO. And I changed Google's focus, by pure weight of evidence, from Blue Dog to SEO digital marketer, and recently we've shifted it again from Digital Marketer to Entrepreneur. And I didn't change anything. I'm still the CEO of Kalicube, my company.

Jason Barnard:

We reframed my life and this is a really interesting example because we got Google to say Jason Barnard is a hugely authoritative, credible digital marketer who knows his stuff. Brilliant. And then I, because our primary client base is entrepreneurs and founders of corporations who want us to manage their personal brand in digital space. For them, I need to place myself alongside them as a peer. So I need to shift from digital marketer to entrepreneur. So I look back at my career and I said, well, okay, I created my first company in 1991 for the music group I played in. I was CEO of that company until 2000, 1999, sorry.

Jason Barnard:

Then I created a company for the Blue Dog and the Yellow Koala in 2000. I was CEO of that company until 2011. Then I created Kalicube and I'm the CEO of Kalicube and the founder of Kalicube. So I founded three companies and I've been the CEO of all three companies and they are all profitable from day one. That makes me an entrepreneur, but it only makes me an entrepreneur if I present it that way to my audience and to Google. That's what we did. We switched the focus, we changed the framing and focused on the companies I've created and my role as a CEO with those companies and making them profitable. Bingo Bob's your uncle. Google now says Jason Barnard, entrepreneur.

Janice Hostager:

Now you were able to do this just with information that you input or does, for example, like on LinkedIn, you can get reviews from people and put that on there. I don't know how Google weighs that, but if other people are saying something about you, that's going to probably weigh heavier than things that you say about yourself, correct? So is that something that you should include, too, on your site? Obviously, for marketing reasons, I recommend that, but is there, I mean, how much of this do you do in terms of outreach to others and how much do you do yourself?

Janice Hostager:

That's really my question.

Jason Barnard:

Yeah, which is a really great question. I think the 80-20 rule can apply here. You can actually do it with 80% of things that you change yourself. So your website, LinkedIn, Twitter.

Jason Barnard:

I write for Forbes, so I changed the presentation there. I signed up for Forbes to put myself in that peer group. All of that is stuff I've done myself. And then the 20% is yes, if I can get other people within that peer group to confirm what I'm saying, that's hugely powerful. But the 20% of confirmation actually amplifies itself and has the same weight as the 80% of the stuff I've done. But you need to do both. You need to be very, very, very, very clear across everything you do, so you can't ignore the 80%. You still have to do the 80%, but you don't need the same amount of corroboration from other people in order to actually make that difference. And what you need to do is focus on the people who are already in the cohort in the group in the category and the peer group of people you're aiming to join.

Janice Hostager:

You're aiming to join, not your ideal customer.

Jason Barnard:

Well, it is two different. Sorry, there's actually two different things going on, which is very interesting. With our platform, Kalicube Pro, we built it. It's got 3 billion data points, so we know exactly what's going on in Google's brain, because it's all data collected from Google since 2015. And we actually divide; we have the market, the audience, the people I want to sell to, and then my peer group. That's two different groups, so I need confirmation from the peer group that I belong to them and confirmation from the audience that they see me that way too

Janice Hostager:

Oh, that's really, that's really powerful.

Jason Barnard:

Well, it's a really good point that you make, because I forget sometimes that we do have those two different cohorts and we do need that message from my audience and from my peers.

Janice Hostager:

Gotcha. So a lot of my listeners or my clients really, really struggle on the social media part of it. I find that often when they start working with me, they have, they either will go all out and be on every platform or they will just focus on one, which is actually what I recommend for startups, because they get overwhelmed otherwise. But do you, is it important to say, claim the uh domain name or social media name for their brand on multiple platforms? Even, does that benefit this? Or it does, even if you're not posting on a regular basis.

