How Is AI Changing Content Marketing and Search?

Carmela Fortin (00:02) So a lot of our marketing today is built for Google and that carpet's been quickly ripped out from underneath us because of generative engine optimization and the need to customize our marketing for AI assistance. And this is one of those things where I'm excited about it, but I would also tell anyone in content figured out because this is one of those intersection points in our history of marketing where we're transforming to fuse both in a more cohesive way. Ben Ard (00:58) Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Carmela. Carmela, welcome to the show. Carmela Fortin (01:04) Hello, thank you for having me then. Ben Ard (01:06) Yeah, Kamara, I'm so excited for this episode. It's one of my favorite subjects, but before we dive in, Carmela, let's get to know you. Tell us about your background, work history. Let's get to know you and all that fun stuff. Carmela Fortin (01:19) Absolutely. So I work as a AI coach and consultant for my own company. And I've been in the world of just building businesses for the last 17 years. And I've been in AI longer than most, I'd say probably eight or nine years. I started out marketing agency when I was raising my son. and working with enterprise organizations. And then after six years thought, I'm going to go be the client working for enterprise companies and growth. My specialty was in data, more ops, being kind of a test subject for a lot of the marketing platforms we know today, the marketos, the hub spots, tech target purchase intent intelligence, anything that's data and marketing related. And then after that, I thought, you know what, I'm going to go try out the Silicon Valley thing. I went to work for an innovative tech company down in the Valley. And that's kind of when my career just sort of, you know, went into the jet packs and the AI and the innovation. And I had an opportunity to go to some really interesting places to learn a lot across manage unsupervised, multimodal AI. and be in a lot of really cool places. And now I get phone calls throughout the week, usually C-suite enterprise executives that are looking to start their own AI startup and say, can you help me? And so what I do as a coach and a consultant is help them through that first chapter, getting through some of those big hurdles until they get their series B round and then I set them free in the world and wish them well, just like a doctor. never want to see you in here again. And then I go on to the next project. So it's a really fun, really fun way to spend my days. Ben Ard (03:06) I love that. That's so cool. And clearly you have this like window into the future of AI. You have all this experience, you have all this knowledge, and then you're working with these cutting edge technologies that are using AI in new and creative ways. I know even we had a call before this podcast where you were going through some of these groups that you get to work with and it is insane what you get to experience. So I'm excited for the audience to get like an insight into AI. and how it's operating in the world. So first and foremost, what are you most excited about when it comes to content and AI? Anything that you feel like marketers should be aware of, anything that's on the horizon where you're like, Hey, keep your eyes out for this new technologies, anything like that. Anything that's just got you really excited when it comes to content and AI. Carmela Fortin (03:56) Absolutely. So I'm smiling a little bit because if any of my clients are listening to this, they know I'm going to start out with a story because that's I just I have a treasure trove of stories. one of one that comes to mind is once upon a time, I was in a content piece for a company on the history of marketing analytics. And I think HubSpot ecosystems and a couple of other companies were in there. And I thought, gosh, am I that old in this area where I mean, the history of marketing analytics. But I've built a lot of the systems that we use today at their core and how they work for marketers. And it feels like, you know, back in the day, going from the four tools that we have to millions of tools today that we're kind of grasping at straws. There's so much distraction out there. There's so many different things. There is such an entrepreneurial spirit with every marketer of just, know what, I'm gonna get this project done and I'm gonna learn this and I'm gonna figure it out. And I don't know, it's just gonna be messy along the way. And embracing that as marketers has been such a great journey to see in a lot of the professionals that I help. But one of the things that I'm most excited about is content systemization. And that is, you know, just my green. a C type personality that is more focused on efficiency and authenticity in marketing that comes from a base that is centered around SEO and GEO. So a lot of our marketing today is sort of built for Google and that is quickly, that carpet's been quickly ripped out from underneath us because of generative engine optimization and the need to customize our marketing for AI assistance. And I'm seeing so many consultants and teams and agencies, full marketing teams that are designing these two parallel journeys for us to customize our content. I'm also seeing some teams that aren't doing the basics, like checking out the keywords and looking at the data. And so that layering and that parallel use of both is just something that some marketers are still figuring out. And this is one of those things where I'm excited about it, but I would also tell anyone in content figured out because this is one of those intersection points in our history of marketing where we're transforming to fuse both in a more cohesive way. And we're still building for human readers and we're still building for Google spiders. But now we've got this third component or additional component of AI assistance. And that's everyone's