Hi, welcome. It's episode 34 of the 90-Day
Website Mastery Podcast, the perfect
companion to the 90-Day Mastery Program.
It's the 34th episode. We're excited to
bring you even more valuable insights and
help you enhance your website's
performance. Join us as we explore
strategies to make your website work
harder for you, reigniting your pride in
your online presence. We want you to feel
proud of your website. That's right, isn't
it, Pascal? We do indeed. And can I just
say thank you very much for people who
reacted to my LinkedIn post earlier in the
week when we announced that we're going to
go live today, because it's been one of
those tough weeks. Tough, but enjoyable.
Lots of workshops, conference speaking,
consultancy on the wonders of AI,
blogging, and of course, websites. So it's
just lovely to kind of end the week in
your company and the company of our
viewers and listeners. we're going to go
through our four segments to, yeah, find
ways, simple ways, but very powerful ways
to make sure your website does more for
your business, for you as you're at the
moment to go from joining it for you to
feel proud of your website again. Yeah,
and we really appreciate you joining us
and listening and giving us feedback. It
keeps us going and we enjoy this space.
It's really important for us and for you
because we want you to feel proud of your
website. So we've got four segments as
always. It's the you ask, we answer. We've
got website stories. We have the website
engine room where we'll share an app or a
piece of kit that's going to help you as a
website manager or website content creator
make your life easier and of course we
always finish with the website call to
action. How can a piece of content not
have a call to action at the end? Well we
make sure it always does. So let's get
started and start with you ask we answer.
Now this one question, I have to thank one
of my recent coaching clients, because
they are really the source of the idea for
it. So we're having a conversation about
the key component parts of a website, talk
about promotional content, talk about
social content. If you're intrigued, go
and check out our webinars, because we do
deep dive on that. And we spoke about the
importance of demonstrating your expertise
via a track record and the way in which
you can kind of craft case studies and
testimonials. And his reaction was,
listen, I'm very keen to add case studies
and more kind of validation on the
website, but I'm worried that quite simply
the competition was simply use that to
almost formulate their own little hit list
of companies to approach. They're going to
steal and scrape the content from our case
studies. And actually, the conversation
went beyond that, which is, well, how do
you protect any content on your website?
But yeah, so the challenge is, and I would
love to hear your perspective, is we need
to demonstrate expertise. We need to
demonstrate that we've done this before,
case studies are important, but how can
you craft them in such a way that you
don't just make life easy for your
competitors to take the name, to kind of
do a bit of research on LinkedIn and
beyond, and approach your customers and
say, I can do it too, and maybe cheaper.
Yeah and I've seen this happen so I
understand the concern. I think some of
this is about having confidence in your
products and services and if listening to
feedback and you know I always remember on
Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares if 16 people
are telling you your soup's crap then your
soup's crap and you need to do something
about it. So there is an element of
actually having confidence. And I've been
in exactly this position where people have
approached my clients and will have got
that from case studies, from my
connections on LinkedIn. But my clients
have been good enough to let me know. So I
am proud of my services. But I also hear
listeners and viewers right now saying,
yes, OK, you can still be great. But if
they come with a better deal or there's
always time to change, So you can, but you
can protect. And so I guess that's along
the route of anonymizing, maybe just using
first names and not using a full name of
the person that's given the testimonial or
the person that's given that client review
case study. And perhaps just mentioning
the industry or the sector of the client
instead of having the logo. I think it's a
difficult one because I think having the
logo and having that depth brings a huge
element of trust, whereas if you're not
bringing that, you're protecting
yourselves, but you're not having quite as
much of the trust element. So I think it's
about finding a fine line, but I guess the
instant response, Pascal, for me, is first
of all, have that, be confident about your
products and services, and you can go down
the anonymization route if that's, what's
your experience with this? The same, in
fact, a customer of mine rang me many,
many years ago saying, I need to tell you
that actually one of your attendees came
to see me armed with your handouts and
your kind of slides and say, I can do it
two cheaper. And it was just the most
surreal experience. So I have some
sympathy with it, but we need to find a
way to build that trust and build that
confidence. So I like your idea of, well,
let's name the industry or even the
subcategory within the industry, but I
think it's all to do with how you shape
the case. Is it that actually it's more
interesting to understand about the