Jason Barnard:

Oh, I see what you mean, excuse me. Yes, when you have the social media platform, you need to have a handle that does represent your brand. You can't always get it, so it's a really good idea to check first and standardize it as much as you possibly can across all the different social media platforms, and that does mean claim the ones you expect to use and don't claim the ones that you will never use. Because we have had clients who come to us saying well, I've created a hundred social media profiles on all these different platforms through a platform I found was $60 to create 100 accounts and it just creates much more mess than it helps.

Jason Barnard:

So what we said to him is we're going to have to delete all of these because we cannot maintain them and it's going to become inconsistent and that hub-spoken-wheel model I talked about earlier on is going to end up with lots of things on the wheel that don't actually correspond to what you're saying today, because what you're saying today isn't what you were saying two years ago and what you will be saying in two years will be different as well, and we need to manage that over time. And if you have a hundred platforms, it's a huge amount of work and we're going to mess it up. And one thing that we have with Kalicube Pro is, of course, our platform tracks all of this, so we don't mess it up. So he came to us because he knew we could control it. But if you go out and do this by hand using the free guide that we offer on Kalicube. com, you are going to make a mistake, you're going to forget something and that's going to confuse the machine.

Jason Barnard:

Consistency is absolutely key.

Janice Hostager:

Okay, okay. So let's say I go and I update my About page on my site and maybe my LinkedIn profile. Well, let's just stick with the About page on my site. It's not crawled on a regular basis. So do I go to Google Search Console and have it crawled?

Jason Barnard:

If you're a little bit geeky, you go to Search Console and you submit it to Google and it will crawl it. It won't necessarily index it immediately, but it's certainly you push it to the front of the queue, um, if you have a WordPress site, uh, installed index now that will get it to Bing as soon as you publish it Microsoft Bing and multiple other engines. If you're using Cloudflare, that also pushes it out to Bing through IndexNow. But Google actually crawls more than we think and a site map is super, super important because a site map with an accurate, less modified date will indicate to the machine when it comes onto the site once every two or three days, let's say, this page has been added or this page has been changed and it will naturally go to that page to check what's happened.

Janice Hostager:

Gotcha gotcha. So talk to us about the Google Knowledge Panel. I noticed when I Googled your name that it popped right up. Is that something that happened just organically because you have done such a good job with your online branding? First, I want to explain what the Google Knowledge Panel is. It's a kind of a box. If you Google someone's name, if they're famous or renowned in their field, like Jason is, it will pop at the top of the Google search results, talking about your background and all the things about you. So it really stands out. So go ahead.

Jason Barnard:

Yeah, it's an information box about a person or corporation who is notable in their field, or simply that Google has understood, and it's the first step towards AI as well. This is the foundation of how we're going to be able to control how we're represented in AI in the future. So this is a step you cannot miss, and anybody can have a knowledge panel. Literally, anybody can have a knowledge panel. So don't think it's because you're not notable in your field that you can't have a knowledge panel. You simply have to be clear and consistent and have that hub, spoke and wheel model set up.

Jason Barnard:

Google will understand. Google wants to understand the entire world. It will only push the four, the people who are notable, and authoritative. So there are two different things going on here is I need to be understood to ensure that the AI and Google represent me correctly and if I'm authoritative, credible and notable, I will be pushed to the floor by these machines or if I can demonstrate to them that I am. Now, if you take my case, I got the knowledge panel immediately back in 2012. I wasn't famous, I wasn't notable in the field, but I convinced the machine that I was.

Jason Barnard:

So, that's a question of framing what you're doing. So I've now convinced it. I'm an entrepreneur, I haven't lied. What I've done is amplified the message about WTPL Music, my first company, up to 10 Limited, my second company, and Kalic ube, my third company, amplified that and pushed other information to the back. So it's a question of managing your information in an intelligent manner to ensure that the machines understand and indeed now people understand. When they talk to me, they talk to me as an entrepreneur, not so much as a digital marketer, although it's actually both.

Jason Barnard:

So the knowledge panel is a foundational step today for your representation on Google and the foundational step for tomorrow, when the AI is going to be delivering the search results. It's going to be a conversation between a machine and a user, like Chat GPT is today. Google Learning has just come out. That's an educational chat experience. Um, this is the future and you need to be ready today. You need to start getting ready at least today.

