The Psychology That Fixes Sales Fear! with Karina Klaus

Episode Summary

You can find Karina Klaus at:
Website: https://karinaklaus.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karinaklaus/
New Program: https://learn.karinaklaus.com/workshop

Book: https://books.google.com.ph/books/about/The_Sales_Reset.html?id=LMmb0QEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Tom Jacobs Podcast Interview

[00:00:00] Kris Ward: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Win The Hour Win The Day podcast. And I am your host, Kris Ward. And today in the house we have Tom Jacobs and he owns a SEO Agency.

Yes, we’re gonna talk SEO search engine optimization. Even though the sky is falling and it’s all coming to a screeching, hysterical end because we have AI. So Tom is gonna set the record straight for us and give us some things that we can do today to sort that out. Welcome to the show, Tom.

[00:00:30] Tom Jacobs: Thanks Kris. I am excited to chat through this. 

[00:00:33] Kris Ward: Okay, so you have this what we call your weekend checklist, five minute checks and things that you can do to see where you are and what you can improve. And maybe we should back up for a second. Maybe just for those who. I don’t know, slept in extra 30 minutes this morning and missed this announcement.

’cause it’s just every day. I feel like if you slept in a little bit this morning, you might be way behind on a high. Because it’s happening so fast. 

[00:00:59] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. 

[00:00:59] Kris Ward: [00:01:00] So there is this big the sky’s fallen. It’s all coming to an end for SEO, which I think is distorted and I’m no expert. So maybe you can explain what that looks like, where it begins and ends.

[00:01:10] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. I was just talking about this yesterday to a private equity portfolio. It’s. It’s a massive hype play. Yeah. That like everybody on LinkedIn is directing a conversation for their own narrative. So it’s all SEO is dead. Forget about it. Ignore it. And the new play is this ’cause they’re trying to sell you something.

[00:01:29] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:01:29] Tom Jacobs: The the realistic piece of it is Google still will drive 14 to 16 billion searches per day while chatGPT is only down at two to three. 

[00:01:39] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:01:39] Tom Jacobs: So ignoring the elephant in the room right, is a mistake. So when I’m going to market, I’m saying, do you have a foundational piece in SEO?

And then we can add the AI piece to it, but it’s not gonna solve your problems. It’s not gonna, close a bunch of pipeline business optimizing for AI quite. [00:02:00] 

[00:02:01] Kris Ward: I think too, I’m sometimes I can be very naive in business because things, products have come out where I thought, that’s not gonna work.

Who’s gonna let people come into their home while they’re away on vacation and rent a room? That would never happen. That’s crazy talk. And here we are, a Airbnb international. And I think sometimes too, we’ve been relying on Google and it’s been so helpful to us. Like it or not like it, we all use it.

I think whenever then there’s any sort of dent in it, I think that’s alarming to us. Like I know I often think of companies that were around for like a hundred years like Kodak, and then after a hundred years I would think, you know what, Kris, you can, you’ve got something going here. We all get excited about the five year mark and they hit a hundred years and then they were outta business.

So I think. We are just shocked that anybody has tampered with Google at all. ’cause they seem to be the God for a while. So that’s a really good point you brought up about actual numbers and statistics. It’s yeah, they took a ding, but you can’t get [00:03:00] around it. It’s still the name of the game.

[00:03:02] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, I think. In our industry, we’re celebrating it because it, it’s like this new opportunity. 

[00:03:08] Kris Ward: Oh, that’s good.

[00:03:09] Tom Jacobs: We spent the past decade with this 99% market share company where you could optimize for Google and call it a day. And now AI is opening up all these doors where you’re like, all right, I gotta figure out what five channels my audience is on.

Okay. And then I have to place my company there. A lot of listeners in your audience will probably be like a variety of different service-based businesses.

[00:03:32] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:03:33] Tom Jacobs: You have to know a ton about your audience. The age range, the behaviorist patterns, because above 50 is going to be a lot slower to adopt for AI.

So you’re probably better off optimizing for Google and Bing for a while. 

[00:03:47] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:03:48] Tom Jacobs: On the lower end of things, I guarantee 50% are using AI every single day. So if you’re user base is a younger crowd, you probably need to make this investment a little bit sooner. 