challenges that you faced and the
solutions that you came up with? That can
be quite innovative. That could be just as
informative as the naming, if you will, of
the very business that you dealt with. But
the way in which you can do that,
particularly I would say B2B, would be to
kind of relate it more to maybe the kind
of membership organization they may belong
to. So you could talk about a member of
this institute or a member of this
federation approached us with this
challenge. And you can find ways to
storytell what you've done, the before,
doing, and after, in such a way that is
informative. But then you mustn't forget
that you have an amazing section on your
website called the blog. if you still want
to use that term, that can really, really
help you as a platform to talk about,
share some news and react to the news in
that industry in particular, because my
kind of philosophy is we're going to go to
market with intent. So the case studies
are there to, as part of a dedicated
approved sales strategy about we're going
to be more visible and more credible in
this particular subsector. So your blog is
a wonderful platform as well to share the
news about that particular sector you want
to talk about, talk about the solutions,
talk about also what's happening and so
on. So within, if you like, the context of
the entire website, not just the case
study element, there's going to be many,
many ways in which you can do that. And
then my position that would be to almost
kind of put the competition competition
off is to then have a joint announcement
or joint press release. So you and your
customers are telling the story of what
has happened in such a way that the
established relationship is seen to be so
strong that would be quite a turn off for
your competitors as well. Yeah, I like
that. I mean, that just increases the
trust, doesn't it? And having a client
come out and talk about the relationship
that you've got is fantastic. I just
should welcome, by the way, we are live on
LinkedIn. We're live on YouTube. We're
live on Instagram. And we've got some
people watching right now. Thanks for
being here on Instagram, because we've
been testing and trying that platform. But
yeah, let us know where you are. You might
be listening to this on the podcast or
even the replay afterwards. Thank you for
being here. But the question that we're
debating is, We've got these case studies,
we've got client logos and we've had that
question, how do you protect yourself from
competitors approaching those clients? So
I think we've covered some good ideas
there about anonymization, about using
first names, about just using the sector
or the industry and also going into depth
on the blog, not just on the case study,
but on the blog about how you've come up
with, you know, these are the typical
problems that we see. These are the
typical solutions. This is the typical
impact that we can achieve. And I think
that's all brilliant. Pascal, there was
just one thing that I wanted to mention
because we've called this episode, how to
safeguard website content and from
competitors. And I think it's important to
mention from, you know, one of the
questions that I get asked quite often is,
you know, you spend a lot of time an
effort on a particular piece of content,
you put that on the website. And how do
you stop someone just copying and
plagiarizing and using that? And the
beauty is, is that if you're optimized
correctly on your website from an SEO
point of view, Google sees the date and
the time that that content was on your
website. And if it sees the same content
somewhere else, it references the date and
the time as who was the first publisher of
that content. So you're sort of protected
from a, uh, quite a good way from a
certainly a Google point of view. But
yeah, just thought I'd mention that,
Pascal, because similarly, I get questions
around competitors copying content.
Absolutely, thanks for that. So everyone,
have you found an innovative way to
protect or suddenly make it such that your
content is not ready to be just stolen by
others? How do you find a way to share
your track record without making life easy
for the competition to essentially have a
hit list of prospects to go after? It'd be
fascinating to hear your stories from your
own perspective and your own industries.
Let us know. And for now, let's move on to
website stories.
Now, in each episode of the Website
Mastery podcast, we choose an article, a
podcast, an infographic, something that
can help us reflect what it means to run a
website in today's economy. And we've
chosen a video, short one, but it's a very
good one, from a channel called TubeBuddy.
One of their journalist video creator
attended the annual YouTube conference and
was reporting on an announcement that I
think is going to be very, very
interesting for us to reflect and react
to. The title is as follows, YouTube CEO
announces major news for small channels.
And very, very quickly, you'll understand
that this is all about helping small
channels get more visibility. In short,
they have introducing, sort of surely
across different territories, as they call
them, a new feature called Hype, H-Y-P-E.
And this is designed for small YouTube
channels with less than 500,000
subscribers, which is unlimited. that I
can think of that I deal with in a kind of
business context. I think if you do
something for leisure, for entertainment,
you get to that number very, very quickly.