first stop. Not everyone, but it's a lot of folks first stop. I believe it was around 20 % to 30 % and growing. We were having a conversation about this yesterday. And if folks want to rank and they want visibility, it's really not just about SEO anymore, it's GEO, that generative engine optimization. And that's changing everything because there's a lot of trust with AI assistance these days. And where I'm seeing some marketers evolve is where they're taking their content and even feeding it back to the AI assistant and saying, hey, what do you think about this? What am I missing? What's your take on this? If I was marketing to you, would you like this? And I'm seeing some folks say, ooh, I would never do that. That feels weird. As a coach, that's a moment where I say, yes, I'm excited about this, but listen to that feeling. If it feels too weird or you know you're never going to do it, it's a good time to pivot in marketing. You know, either upscale or a different area of marketing to be in because this evolution is not. Ben Ard (07:19) you Carmela Fortin (07:27) a future state or on the horizon or going to take our jobs. It's just an extra step. And I am not someone with, you know, hard skills. I'm not a rocket scientist. I'm a marketer. I figured it out. And I, and I know there's a lot of folks out there that are scrappy and gritty enough to figure out as well. Ben Ard (07:43) I love that. So for all of the marketers out there that are hearing this and they're like, okay, you know, I've been afraid of AI. I've been afraid it's going to take over my job. I've had concerns about it. It feels inauthentic, things like that. How do they up level themselves? Where do they go? What resources can they start using to really develop a skill set? And I guess a secondary question, should they be afraid of their jobs? But how How can they continue to adapt alongside AI and kind of make sure that there's a future for them in the industry? Carmela Fortin (08:14) Yeah, the coach side of me says in regards to the job piece and the job insecurity and how difficult it is in the market. If you're someone who's in the job market or you're someone who's about to be in the job market from a layoff, I can definitely tell you I have survived four AI marketing layoffs. And every time I told myself I'm not going back, I'm going to go do something else. And somehow I keep coming back for more and now do this out of my own. So I can definitely tell you that you will be okay. There's enough grittiness in there as a marketer to figure out what that next step is. The consulting side of me says there's a couple different options. If you're a company in a high growth mode, work with an expert. take the fast lane, don't try to figure it out. The more you're trying to figure it out, the longer it's going to take, the longer your project will take, the harder, the more you're going to kick your goals out, work with an expert, find a mentor, find a coach, find an advisor. When I was at AI startups, I found that they kept bringing in advisors from investors. And a lot of folks look at me and think, gosh, she's really young for an AI advisor. but I found that I was more qualified and we actually after a while didn't have advisors that would work with us. And I thought, that's me. That's, I guess I should go do that. And I think there's a lot of marketers out there. They're still in that hamster wheel and that could be you. That could be you. That's a mentor or coach or advisor. So I just want to offer that as well. Lastly, if you're someone who is boots on the ground and you're like, how do I figure this out? I'm looking at all these YouTube videos. And there's all these influencers trying to get me to buy their content, but they're sending me an ad. And if they made millions, why am I even seeing this ad? Why are they reaching me with this? So I'll boil it down in very simple terms and define both. So SEO, we all know it. We've had that happy marriage of keywords and backlinks and crawlability. GEO is really going to be on how AI summarizes your brand. If you're a marketer that's really married to how your brand exists in the world. or you're an agency that's been telling your clients all about, you know, how their brand looks and that aesthetic. Can you really want to market to market? I just want to let you know that this is the least sexy part of marketing and embracing that some professionals need some growth in that area. And that's where I say absolutely work for a coach. Get over that hurdle because if you're married to brand, that will be a big canyon to cross. So AI is summarizing your brand, your product, your value, and it's not even clicking on your website sometimes, right? It's where you're optimizing content, whether it's syndicated or it's something that someone's sharing a link to, or it's something that's really in the schema markup. You're optimizing for the chat GPT, the perplexity, the Claude, Gemini, because these are interpreting your brand. What I do for founders sometimes when we're just kind of checking that box, all right, that we kind of do our housekeeping when we're setting this brand up, we'll take a look at our FAQs. We'll take a look at the pages, our SEO, but then we'll do a second check and do sort of a washing machine on the GEO. And I'll even feed it back to an AI assistant and say, OK, here's the brand and here's what FAQs. Here's our data file. Ben Ard (11:23) you Carmela Fortin (11:34) If I was selling this to you, how cute is that? Like, what do you think of this? So if your site doesn't have clear, structured AI digestible content, the AI assistants may hallucinate or worse, they'll really summarize your competitor instead. And that's not the look you're going for. So yeah, in terms of evolution, I would say just start with simple things. Micro steps are steps as professionals. And if we're doing simple things like FAQs and house cleaning on your schema markup, you can start