Matt: Welcome to Publish & Prosper.

Lauren: Yeah. Welcome back.

Matt: I was going to say the episode number, and then I stopped myself. Should I redo it?

Lauren: It's up to you.

Matt: No, I'm not going to do it. Yeah. That'll just have to be okay.

Lauren: Alright.

Matt: Welcome. How about that?

Lauren: Period.

Matt: Welcome Foolish Mortals.

Lauren: Ooh!

Matt: How about that?

Lauren: Always a fan of that.

[0:44] – Episode Topic Intro 

Matt: Yeah. Today we're going to be talking about an element of marketing. Discoverability. Right? And how that applies to certain channels within your marketing mix. But more importantly, we're going to be talking about how things may or may not have changed in the last couple of years. With the onset of generative AI, and the way people search the internet now and how algorithms are relying a lot more on AI to, to basically serve up content. And what that means for you when it comes to marketing your book or your brand. So.

Lauren: Yeah, I think this is really important right up at the top to frame it in, in the context that we are not necessarily... This is not limited to talking about generative AI.

Matt: No.

Lauren: We're not talking about a scenario where a potential reader is going on ChatGPT and typing in I'm looking for a book.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: That's not what we're talking about. Because everything that we’re doing –

Matt: It's included, but it’s not –

Lauren: It is included.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But it's not – We're not limited to that.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: Everything that we are doing as content marketers – which you are. If you are an author or an entrepreneur or a small business owner or content entrepreneur or whatever, you are a content marketer. That's part of your – Yeah. – role in what you're doing with your brand. We are all impacted by AI in different ways in our marketing efforts, and that includes what Reels are being delivered to Instagram FYPs, and what TikToks are being shown to people, and even what books show up in search when librarians are searching catalogs for recommendations for new titles to add. Which, we've done that episode. So these are all things – Even things that feel like I'm doing this, this is a human to human interaction kind of thing. Like, there's still the influence of the algorithm, the AI, the search engine results, whatever it is. So this is important. No matter what angle you're coming at it at or from.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Discoverability is... previously, you know, the term discoverability in the publishing world was mostly synonymous with metadata, and conversations around your metadata. But primarily because of how that metadata would be ingested by a distributor. Right? Or your ISBN provider or, you know, some of those other, very much specific to the publishing world, types of engines for discoverability. Whereas now discoverability is a lot more synonymous with, you know, the way that you as an author will be out there talking about yourself and your content. And how that is sort of received by LLMs like, you know, ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity, Google and Google Gemini, which is still the strongest search platform, by the way. But also, you know, the social media channels and Reddit and some of the other places where, you know, again, you're hoping that you show up and you're hoping that you show up a certain way. Some of that has changed. Some of it has not.

Lauren: Yeah. And we will talk about it. And we will talk about what we see people doing, what you could be doing to be proactive with this, but also what we see people doing or not doing that is a big mistake.

Matt: Yes. Yeah.

Lauren: So.

[4:14] – Establishing Context

Matt: So yeah, we're not going to focus on any one specific, you know, AI tool or tool in general or even channel or platform. This really isn't a conversation about oh, you should be using TikTok instead of Reddit or like, this isn't specific conversation around marketing channels, per se. This is really more about the overall concept of discoverability and how that has shifted or changed in the, in the last couple of years. You know, things like word of mouth, stuff like that, that's still king. You still want to, to strive for having a large chunk of your book sales coming from referrals and word of mouth. The trust signals that come from those types of content are infinitely, larger than the, you know, some janky review on, on Amazon or something like that.

Lauren: Of course, but it is also – That's still the element that I'm so... I don't want to say worried that people are overlooking, it's not that deep. But like, that is something that still, if you're word of mouth referral is not coming in person, from friend to friend. If, if it's something that there is a TikTok creator that I follow that I trust their book recommendations. They've earned my trust, that is human credibility –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – authority building. It is still –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – being influenced by an algorithm, whether or not I see their content in the first place.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: So there's still that touch of discoverability.