Jason Barnard:

Uh well, one interesting thing is we're doing an experiment at our company and we have 10 people at the company who have said I want to be part of the experiment, I want to get a knowledge panel on Google, and none of them are famous in their field. Some of them only have two social media channels, plus their about page on the Kalicube,com website. We have got them small knowledge panels simply through those three references. That shows to what extent Google really wants to understand and to what extent it trusts the information that we place on Kalicube. And that is key as well is you need to make sure that Google and the AI trust you and trust your website to provide them with factual, reliable, trustworthy information. If you can do that, you can feed them the information about you really easily. It takes years, I'm afraid.

Janice Hostager:

Okay, but like you said, the time to start is right now, right?

Jason Barnard:

And that hub, spoke and wheel model is exactly how you do it. And you were talking about third party corroboration; third parties agreeing with what I say, agreeing that I'm part of the entrepreneurship peer group, agreeing that I'm an expert, agreeing that I'm successful, agreeing that I know how to manage personal brand and corporate brand in Google and AI. If I can get third parties to confirm that, I've won the game.

Janice Hostager:

Hmm, interesting, interesting. So, beyond just the about page, I would imagine that content plays into this as well. You really want to be accurate, authoritative, all the things. What is the EEAT acronym?

Jason Barnard:

Expert, experienced, authoritative and trustworthy, and I would add to that, notable and transparent. So we call it NEAT.

Jason Barnard:

So, it's experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness, plus notability and transparency. You can't communicate with Google if you're not transparent. You can't communicate with AI if you're not transparent, and they will always push you to the fore if you're notable. So being notable is important Google don't talk about it. But, obviously, being famous in your niche you don't have to be famous in the entire universe, you just need to be famous in your niche.

Jason Barnard:

Niche is super important and so content yes, it's hugely important. It's important for multiple reasons. Number one is to demonstrate your credibility. I mean, we can just call it credibility instead of saying NEAT all the time. Your NEAT Credibility. It helps in terms of your topic and your topical authority. Google understanding what you're an expert in. So it's not just you're an expert, you're an expert in something. So creating a lot of content around that that is obviously reliable, helpful, valuable, meaningful is hugely important. But then what we call deliverability at Kalicube. So we have the Kalicube process, which is what we explain in the download that you can get from Kalicube. com slash guides Kalicube with a K, and we talk about understandability, credibility and deliverability.

Jason Barnard:

Understandability does the machine understand who you are, what you do, which audience you serve? Credibility does it believe you're NEAT credible? Are you a credible solution to the users it has? Number three does it have the content from you to allow it and to help it deliver you to the subset of its users, who are your audience? And if you look at that, that's the machine's perspective understanding, credibility, deliverability. I look at it from my perspective of my personal brand. Understanding gives me control. If I can get it to understand on my terms, I have control. If I can get it to believe that I'm credible, I get influence. I can influence the machine and I can influence the people on the other side of the machine via the machine. And if I get deliverability ie I have the content that allows the machine to present me to its audience regularly when I'm going to be helpful to them I get visibility. So, from my perspective, I'm getting control, influence and visibility.

Janice Hostager:

Gotcha. That's so powerful.

Jason Barnard:

Cool, isn't it?

Janice Hostager:

It really is cool and I think I wish I would have known this about 10 years ago. So just, let's say that somebody, just in terms of brand management, let's say that there's a bit of a curveball. You've got some bad reviews or something negative appears search results. Is there a way to push that down or remove it? I know we talked about like things that were no longer relevant can be kind of pushed down. Is this the same apply if something negative pops up? Let's say, I've had a client that um got an arrest for drunk driving and that would pop up every time that they were Googled. So things like that where, like, what do you do about something like that besides hire a

Janice Hostager:

PR firm for the best?