[00:04:01] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:04:01] Tom Jacobs: But I have a theory that like google’s not just gonna go away quietly.

[00:04:06] Kris Ward: No. Yeah. 

[00:04:07] Tom Jacobs: They’ve spent so many years being the market leader at 99% that they most likely have a play 

[00:04:14] Kris Ward: right. 

[00:04:14] Tom Jacobs: In the next year of like, all right, open AI is trying to take this, now what are we going to do? 

[00:04:19] Kris Ward: Oh, that’s very refreshing. And sometimes what I’ll say to somebody, they’re throwing something at me and it’s that doesn’t make sense.

I’m like you’re confusing this conversation with logic in it. So I think this is the first time I’ve had a logical conversation with any sort of substance in on this topic in a while, because you have to be mindful every time you go online, the sky is falling. Oh, the algorithms hate us. Oh, this is happening.

Everything’s changing, and you’re like running like chickens over here, back there. So a, you’re right. It took a small hit, nothing’s changed as far as the size of our business and our reach. B, they ha they probably knew this was coming before we did. Like they’re just not [00:05:00] sitting there going who knew?

Yeah. If they got this far, they didn’t get this far just to get this far so those are some really good points. Okay, so what, where do we start? We are a small business owner. We’ve been in business five, 10 years. Whatever. We’re in our, we’ve been, yeah, we’re in our forties, fifties, sixties, whatever, or younger.

You can all be younger, but adults we got here. What are you doing? I don’t know why I put that age graphic, but I guess ’cause I didn’t wanna stretch you too thin. I didn’t wanna be talking about somebody that’s 20. Because I personally think usually, whatever. Anyways, go ahead. 

[00:05:27] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. So you need to establish where you’re at on the internet, what your strengths and weaknesses are. Okay. Where you show up and where you don’t show up. 

[00:05:35] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:05:35] Tom Jacobs: So I usually start with Google My Business page. Okay? If you’re a local business, you have a brick and mortar. Or your service base, you can still put yourself on a map. 

[00:05:45] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:05:46] Tom Jacobs: And then you need five or 10 money keywords where you’re like, I have to show up for that, 

[00:05:52] Kris Ward: okay

[00:05:52] Tom Jacobs: because that’s what’s gonna drive me revenue. 

[00:05:55] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:05:55] Tom Jacobs: Too many times in the SEO O industry, it’s like these businesses will optimize your page, they’ll [00:06:00] drive you traffic, but then nothing happens 

[00:06:02] Kris Ward: okay 

[00:06:02] Tom Jacobs: You have to ensure that your content is strong enough that a user that clicks to come to your site is eventually going to either partner up, fill out a form, or drive revenue to your site. That’s the biggest thing. 

[00:06:16] Kris Ward: So do you mean maybe spell that out for us a little bit? So let’s say I.. We find, hired and onboard virtual assistants for entrepreneurs, put them in our Leadership Program and then we help you be set up so that you can keep that person and do work less work and less time and all that stuff, and have a business that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Virtual assistant, VA things like that might be one of our key words. When they get to my site, are you just saying, make sure my content is talking about that very clearly? Like it always sounds logical when you say of course I’d do that. Why wouldn’t I do that? 

[00:06:48] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, for something as competitive as that, like a lot of these business will be in a really saturated market.

[00:06:55] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:06:55] Tom Jacobs: You have to align your keywords with your audience. It’s what problem are you [00:07:00] solving through what means? Ah, to what audience?

[00:07:02] Kris Ward: Okay. Okay.

[00:07:03] Tom Jacobs: And then your content on your page has to align with that. 

You have to address pain points for service-based businesses that want help, right?

And this is how you solve it.

[00:07:12] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:07:12] Tom Jacobs: So then everything is super aligned, so that person goes there, it’s like you’re speaking directly to me, right? People will love that. And then they’ll come through and fill a form. 

[00:07:22] Kris Ward: Okay. And that makes sense. So we do talk a lot about that. Our clients tend to be people that are the go-to person in their life.

They get a lot done. They just think there’s more to get done that can be done because they’ve been grinding it out for years and they’re still working way too many hours for where they are at this point in their journey. So as long as I’m consistent, but I guess the question asks as we talk out loud, this always, I struggle with this ’cause it’s why wouldn’t we tell that story on our website? Like where the, where are we going wrong? If you say you should know your audience. We think we do every, everybody listening to this is gonna say of course I think I’m putting good content up my website, or I wouldn’t be putting it up. 

