Jay Schwedelson: We are back for Ask Us Anything from the Do This Not That podcast. This is our episode where we're getting questions all week long, work questions, ridiculous questions. We try to tackle one of each, and if you want to submit a question, it's real easy. Just go to jayschwedelson.com, and you could submit a question.

Jay Schwedelson: There's a button that says Podcast, another one that says Ask Us Anything. And, uh, yeah, we love getting the questions, so let's do it. The first question is from Ben from Miami. Oh, well, that's near me. I'm in Boca Raton. You know what I saw about Miami this week? You don't see the local news, but I do. There are...

Jay Schwedelson: There was a restaurant down there who, who... And I guess a lot of restaurants are doing this, that are making, uh, not rules, but, like, guidelines for when a creator comes to their restaurant, how they want their staff to handle it, like an influencer. Not even, like, a big influence. I get it if, like, you know, I don't know, Kim Kardashian shows up, but just a regular, like, creator or something.

Jay Schwedelson: They're giving them special seating near windows. This was all in this write-up, okay? And then they're alerting the kitchen, and then the person that's their waiter has to have a story ready to tell about the food, more than just the regular, like, reading of the specials. It was this whole thing. I don't know.

Jay Schwedelson: So creators are now getting, like, the red carpet treatment. I guess that's how restaurants, you know, get traffic. Who am I to... Whatever. Who cares? All right, Ben, what is your question? "Jay, we are pumping out more content than ever 'cause we're using some AI tools to generate a ton of posts and new email formats too, but our engagement is actually dropping.

Jay Schwedelson: You have any thoughts as to why if we are doing more, we are seeing less?" Yeah, well, that doesn't really surprise me at all because, you know, all these AI tools, and there's so many of them now, right? It's getting us to be more efficient and pump out more garbage, but here's the reality of it, and we've been testing a lot of stuff.

Jay Schwedelson: The things that, whether you're a business marketer, consumer marketer, nonprofit, the lo-fi, which I've talked about before, but I have some specific new things to test, th-the lo-fi kind of more authentic stuff is what's working. The polished AI garbage is just garbage. So for example, let me give you some specifics that you can test that we're seeing a serious lift on.

Jay Schwedelson: So let's talk about case studies. Uh, everybody always wants their case studies downloaded, but, but that doesn't really even work that well anymore because case studies are generic and boring. What's actually working, whether it's business, consumer, whatever, are screenshot testimonials. That format, if you could screenshot a testimonial and use that as the image in your social posts, in your emails, on your website, that is crushing.

Jay Schwedelson: We actually did a head-to-head test on this, and we saw a 22%, um, conversion lift when the testimonial was a screenshot As opposed to just a, uh, case study format. The, the craziest one that we've been testing, which is so wild, has to do with your call to action buttons. You know, the long rectangular things in your emails, on your landing pages, wherever you're getting people to click through, and it's this idea instead of saying Download or Register or Buy Now, it's this idea of the maybe call to action button.

Jay Schwedelson: It's so weird. So what does that mean? If the call to action button, instead of saying the regular stuff, it says something like, "Lemme see," where you actually write L-E-M-M-E and then C, lemme see. Or the button would say, "Fine, I'll look," or, "Show me the thing," or it would say, "I guess," or it will say, "Okay, what is this?"

Jay Schwedelson: This idea of the maybe call to action button, I know how bizarre that is, but it grabs your attention for a millisecond, and it's the most un-AI thing ever, and we actually tested this on a bunch of campaigns, and we actually saw this type of, you know, casual, maybe style call to action button. We got a 14% higher click-through rate when doing that versus, um, a lot of the standard call to actions that we were using.

Jay Schwedelson: And then one... The other thing that we've been testing is webinar title format. Right now, the best webinar title format that we have been seeing is instead of, like, doing a webinar title that would be something like, you know, strategies for blah, blah, blah, something epically boring, generic garbage, if you have your webinar title starting with how we did blah, blah, how we did blah, blah, that is crushing it.

Jay Schwedelson: 'Cause all we want, in general, with the content that's working out there, is behind-the-scenes. That is really the thing that we want, and the w- the one place where we're seeing it more than anywhere else, the number one content format that is outperforming any polished educational content of any kind, is day in the life content.

Jay Schwedelson: If you're a boring manufacturer, if you are in a regulated industry like healthcare or financial services, if you are a nonprofit, I am telling you, day in the life content crushes it. I don't care what industry you're in. Of course, if you're in a fun consumer industry, that's easy. Test this out. It is working so, so well.

Jay Schwedelson: All right, let's get into the ridiculous question. We have a question from Kathy from Portland. "Jay, we need you to settle some big debates. Are these things bad?" Okay, she has four of them. Here we go. Is this bad? Rehearsing fake arguments in the shower. Uh, well, I never really thought about that. I do that.

Jay Schwedelson: And not even just fake arguments, I just... I find myself... I don't know if you all do this. I find myself actually knowing I'm gonna have a certain conversation, and I'll, like, almost talk it out in the shower. Is that weird? Maybe it's not weird, 'cause you asked the question. So I'm gonna go with no, that's not bad, and I never really thought about it, but I do that.

Jay Schwedelson: Not the argument thing, but I do that. Okay, next one. Is this bad? Reading restaurant menus before arriving. Um, you know, I, I'm gonna talk out of both sides of my mouth. I don't like doing that because it takes away from the experience of when you go to the restaurant. But I also like knowing if the restaurant has a good menu.

Jay Schwedelson: So I do it sometimes, not always. I don't think it's bad, but I also think it makes your restaurant experience more boring. So I'm on the fence on that one. Okay, what about the next one? Is this bad? Saying we need rain like you're a farmer. Yeah, this actually bothers me. I don't like it when people say we need rain.

Jay Schwedelson: I even, I know that some areas have a drought, and that's not okay for me to say. Uh, maybe 'cause I'm in Florida and it rains all the time, but it does bother me when it's raining out and I wanna go somewhere and someone says, "No, no, this is good. We needed the rain." I'm like, "Who are you?" Like, like, w- are you, like, a meteorologist?

Jay Schwedelson: We needed the rain. I know we're all on one team on the planet and all that stuff. I don't know why that bothers me. It's fine if you say it in your head. It just bothers me. All right, the last one, Jay, is this bad? Using a speakerphone in public. This is probably the worst thing of all time, okay? It, it could not be more annoying.

Jay Schwedelson: Someone... No one cares about your conversation. I don't even care about the conversations I'm in when I'm not on speakerphone. Nobody on earth should be on their speakerphone in public. If you do this, you stink. Don't do that. Good questions, Kathy. All right, everyone, I would appreciate something. Go to jayschwedelson.com.

Jay Schwedelson: There is a button that says Partner. We are lining up our collabs. I wanna help promote your brand. My agency does all sorts of cool marketing campaigns, business, consumer, everything, on things like, uh, Reddit and email and direct mail and other social channels, all this stuff. Go to jayschwedelson.com, click the Partner button.

Jay Schwedelson: Let's do stuff. See you later