Jason Barnard:

Yeah well, you don't need to hire a PR firm, is the good news? As you rightly said, you can refocus, reframe in Google's mind and you can ensure that it understands that that piece of information isn't actually relevant and helpful. And there are multiple ways of doing it, one of which is what we call leapfrogging, which is find a piece of content that ranks lower and help that content rank higher, so you will link to it from your website to indicate to Google that that's an important piece of information. If Google checks your website, it will then understand yes, this is important, it will believe that it's important and it helps that piece of content move up.

Jason Barnard:

If you control the content, you can optimize it for Google. Simple SEO techniques changing the meta title or the title to include your name will help it to rank higher if your name isn't in it. It's a very simple trick, and you can also, if it's a third party, reach out to the third party and ask them to change things in the article or the piece of content. That will help it rise up, and you need to focus on ensuring that the changes you make indicate to Google that this piece of content is highly relevant, helpful and valuable to your audience. Technique number two is what I call rich elements, which are cert features like video carousels, Twitter boxes, author boxes. If you don't have any, or if you only have one or two, you can generate new ones. If you create lots of video content, you get engagement and Google understands that that's you. It will create a video box for you, a carousel of three or four videos that will generally remove one blue link.

Jason Barnard:

Which means that you have one less thing to worry about and they will generally rank slightly higher than yeah. They'll rank in the middle of the page. So you're just pushing things down by creating new elements in the SERP and pushing your good content from below, pushing it up above that content. If you reframe your story in depending on the case, you can reframe your story to indicate that a piece of content that is negative isn't actually relevant. Mm-hmm.

Jason Barnard:

So you can pivot very slightly your own personal messaging away from that negative content and Google will say, well, actually it's not relevant anymore, or it's not relevant to this person today, and it will tend to be demoted. And the problem's slightly more vicious than that, because I actually had this problem and it wasn't anything that I had done. Somebody else called Jason Barnard was caught speeding at 157 miles an hour down the motorway in the UK and that content was ranking for my name and people looking at it wouldn't know that it wasn't me. At the time I had a Twingo, the slowest car in the universe that couldn't do 157 miles an hour, however hard and much you wanted to do it, except in somebody's dream, and so my job there was to indicate to Google that's not me, that Jason Barnard isn't relevant to people searching my name. I'm relevant and that's not me. And that was a slightly different strategy, but similar ideas. But the idea that Google gets confused between two different people with the same name is a huge problem that most people haven't even thought about yet.

Janice Hostager:

That was actually the next question on my list here is what do you do if you have a common name like John Smith, or you know that? How do you differentiate yourself and make your search results more distinct? I suppose it's just to really define what it is you do and and have that label attached to your name so that people will understand that, oh, that's not the same John Smith, because they don't play football or whatever you know, or yeah, so that's, that's kind of it.

Jason Barnard:

Well, there are multiple kinds of layers to this. Number one is if I'm called John Smith and I don't care that I don't come up first with my knowledge panel when somebody searches John Smith; my job is to educate Google with a hub, spoke and wheel model to ensure that it doesn't confuse me with other John Smiths. But it's a huge job because it's such a common name and every time Google sees anything with the name John Smith, it's going to assume it's a new John Smith. So if, for example, I've had a career where I was a musician, then I was a screenwriter, then I was a songwriter. Now I'm a digital marketer. Then I was an author, now I'm an entrepreneur, that's potentially six different people.

Jason Barnard:

Explaining to Google that it's actually all the same person is quite difficult. That's what we do at Kalicube, um. But you can do it. But you you're not necessarily going to be prominent because you're not the most notable, famous John Smith. But if that's not part of your personal branding strategy you use for control, that's fine. If you want to be dominant when somebody searches your name, you have no choice but to change your name. You need to rebrand yourself.

Jason Barnard:

So it would be...