[00:07:59] Tom Jacobs: [00:08:00] Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. You have to figure out like what’s the balance between writing your content for something that you think is published, they’re like polished. 

[00:08:09] Kris Ward: Yeah. 

[00:08:10] Tom Jacobs: And what the search engines and then eventually, like the LLMs will think is polished because 

[00:08:15] Kris Ward: okay. So dive into that a little bit more. I’m not getting that polished. Sure. 

[00:08:18] Tom Jacobs: So we’ve spent a lot of time, and a lot of companies will come up with a super polished version of their business on their website. Okay. Go through content they’ll be cute like marketing language, like brand tone.

[00:08:29] Kris Ward: Ah, okay. 

[00:08:31] Tom Jacobs: It’s not telling me exactly what I need to know.

[00:08:33] Kris Ward: Okay.

[00:08:33] Tom Jacobs: The AI tools are taking this content very literally. 

[00:08:36] Kris Ward: Oh, okay. 

[00:08:37] Tom Jacobs: So it’s alright, Kris’s business, what do you do? Who do you do it for? And gimme some unique data points, some customer stories you tell that tale extremely literally. So if that’s somebody goes to chat chippie and it’s Hey, I’m looking to save time.

I’m looking to outsource some stuff. I need to get 25 hours back in my day. It’ll be like, Hey, we have this perfect person because we just digested [00:09:00] your content. That says exactly that. 

[00:09:02] Kris Ward: Okay. We are known for getting 24 hours, 20 hours back in a week now, 25 hours back in a day. 

[00:09:06] Tom Jacobs: Sorry for overpromising, 

[00:09:08] Kris Ward: overpromising there, but okay.

I think what you’re saying, which is something I find intuitively I do now, is if I really wanna see the what’s what on somebody, I’m telling you, I very seldom go to their website anymore. I check them out on LinkedIn ’cause I wanna see what do you look like when you’re commenting and interacting with other people and what do your posts look like that from yesterday versus, you’re right, the polished version, the brochure version of you on your website, and how outdated is that?

So I guess what you’re saying is, and I think that ties into that big debate too, where we’re now questioning everything ’cause it’s AI. Yeah. Then we want the real information and we want it real fast. 

[00:09:45] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. We’re gonna we’re slowly getting to this world where like over 50% of the Internet’s just gonna be AI created.

Okay. And then the AI’s gonna start like pulling this all in. So it’s like a death spiral. I don’t wanna get on that tangent. But yeah, for [00:10:00] smaller business owners it’s aligning your content and figuring out where you’re at. ’cause a lot of people don’t know where they’re at, don’t know necessarily like how to view their analytics or their keyword rankings.

Okay. And then figure out like back into what’s driving that. 

[00:10:14] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:10:14] Tom Jacobs: So I would recommend figuring out where you’re at to benchmark, figuring out like who ranks better than you, and then try to backend back engineer like why that is. 

Okay, what about their content? What about their website?

What are they pushing? And then try to do that better than they’re doing. 

[00:10:32] Kris Ward: And sometimes that can be overwhelming and discouraging and you get lost. ’cause you can look at somebody else’s stuff and you’re like, oh, this looks good, or that looks good, or I should be doing better, whatever. But a lot of times too, what I find is they will list things that we do, but never mentioned.

’cause it’s not, it’s almost I don’t know, if you’re going into a sub shop and you’re getting a sandwich and they say we never serve day old bread or the bread’s included in the sandwich, and you think yes, of course it’s included in the sandwich. Or of course the [00:11:00] bread is fresh. And so then you think, oh, they’re listing that.

As one of their value points. And we didn’t even mention that. ’cause to me it’s just a basic right? So even sometimes seeing there seems to be perceived at higher value just because I am not someone that, like we overdeliver a lot and include a lot of stuff and we’re not, it’s not nicking you there.

So I think that does give you some perspective when you’re looking at other competitors in that way. 

[00:11:25] Tom Jacobs: And I think learning experience for me, posting on LinkedIn every day for the past six months is like people still, there’ll be a large chunk of your audience that never see or read any of this stuff.