And I suppose, for me, what I like about
it is that timely reflection from Google,
who owns YouTube, about the need for small
channels to get more recognition, more
visibility when the feeds, particularly
because of the kind of imperfect algorithm
it just fed with all the populist and
popular content. So the way it works is
viewers, Now you and I would get three
hypes per week so we can essentially help
three videos per week and what you will
see on small channels is a new kind of
symbol and icon alongside the sharing and
the subscribing and so on called hype and
you can do that three times a week. And
the other being that the more hype points
given to a video, the higher this video
will get onto a brand new leaderboard
called hype. And actually, they're
introducing a new tab. So there's going to
be some new habits to get into and a new
tab to get comfortable with. They've done
some beta testing in Turkey, Taiwan, and
Brazil. People can ask you why. of the
large population. And I'm, you know,
sometimes reminded that in the UK
certainly we're not that big and that
important any longer, just quite humbling.
But the idea being that, you know, a
solution to a problem created by YouTube
itself as a platform, but also because of
the imperfect algorithm, so hype, a new
way to support small YouTube channels. But
then the conversation and the reaction I
want to invite from you, Johnny, is can we
hope that this kind of desire to help
smaller businesses and smaller content
creators will translate also across maybe
search, maybe across Google Maps and more.
So I like it. I like it a lot, of course,
but I'm hoping that it's a change that we
may see even on social media platforms
like YouTube and LinkedIn and more. I
mean, that's the problem, isn't it? That
small businesses are finding it tougher
and tougher to stand out. You know, even
just look at Meta and advertising on
Facebook, on Instagram, you've got to have
big bucks now for things to work. And so
it is great to see YouTube owning this and
saying, look, you know, we realize that
small businesses are suffering here.
That's why we've introduced this new hype
solution. I think what's going to end up
happening here is that we're going to
start having to add call to actions to the
end of our videos that aren't just
subscribe or like, but make sure you hype
us as well. So I think we'll start seeing
some of that. But I think in terms of
other platforms, so search, SEO, it's been
a problem for a long time that bigger
organizations dominate in search. They've
got better backlinks. They've got better
domain authority. So then it comes down to
how well you can do locally, how well you
can do from a personalization point of
view. It was nice to see Google launch
personalization many years ago and they've
really, really developed that hugely so
that they are trying to promote more local
businesses, more businesses that you've
already shown an interest in, perhaps
you've already got connections with some
kind of data points that Google have. So
yeah, I think it's great to see the
recognition that small businesses are
being squashed to some extent and
certainly hype is a really positive way
forward on YouTube and I'd like to see it
across more platforms. Yeah, one platform
that I'd be very keen to see is that
Google My Business, Google Maps. Many
years ago, during a Google conference,
they had suggested that Google Maps could
become almost like a social network, where
a group of people could get together and
favor and kind of promote their favorite
places and favorite services and so on.
And that never really came to fruition, so
we shall see. But Watch this space, you
know, so YouTube was the first one out
with a solution of sort. We'll see whether
people want to do the hyping. This is
going to become a new verb and so on. And
can we see a rollout across all the
digital platforms because It's not getting
any easier. All the conversation you and I
have with our customers is the stats are
not great. And it's tough sometimes to
keep yourself motivated when you feel like
you're swimming against the current. So
yeah, this is a nice breakthrough. Yeah,
for sure. On that note, let's move forward
onto our next segment, the website engine
room.
Now in this segment of the show, Jonny and
I love to introduce a new app, maybe a new
solution, maybe a new piece of kit that
can make life easier as a website manager
and content creator. So Jonny, what is
your selection for the website engine
room? So this week, the focus is on
businesses that have some kind of product
online, some kind of SaaS solution. Maybe
you've got some kind of portal or some
kind of something that is an online
solution. and how to demonstrate that, but
also how to apply some training to that
area as well. So the app is called
Storylane.io. It helps companies build and
share interactive product demos with their
prospects in under 10 minutes. It allows
you to share your story visually to engage
your audience and boost conversions. It's
a great way to be able to produce a far
higher quality screen share. That's very
polished. That's got, you know, the right
type of pop-ups and arrows and, and, and
allow you to really demonstrate a product,
an online product really easily. Um, so
yeah, it's, it was a great little find,
uh, that I had with a client not so long
ago. Um, and just wanted to recommend it.
So it's storyline.io. I, uh, I was just
double checking. Yeah. It's storyline.io.