there. You can start with a YouTube video there. And you'd be surprised that within a shorter amount of time than Google is going to index you, you're getting picked up in AI assistance and you're doing it. Ben Ard (12:17) I love that. So this whole point about using a coach, I think this is one of the most insightful things and I think it doesn't always this is an exclusive to AI. This is for I think everything in life. So before I worked a couple companies ago, I used the golf a lot because we had free golf passes and it's so funny in the golfing world that so many people spend time and effort on going out to the course, they'll spend all sorts of money on their rounds and their equipment. But like there's this weird vibe around actually getting a coach and the amount of progress a golfer makes by having like three lessons with a coach to improve their swing is incredible. But yet they spent thousands of dollars on equipment and all this flashy stuff as marketers building a network, working with coaches. Instead of spending X amount of dollars on a new platform, sometimes it's better to just say, let's take that same money and let's invest in a coach who has built this before. He can tell us what we need to do, who can train us up level S. It is not a sign of weakness to have a coach or, you know, a consultant come in who has a different skillset. Like that's just, I think as marketers, we just eat that up. Take it for what it is and move forward with the knowledge instead of feeling like our jobs at risk because we're bringing in outside resources and things like that. So I think that is such a cool insight. How, how would you recommend? I'm boots on the ground. I'm in marketing, you know, I'm getting my feet wet with AI. Maybe the company doesn't have resources to pay for a coach today. What are some places that I can go should I find network should I find group should I fed mentors any recommendations there? Carmela Fortin (13:58) Yes, so I'm a mentor and a coach. I'm a mentor for the Washington Small Business Administration through a volunteer program called SCORE. And that's where we offer free mentorship from retired professionals like myself, semi-retired in my regard, but most are retired. And those free mentors can help you by just setting an appointment and starting with a conversation. It's not scary. And there's a lot of free webinars online as well with the score program. And there's a score program in every state in the United States. So that's the free version. I am also a coach through mento.co where it is highly skilled ICF certified coaches. And sometimes you'll see an ad that's, work with a coach with the ex Google, ex Amazon leadership team member. And you might be thinking to yourself, wow, that's really expensive. I could never afford that. There's coaches like me on mento.co. I am both a certified organizational change management coach and an executive and professional coach because during COVID, I found that so many of the companies I was working with that were accelerating with growth and content, they couldn't grow fast enough to meet their goals because of the organizational change that had to happen. And so I looked at the ICF certifications and just chose the longest, hardest one, of course. And I find that at startups and commercial organizations, there's a lot of change management. If you're on a team of two or more, you're dealing with change management. But if you're an army of one and you're wondering, gosh, how do I do this? That's where mentorship can kind of come in. And if you're working on a bigger team, working with an organizational change management coach or having a consultant come in and talking with your manager can help as well. If you're identifying that it's something tactical, that's a consultant. That's someone who's going to work on it with you and then set you free and say, I never want to see you again, but it's been lovely. And then working with a coach is where you're identifying, you know what, my team has other issues. that are constricting our growth or they need to upskill or maybe they're limited in their thinking with the transformation that's on the horizon. And that's a lot of the reasons that I do coaching is because this wave of transformation and technology isn't meeting teams all in the same place so that they can move forward together. And that's where we need to see some movement. And that's why I work with teams as a group and as individuals So we're still continuing to push everything forward in a way that's meeting goals. And I do that through my company, which is Seattle Startup Coaches, and I also own the AI Marketing Coach as well. Ben Ard (16:43) I love that. That's amazing. Well, Carmella, if anyone wants to reach out and connect with you, what are the best ways for them to kind of stay in touch with you? This has been so insightful. And again, I believe there's a lot of value in coaching and mentorship and all that kind of fun stuff. How can they find you? Carmela Fortin (16:59) my gosh, thanks for the question. This time goes so fast and I could have talked about systemization for a really long time. So you can find me at seattlestartupcoaches.com. That's the easiest place to find me. And then also I will be a speaker and host at Seattle Tech Week. So if you're looking to get into a really informative session, I'll be on Pier 70 And if you're not sure where you want to land in the world of AI, Seattle Tech Week, if you're local, is a really great way to find a session that's going to be helpful. There's a lot of resources online, but I'd love to connect with anyone who has questions as well. Ben Ard (17:32) love it. Perfect. Well, we will link to all of those links and resources in the show notes below. So for any listeners, scroll down and find those there. Carmella, again, thank you so much for the time and the insights today. This was wonderful. Carmela Fortin (17:45) Absolutely. Thanks so much, Ben.