So like you have to tell people who you are, what you do, and like how you’re good at it or what differentiates yourself. Yeah. Time and time again. 

[00:11:46] Kris Ward: Yeah. 

[00:11:46] Tom Jacobs: Before it’s even like a brand recall. 

[00:11:48] Kris Ward: Yeah, that’s a good point. Okay. And then with your weekend checklist, I like so much you talked about and the last updated dates to your top three posts.

Change one sentence to make it current. [00:12:00] Can I thought that would get us into trouble. So I do passionately. ’cause we’re all about time efficiency and stuff. Believe in repurposing stuff. And to your point, it’s very easy to repost something, two months later. ’cause who if somebody did read it, who’s gonna remember it?

Yeah. And I do think, and I do think give it a fresh eye and take a look at it, and can you make it a little bit better? So you’re gonna change it just by virtue of, Hey, let me reread this with fresh eyes. But to make such a minor edit, I thought for the longest time you would like whatever, get dinged for that.

[00:12:30] Tom Jacobs: Actually the way the AI, open AI and chat GPT are pulling things in, they’re appending their search queries and their prompts when they go to retrieve information by saying, I want 20, 25 articles. 

[00:12:44] Kris Ward: Oh. 

[00:12:44] Tom Jacobs: So that’s my play for GEO of like getting a core eight to 10 articles that you do every single year that drive a lot of traffic, and then just updating them.

A couple new bullet points, a couple new perspectives, and then it’s like you’re [00:13:00] saving so much time, you’re not recreating the wheel and building these brand new content calendars every year. It’s I know these 10 things work. They’ll work next year too. 

[00:13:10] Kris Ward: Oh my gosh. I just got tingly. Okay, everybody pull the car over and take some notes.

Okay. I That makes such sense. I knew of course it’s great. Like we do repurpose stuff, right? I, that seems oh, that’s just a phish and go back. Can we repurpose it? But you can go back and if you make it not just repurposing, but you make it so current, not just to AI, which makes a good point.

Now, AI is pulling, not only is AI gonna pull it up because you reposted. So it’s date stamped something more current. But then also if you say things like, I, here’s the top five tips for a virtual assistant in 2026. My gosh, AI’s gonna love it. And it just sounds like hot off the press.

Now of course, some of these things. Are gonna be the same thing from four years ago. ’cause when it [00:14:00] works like, yeah. One of the things we do is we never have VAs work overnights VA agencies, which we are not do that. And I think if you have a VA that you need there all day long, you’re not set up properly.

Like they can work till noon, one o’clock your time, which would be midnight their time. And you can go a couple hours in the afternoon. ’cause when it’s set up, the a the work will, more work will be done if they’re working full time when you come back in the morning. So it benefits you right. But that’s gonna be something that I said five years ago.

But if I can say, this is what you, this is how you keep somebody in 2026. My gosh. Okay. Yeah, you just sit there, nod, and I’ll tell you how smart you’re Tom. Go ahead. 

[00:14:37] Tom Jacobs: To your point, there’s a stat that’s 34% of all citations in AI is either a top best list or a comparison. Okay. Where you like this, like VAs versus alternative, right?

Or top 10 VA type private companies to help efficiencies. Okay. [00:15:00] Things like that. They love that. Okay. ’cause they’re lazy right now in current state. Oh, okay. ’cause they just pull that in. They’re like, Hey, you’re asking for the top best. I’ll just pull these three, three articles that say top 10 average amount.

Call it a day. 

[00:15:15] Kris Ward: Wow. I’m loving this. Okay. This is really helpful. And also I think inspiring because you, to your point in the beginning of the conversation is everybody’s just trying to sell you the next thing. And we all are, I get it, no judgment, but when they just lean into the problem, like these are fantastic solutions and quite simple and I think it must be hard to be you because do you not then see all this nonsense out there?

Like I know it’s nonsense, but I don’t have enough intellect to break it down. So when you see all this foolishness going on, it’s okay. There’s 10 words, that sentence, and two of which you got right and the rest are wrong. Doesn’t that make you a little crazy? 