Uh, so that would be mine for this
episode. I mean, it's perfect because I've
got a meeting next week and I'm going to
introduce that as part of a discourse
because it is tough sometimes. Because
what we do, whether it's a website itself
or the website content, is we try and
invite somebody to imagine a near future
where things are different and that with
us, things are going to go well. And
sometimes all we see are just claims after
claims after claims that things are going
to go well. People need to be more than
that. And I think visual storytelling is
very, very important. Now, there's one
thing that you and I have discussed many a
time, which is that if only we would know
and could hear and see what it's like for
visitors to go on our websites. kind of
insight into behavior, into also what they
seem to have understood about us, or what
they seem to remember about us, is so
vastly important. And indeed, you know,
you can, if budget allows, do focus
groups. But actually, what we have found,
because I've done many of them myself, and
you have as well, is focus groups, you do
get a biased view because people spend too
much time rationalizing their perceptions
and views about a website. Now, there is
an online tool that's just been released
by Google called Notebook LM, LM standing
for Language Model. And Notebook LM first
was invented, if you will, to help you
summarize a number of documents about a
specific subject. And what you could do
with your AI-powered assistant is query
those documents, get an understanding of
what it is, And you get some summaries,
and you can upload Google documentations.
You can upload links to a number of
things. But the way in which I've been
using it more recently, Notebook LM by
Google, it's actually simply copy and
paste the URL of your website, or URL of a
particular part of your website, and
simply wait for AI to summarize what they
have understood based on the content
present there. And it's very, very telling
because the summary sometimes is actually
very powerful. It can be used almost as is
for an apprentice section more. But
sometimes you kind of go, oh, that's not
really what I had in mind when I created
this content. That's not what I had in
mind in terms of this website. I want
people to remember or understand more of
this and less of the other. So if you have
some imbalance that can be very helpful.
So this AI platform literally will visit
inverted commas the website and report
back to you what it seems to have
understood about your offer, about your
kind of values and that kind of things.
That's number one, so you get a good
written summary. But the other thing that
is very, very powerful is you get an audio
summary. And this is the one that people
can see Johnny smiling because he's done
the test already. If you watch the video
format, the audio summary is a mini
podcast between two people. Now, I grant
you, these are bots talking to each other,
but the voices, the intonations, and the
interaction is so human-like that it's a
pleasure to listen to, But also, it gives
you, again, an appreciation of what if two
customers, two prospect met at a local
pub, local cafe, and discussed what they
understood of your website content. This
is what Notebook LM can provide you as
market intelligence via essentially an
assistant. And then there's many, many use
cases for that content. For me, the
written summary and the audio summary is
what we've been almost hoping for, which
is, If you were a first-time visitor, what
impression would you have of my website
and what would you retain in terms of the
information? And then based on that
intelligence, can you go in and adjust
that content accordingly? Yeah, it's quite
a wow platform that you introduced me to.
I had a little play. the other day and I
am very excited to see where this is going
to go but I love the use case that you've
just painted which is let's just you know
paste our website URL see what the
language model says about it and it gives
you some really interesting insight from a
as you said you can read about it or you
can listen to it where you know It's as if
two people have got together and start
talking about you. Uh, so, uh, and, and
we're, we're talking about, you know,
we're talking about this within seconds as
well, aren't we? You know, it's, it's, uh,
it only takes a minute or two for it to
literally, uh, compile that audio and,
and, and play it back to you. Uh, so yeah,
interesting to see where that platform
goes. Um, and, uh, I like it a lot.
Thanks, Pascal. So that was our website
engine room, where we shared a couple of
apps that's going to help you as a website
content creator, website manager, start
feeling proud of your website. But also,
ultimately, this is about sales, isn't it?
It's about selling more. It's about
engaging more. And whether that be current
clients or previous clients. Let's move on
to our final segment of this episode, the
website call to action.
Now, in this final segment, we surprised
each other, we surprised you, our viewers
and listeners, with one change or one
adjustment that can make a big difference
to your website. So, Jonny, what is your
website call to action for today? So, I'm
going to talk about voice search
optimization. Now, I've talked about this
before, but not on this podcast. And the
reason that I bring it up is because
You'll have noticed in the UK that Google
is rolling out lots of AI in its Google
search. And a lot of that generative AI is
based on voice search as well, voice
search data. And so it's a lot more
conversational content. It's a lot more
longer tail keywords. And really trying
to, you know, this isn't new for some of
you that are listening, but I expect that
actually knowing the clients that we work
with, knowing the range of clients that we
work with, these questions still come up
all the time. And the obvious things
aren't always that obvious. So we want to
be at the top of Google for the best word
in the world, because that's what we sell.