Jason Barnard:

John Benjamin Smith. At that point, you've reduced the competition, you've reduced the ambiguity and you can dominate, and that's a choice you need to make: Is that something I want? Is that something I need? Is that something that will help my company or does? Being an anonymous John Smith who has control of what the Google and AI understands, is that fine for me? And what's going to happen in the future? Right now, we've got search. It's one result. You it's a zero-sum game. You win or you lose. You dominate or you don't. In AI, it's a conversation, so the AI is going to prompt people to dig down to figure out which John Smith you're looking for. At that point, you don't need to dominate, but you definitely need control.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah, interesting. So is there a way that you can, you know, looking forward, you said it takes a year for AI to kind of catch up with what's happening, but already you know I've asked ChatGPT certain questions about a person and it will come up with incorrect information. So already it's an issue and I would imagine following the advice that you gave is going to be helpful but probably won't solve it always and forever, because they haven't worked that issue too right. They have to figure out...

Jason Barnard:

The thing is saying they need to figure that out is pushing the onus of responsibility onto a huge machine that is trying to understand billions of people. And my perspective on this would be I can actually take control, I can help the machine and the machine will be grateful, and I can control how it understands me. So the machines are going to get better, but they're not going to get better specifically for you and me. I have to be proactive and take action to ensure that I take most advantage of the improving machine. And then with um, with this particular problem, those misunderstandings are huge and it's a huge problem of the machines talking rubbish. And if you search my name on ChatGPT, you ask ChatGPT, who is Jason Barnard. It can tell you my life story in a very detailed manner and it doesn't make any mistakes because I have educated it, because I have been planting the seeds and making sure that all the dots join up and that there is no confusion, no ambiguity about this particular Jason Barnard.

Janice Hostager:

Interesting.

Jason Barnard:

And it's a long haul job. I mean, that year frightens people, but if you look at it from a perspective of what are my aims? Short term, let's manage that Google search result for my name or my corporate name. Midterm, let's manage that knowledge panel three months to six months. Medium to long term, let's manage the AI. A year that's fine. So right now, AI isn't in a position where it's going to have a huge effect on your business, so you can start working on what does make a difference for your business today, which is the search result for your brand name, your company name or your personal name. That search result,

Jason Barnard:

you can affect in a month. The knowledge panel, you can affect in three to six months and that's going to help your business because it will make you look credible. If you search my name, you see the brilliant knowledge panel that I get. You think I'm rich. It's the perception that you get is that I'm rich and successful, which is great, suits me fine. And then a year down the line, that same work will have educated the AI and the AI will get it right.

Janice Hostager:

Gotcha.

Jason Barnard:

So you're, you're, you're actually in a very, very, very good place If you start today and you realize you have those three goals with a very distinct timeline that you can follow, and that's maybe not safe, but certainly the priorities are right.

Janice Hostager:

Oh, such such wisdom here. You know, as everything changes so rapidly it's, it's really kind of reassuring to know. Oh scary, but it's reassuring to know that you do have some control over what's, what's being put out there, even just on your, in your search results. So...

Jason Barnard:

What I find

Jason Barnard:

is, I mean within the SEO industry, which I know quite well, and within the digital marketing industry, within the personal branding industry, within the PR industry and business people are worried and scared, frightened, and they don't know what's happening. They don't know what to do. AI is scary and it's new and we've never seen this before. I am not worried and I'm not scared because what I've seen is that this process, the Kalicube process, works for all of them and gives me control and makes me make sure I sleep well at night, let's say. And when ChatGPT came out a couple of years ago, first thing I did, who is Jason Barnard? And it gave me the exact, right answer straight off the bat. Didn't do it for my colleagues.

Jason Barnard:

Co-pilot came out on Bing, same thing. Gemini comes out, same thing. Google Learn About just came out this weekend. First thing I did, I went in and said who is Jason Barnard and what is Kali cube, and it spits out exactly the brand narrative that I intend. This process is universal and timeless because all of these machines are using the same technologies, large language models, knowledge graphs and search results. They're serving the same audience people with the same aim, trying to get us to the solution to our problem as efficiently as possible, using the same fundamental technologies, huge, huge computers, storage space and computing power and algorithms, which are, you know, come in different flavors, but fundamentally same technology, data set, which is the web. Same user base, people with the same aim, trying to get them to the solutions to their problems as efficiently as possible. So, universal strategy, hub, spoke wheel, the machines digest it spit out exactly what you want. Job done.