[00:15:52] Tom Jacobs: I take it with some empathy on it’s such a new concept that everybody’s shooting in the dark of

[00:15:58] Kris Ward: right, 

[00:15:59] Tom Jacobs: I’m either [00:16:00] going to test this with clients to see what actually works, or I’m just gonna read through my LinkedIn feed and build my thinking or my theory without testing. So I think that’s a lot where people are at. They’re like, Hey, I’m just gonna regurgitate what I’ve seen, what I’ve read. Yeah. Not necessarily testing. And then there’s other people that’s Hey, this is actually working to rank us in chatGPT. I want to tell you about it.

So that’s like the pragmatic approach that I’m trying to take of like this balance. It’s Hey, don’t abandon the old, the traditional what got us here. Yeah. Just for this new shiny object. 

[00:16:35] Kris Ward: Yeah. 

[00:16:36] Tom Jacobs: Because so many CMOs are just sitting there getting pressure from the CEO saying, Hey, what are we doing about AI?

We have to be on the cutting edge. We have to be there. Then they’re throwing up their hands like, all right guys, figure it out. 

[00:16:51] Kris Ward: Okay. You’re much you’re a much better human being than me. ’cause I would be like, people stop with the nonsense. Okay. Two. And to [00:17:00] leaning into this, what you call content fixes.

Here’s a great example. ’cause it’s all well and good in theory. This is my pet peeve. When, you read these big blogs that’ll say something like, how to set boundaries in the workplace. Leave work on time. Like they’re all just, it’s like how to get fit. Exercise more and eat better. Oh, that’s fantastic.

Thank you for that. We got it. Okay. Write that down. So I think when you break things down and you give us clear examples, like here’s a content fix. Pricing information becomes, how much does your thing cost? How much X, Y, Z cost? How much does the VA cost? That is so simple. And now it. Such sense? That’s what, not only is it what Chat is searching for, frankly, it was what we were searching for all along.

We just got trained to go, oh, am I looking for pricing? Yeah. 

[00:17:47] Tom Jacobs: It’s like the classic like recipes where you’re like, I’m just looking for a recipe for great soup. And it’s Hey, my grandma made this soup and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You’re like skimming through all the information to get what you actually want.

[00:17:58] Kris Ward: Yeah. 

[00:17:58] Tom Jacobs: And then the AI [00:18:00] comes along and they’re like, here’s exactly what you need. Here’s the recipe and here’s how to do it. 

[00:18:04] Kris Ward: And to that line, recipes I might be looking for what I’d like to eat healthy and stuff, so I’ll key in. Whatever healthy banana bread and then somebody will say in this recipe, oh, I cut, it used to be three cups of sugar.

When I got it down to one, I’m like, oh my god. What are you doing? Yeah, so then I have to learn oh whatever, dairy free or all, using all my flour just ’cause I know someone who uses almond flour will not use sugar. Yeah. Not because I’m buried married to almond flour. So then I’m learning to interpret their language where I think i’m having a moment here. I think now they’re learning to interpret ours, the whole AI thing. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:18:43] Tom Jacobs: They won’t fill in a ton of context or try to be assumptive about what it’s puzzling together. But if you supply that, like the whole recipe thing. Yeah. If you supply the recipe, it’s just gonna pull out that snippet, and that’s exactly what it wants.

Just like snackable pieces of your content. It’s like a [00:19:00] question, an answer, a question, an answer. Don’t try to be cute. Yeah. Like all this stuff jumping through hoops, it’s just like looking for a certain snippet of your piece. 

[00:19:10] Kris Ward: It’s simplifying the language. One of my other pet peeves, ’cause it’s all about me here, Tom.

One of my other pet peeves is you know what, I go to send you something three months from now and I’m, look, I go to type in my email Tom and I’m hoping it’ll come up and the Tom Jacobs or a couple Toms will come up and I’m like, oh yeah, that, there he is. And other people will ke. Not as smart as yourself will say the best marketing coach.

So I’m like, hold on. I talked to Tom three months ago. I can’t find his email. And I’m looking everywhere. I’m looking everywhere. So I have to go back and find them document that you, you are on my calendar. I found that and I realize, oh, this email is the best marketing coach. It’s not even his name. So now I have to go.

And how I, how am I gonna remember that right? And it gets lost in it. And that makes me crazy. And I think people, do you understand that I. You’re lucky. I remember your name and I’m not alone. You, if somebody remembers your name, that’s step one. Now your cutesy label in the email, I [00:20:00] can’t even find to send you something.