But actually, we really need to be
thinking about what are our clients
questions. What are they typing into
Google? What are they asking? And more
importantly, what are the younger
generations using, for example, on voice
search, for example, on other platforms,
not just Google. They're using search on
TikTok. And so it's how you're using that
conversational language within your
content and focusing on those sort of
longer tail keywords. So my advice for you
for this week, the call to action, is to
really stand back about what it is you're
trying to sell, what it is you're trying
to, what the products and services are,
and really home in on what might your
clients be asking if they were looking for
solutions that you offer. Not what would
they type into Google, Not what would be
the one or two keywords, but what would be
the sense, what would be the, if they were
going to ask someone, a personal
assistant, if they were going to ask a
personal assistant to solve one of their
problems that you have a solution to, what
would they say to that personal assistant?
And that would be my call to action for
this episode. This is so good. That
relates back to what we discussed with the
previous segment as well, because this is
where AI can help you stimulate your
imagination about remembering actually
those moments where you had the
interaction yourself. That's really
important to go back to real life
conversations. But also, what is lovely
about some of the platforms you and I have
mentioned on the show, that could be from
ChatGPT to Perplexity, and now Notebook
LM, is that they make suggestions about
those questions as well. You could also go
onto Google and look at the box that says
people also asked, and that kind of thing.
So it's really important to have that. And
we learned again, because we don't talk to
each other, we prepare separately for for
the show but I've got something very
similar which is this idea of a targeted
product or services FAQ so back to
questions people ask and this one is
important because I have noticed I don't
have any hard data to back it up, but I
have noticed that search engines,
particularly the AI summaries that they
seem to be crafting as part of the top
level bit of what you see, seems to like a
lot FAQ content from websites. There seems
to be a trend going towards that. So let's
ride that wave as long as it may last. So
my recommendation would be to make a list
of your sales objectives, and be clear
about the product and services that you
want to sell more of in this next quarter
or six months of the year. And then what I
would do is use your AI assistant to give
you some ideas about the likely questions,
the likely objections, really important,
the likely objections that they might
have, the likely dancing concerns. And
what I would do is even do that across a
range of personas. So maybe if you don't
have them, start with the personas and
then use them to interrogate your AI
assistant. platform for ideas for the
likely objection the likely questions are
likely dancing concerns but also
aspirations and wishes you need to kind of
go deep diving into that and then you'll
have a lot to go after you don't have to
use all of it but that is what you need to
then repurpose that those a i can suggest
the content into the ultimate FAQ for a
particular service or a particular
product. A, that's gonna make your website
shine in terms of content and usefulness,
but also this idea of being the extension
of your customer care ethos. But also
since, ultimately, even though they are
produced by, they are AI summaries,
forgive me, they still need content from
the interweb, as I call it, with
affection. And that comes from your
website. So to have the ultimate service
FAQ on your website is going to give you
many, many wins moving forward. Fantastic.
What a jam-packed episode. As always, this
was episode 34. We've talked about how to
safeguard website content for your
competitors. Listen, don't be shy of
sharing case studies and even clients'
names and logos. But if you really do have
concern, you can anonymize. That's what
we've talked about. So don't be shy of
that. Watch out for the new hype that's
coming on YouTube to help small
businesses, to help smaller accounts. So
make sure that when you're watching this
on the replay and the hype button appears,
make sure you click the hype button. We've
shared a few tips and apps. Of course, it
was AI related. We're loving AI, aren't
we, Pascal? It's ingrained into us now.
That's a wrap for episode 34, the 90 Day
Website Mastery Podcast, your audio
companion to the 90 Day Website Mastery
Program. For more information, visit
90daymarketingmastery.com, where you can
book a discovery call with either myself
or Pascal. It's goodbye for now. We'll
leave you with a fun video and audio
montage to enjoy whilst you review your
notes and action steps. And make sure you
do subscribe. Make sure you tell your
friends. I was about to say tweet as X's.
I still haven't quite got that X or tweet.
But anyway, more importantly, we love
feedback. Let us know what you think. What
else would you like on the show? What do
you want us to explore? What questions do
you have? But more importantly, thanks for
being there and start feeling proud of
your website again. We'll see you all
soon. Cheers, Pascal. Take care. Bye-bye.