Janice Hostager:

This has been so good. Thank you, Jason, it really is interesting.

Janice Hostager:

I mean,

Jason Barnard:

Oh, I said fun.

Jason Barnard:

You said

Janice Hostager:

Well, you know, I think it, you know, looking at what I know I have to do in a certain day and I know what my clients are, you know, always really struggling with marketing because there's so much out there and there's so many different silos and there's so much to do and all of that. But this, this really is a priority for people. It should be a priority for people because it affects everything, um, not only for today, but for your future as well.

Jason Barnard:

And the thing is that you'll find the initial setup takes quite a lot of time.

Jason Barnard:

First of all, you need to define what you're trying to communicate. Then you need to create the about page, which is the hub. Then you need to corroborate, make sure everything corresponds. That takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. You need to join all the spokes and then you've got your hub, spoke and wheel. That is the huge chunk of work and it takes about a month to do. If you if you not full time, obviously, but you know, if you work through it in a reasonable manner, it will take you about a month. Within three months you will see the fruit of that effort, which is pretty good going.

Jason Barnard:

Then you simply need to maintain it, because your digital footprint will change as you publish more content, as you get on more platforms, as you push out your marketing. Your market will change, both because your competitors will do things, but also because your audience will say things about you. You need to keep a grip on all of that. Make sure that it's corroborating, that it's positive and that people who are saying things about you are saying things that are relevant to what you're trying to communicate today and not something you were trying to communicate three or four years ago. And then technology will change so you need to keep an eye on it, you need to track it. But the maintenance isn't such a huge job because, especially with a smallish business, you're not going to be producing huge amounts of content, you're not going to be changing a brand message hugely from one year to the next. So I would strongly advise people to spend that painful month setting it all up and then remember to maintain it over time, doing a sanity check once a month.

Janice Hostager:

Such good advice. All right, where can people find out more about you and Kalicube.

Jason Barnard:

They can Google me! And if anyone's listening on audio only, I have a QR code with Google me. So Google Jason Barnard J-A-S-O-N-B-A-R-N-A-R-D, and if you're watching on video, you can scan the QR code. But if you've decided that Google isn't much fun anymore, you can just ask ChatGPT, and there you have a QR code for going straight to ChatGPT, where it will tell you exactly who I am and explain my career to you. So ask ChatGPT about Jason Barnard J-A-S-O-N-B-A-R-N-A-R-D, or Google me and you'll learn all about me and know exactly where you can connect.

Janice Hostager:

And you have a free download too, a free guide, right?

Jason Barnard:

We do Kalicube. com, k-a-l-i-c-u-b-e dot com, slash guides, g-u-i-d-e-s, and we have seven or eight free guides where we explain how to manage a knowledge panel, how to manage your personal brand, how to manage your corporate brand, 60-page downloads, how to survive as a marketer in a world of generative AI, how to survive as a CEO and a business founder in a world of generative AI and how to survive as an SEO in the world of generative AI. So we're trying to help everybody.

Janice Hostager:

You really are.

Jason Barnard:

All of that's free.

Janice Hostager:

Yes, I looked at your downloads and you offer so much for free, so I just think that's so awesome, especially for the smaller businesses that don't have a bigger budget. So thank you. Thank you, Jason. This has been super informative, super helpful and I appreciate your time today.

Jason Barnard:

It was an absolute delight. Thank you so much.

Janice Hostager:

So I don't know about you, but I've been sitting here taking notes like crazy. Who wouldn't want to have their personal or corporate brand ranked higher on Google or any search engine for that matter? For more information about anything we talked about today, including links to all of Jason's downloads, visit myweeklymarketingcom. Forward slash 84. If you liked what you heard, please leave a review or, better yet, forward it to someone who could benefit from it too. Thanks for joining me today. See you next time. Bye for now.

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