So I think what you are giving us great excitement about is it’s really just say what you mean me when you say so that we don’t have to train the user to find the right language to find you. 

[00:20:15] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, that’s exactly that. I’ve seen companies like build or like press releases around awards that they’ve won, and they position themselves as like the best in that market because they won an award and then chatGPT will pull that in and say, here’s the best because I know they won an award. It’s it’s very literal. 

[00:20:35] Kris Ward: Okay. Okay. All right. It’s literal. That’s a good point. I see. I always struggle with that too. When you walk by a coffee shop and it says, best Coffee in the World. I’m like, how can you say that?

Yeah. I’m always afraid like I can’t, whatever. But yeah, testing. Yeah. Okay. And then you talk about here really simple short sentences, answer immediately under each header, one to two sentences, and break it down. Everything’s just short snippets now. No big paragraphs. [00:21:00] 

[00:21:00] Tom Jacobs: Yeah, it’s very there’s a crazy trend of like FAQs everywhere.

[00:21:05] Kris Ward: Yeah.

[00:21:05] Tom Jacobs: It’s tell me what I want to know, but then simplify it. 

[00:21:08] Kris Ward: Okay. Okay. Okay. So that’s another thing. What would you say now with the FAQs? What percentage I think it was before and afterthought I think before it was more so you could stop bothering me. Oh, we get this question all the time.

Go to our FQs, please stop Bo like before you call us, check this out. But now it’s really content driven. It’s again for the AI. 

[00:21:31] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. It’ll supplement the question and answer base once you’re chatting with the AI bot. Then you have follow up questions. It’s gonna look through your website to see, Hey, have they addressed it?

Do I need to find another source? So it’ll support that. It’ll also support the traditional search engines too. 

[00:21:50] Kris Ward: Okay. Also you say link to real sources, government sites, studies, reports, back to claims. Okay. So I know back, we’ve all heard that back links to [00:22:00] big important websites. Great help. Okay.

Wonderful. Let’s. It’s like saying, get a celebrity to endorse your product. Great idea. Now how do we do it? In here, when you say studies, like if I whatever, put a Harvard did a study on how it’s ..Counterproductive to work past 50 hours, could I put that link to that report? But if that link is just gonna be to another website Yeah. Can do. Is that the kind of studies that would enhance my website? 

[00:22:30] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. It’s just kinda adding authority to what you’re saying. 

[00:22:32] Kris Ward: Okay. Instead of it just being something Kris says all the time

[00:22:34] Tom Jacobs: right it’ll be your opinion versus what Harvard is saying. And then the more. You want a balance of like internal links back up to your website and your services and external links sourcing and citing what you’re actually referencing.

Okay. And that adds authority to the actual piece. 

[00:22:52] Kris Ward: Okay? Okay. All right. So that’s something we can do. We can all look up a study, right? Yeah. That’s attainable. We’re not waiting for something. Okay. 

[00:22:59] Tom Jacobs: Or like a [00:23:00] YouTube video or a podcast, like something relevant to what they’re talking about. 

[00:23:05] Kris Ward: Okay. Somebody else’s podcast, like obviously on my website we would have my podcast link, but, and then of course it does add weight when I’m on other people’s podcasts, which I am, that’s fine.

But those I guess I would see softer, sell softer links, but the stuff that really adds. Sort of gravity to it is saying she’s not just talking about this. Here’s the study on this, or the latest facts on that. That is a higher level of sort of weight. 

[00:23:29] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that’s the internal piece, the external piece is it it went from link building. 

[00:23:36] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:23:37] Tom Jacobs: Being like the classic annoying SEO tactic of like link exchanges to now brand mentions. Like the AI will go through the entire website in retrieval and it’ll look first for a neutral source talking about you. 

[00:23:50] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:23:51] Tom Jacobs: So if you have like friendly businesses, partnerships, things like that mention you, your book, your podcast, 

[00:23:59] Kris Ward: [00:24:00] yeah.

[00:24:00] Tom Jacobs: It adds weight to what they’re referencing and recommending. 

[00:24:04] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:24:04] Tom Jacobs: So to say, okay, I see this on the top VA podcast. Right there. There’s Kris. 

[00:24:11] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:24:12] Tom Jacobs: Reference her. That gives you a lot of weight. So right now it’s like brand mentions externally, not necessarily even links. Okay. It’s just like people referencing you.

[00:24:20] Kris Ward: Okay. Alright. And then you talk about here, you talk about leaving comments on five LinkedIn posts. Mention your brand when relevant. Not stuffing it in there and answering questions on Reddit. A cure, I must say. I Quora, whatever. I never do that. I could go into Reddit and you just get lost and oh my gosh. Yeah, the environment’s dying and the world’s coming to an end. I gotta get outta here. 

[00:24:42] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. And everybody’s a cynic. Yeah. They’re like external alternative search plays. So in the beginning, ChatGPT pulled in Reddit a lot, but I think they ran into a user generated content issue where it’s just not fact checked.

Okay. So they view that kind of [00:25:00] stuff as sentiment. Okay. Hey, if you’re a national brand, how are people talking about you? What are the reviews like? What are the benefits of working with this product? A lot of the companies I’m working with are like, what is our Reddit strategy? 

[00:25:14] Kris Ward: Oh, all right. 

[00:25:15] Tom Jacobs: Yeah. So it’s a very authentic channel, but it’s very time consuming, 

[00:25:20] Kris Ward: right. Yeah. 

[00:25:21] Tom Jacobs: So it’s like if your people are there, maybe you make a play there. Okay. I and your audience skews younger. Maybe you do that, but think that’s like a 1 0 2 type of issue. Okay. After you after you’re looking for extra opportunity.

[00:25:36] Kris Ward: All right. We can just keep reposting stuff and adding 2026 and that’s it. That’ll save us all kinds of time. Yeah. Okay. Alright. What, give us one last thing that you feel like we just, we don’t know what we don’t know. 

[00:25:50] Tom Jacobs: I would just say there’s probably like an eight to 12 month runway. Where you don’t have to sprint towards AI. Yes, [00:26:00] everybody’s using it, but a lot of people are still novices in it. 

[00:26:04] Kris Ward: Yeah. 

[00:26:05] Tom Jacobs: And we’re going to get to this place where AI is like a support tool rather than a crutch. So I look forward to that day. But yeah, in terms of like small business owners that have been open for five to 10 years, I always say do what works.

Yeah. For you and your brand and your audience. Yeah. Do more of that and then set aside five to percent, 10% of your budget to like experiment on this stuff. Yeah. Stay current. Really figure out what the next move is. While like your 90% is your bread and butter. Yeah. The thing that’s driving revenue. That’s growing your business.

That’s like in simplistic terms, what it comes down to. 

[00:26:43] Kris Ward: Yes. ’cause we do have to stop running around, like the sky’s falling. ’cause like we just had a meeting last week where it’s all of a sudden three months ago, it’s short content, video content. Keep it less than minute. Keep it less than minute.

Okay, fine. And then it comes back. The study show 55% of people are not engaging in that. They wanna learn, they want long [00:27:00] form content. And I’m like, that makes sense. When I’m learning about fitness or something on reels, it’s yeah, they are longer videos. They’re explaining something to me, right?

So all we’re doing is chasing what other businesses or platforms have accumulated in knowledge in the last six months, and then we just keep pivoting. Like it’s the new now and the new forever. Yeah. 

[00:27:22] Tom Jacobs: It’s really just ambulance chasing. 

[00:27:24] Kris Ward: Yes. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Okay. This was whatever.

With so much to we got. We don’t have time to talk to you, Tom. We gotta get on and get to, we gotta do all this stuff and at least repurpose our blogs. 

[00:27:35] Tom Jacobs: There you go. 

[00:27:35] Kris Ward: Okay. Where can people find more of your brilliance? 

[00:27:38] Tom Jacobs: I’m basically on LinkedIn every day. 

[00:27:41] Kris Ward: Okay. 

[00:27:41] Tom Jacobs: I’m building a website, but like you say.

It’s pretty much a polished version of, on LinkedIn, I’m a lot more available and a little venti or brash. 

[00:27:53] Kris Ward: No, I didn’t find so, but okay. Maybe for you. Okay. Please hand this show, hand this off to a business buddy. Do not let them bang around by themselves. Oh my gosh. Lots of content here and lots of clarity.

And boy, oh boy, did we need that today. Thank you so much, Tom. We’ll see everyone else in the next episode.