Matt: Well, some of that you can't control.

Lauren: Right. But it, it’s still –

Matt: You can't always control whether that TikTok creator's channel or post is going to show up in your feed, necessarily.

Lauren: No, of course.

Matt: Or somebody’s feed that you want it to.

Lauren: Of course not.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But it is still something that, you know, if – even if 100% of your new audiences are coming from word of mouth referrals and recommendations, there is still a touch of influence over that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: It could be negligible, could be large. But, you know, that is part and parcel of part of what we're talking about.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Which is the influence of these particular algorithms, because of AI influence. Anyways. Again, I just want to reiterate when we talk about discoverability, when we talk about search... If you were already doing really well with Google and some of your other organic stuff, theoretically – and chances are, if you're watching your data – you're probably still doing well. Google is still king. Doesn't matter what anybody says. You can go find any of the stats that you want out there. The amount of searches that happen across Google's channels is still insane. In the, you know, billions and billions per week. These are numbers that obviously OpenAI and Anthropic strive for, but they're nowhere near those yet. It doesn't mean that they won't get there. So if you've already been doing best practices for Google and a bunch of other stuff, you're probably doing okay. But you still need to think about some of this other stuff. As ChatGPT and Claude and Perplexity – and probably never, but maybe one day, Meta AI. If Zuckerberg can ever get his shit together, which I doubt he can because he's the worst on the planet. But as these platforms get more popular, you should be aware of these things, and trying to, trying to do these things. So.

Lauren: I think they're also – and this is a point that we've made in other episodes that we've done everything that we're going to talk about here, none of it's going to hurt your brand to do it. So even if you're not –

Matt: Yeah, that's correct.

Lauren: – actively in a position where you need to reposition your marketing strategy.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: None of this is going to hurt you.

Matt: It can only help.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: These are very safe things to put in place.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: And to attempt. Yeah.

Lauren: Yes. And also –

Matt: It's a great point.

Lauren: If you've been doing this for long enough that you have noticed a change in the market, in market discoverability. If you're, if you're seeing a decrease in engagements, or you're seeing that your content's getting delivered to different people, your sales are coming from somewhere – whatever. If you've been doing this for long enough that you've noticed a change. It's always a good idea to reassess and refresh your strategies. If you've been doing them for a while.

Matt: Yeah, if your monthly fluctuations in your metrics have become more than just that, like subtle –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – fluctuations, right? If they've become permanent, especially in the the downward direction, you absolutely should be reviewing these things. So, has market discoverability changed? Yes and no. What hasn't changed is the way that you approach your audience or audiences, plural. You still have to have a very clear understanding of who your audience is and what kind of content they want to see. Obviously your product, your book still needs to be good. It needs to speak to that audience. It needs to be relevant to that audience. And ultimately, your content has to be generating... engagement, yes. But more importantly, authority and trust. Right?

Lauren: Yeah.

[9:25] – Shifting from Keywords to Trust Signals

Matt: So back in the day, engagement alone was enough to really propel you to the top. Or as close to the top as possible, based on volume. But now authority and trust signals are, are a little more important. But a lot of other stuff has changed.

Lauren: It has. The biggest thing that has changed is, is where you need to put weight and significance on different elements. That aren't new. None of this stuff is new to the practice of marketing. But what matters more than other things has changed. For example, for a long time, for a lot of people that are familiar with this type of discoverability and marketing, SEO and keyword marketing was like a huge, significant driving force.

Matt: Keywords were king.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Matt: Of everything.

Lauren: And, you know, we're starting to see, these days, that – not that they don't matter anymore –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – but that more value and more weight is put on, like, authority signals and trust signals and proving the value of content.

Matt: Well, yes. And how all of those things create a more complete picture of, of the value that your content brings. So yeah, like what you said is absolutely correct. I got my start in marketing in SEO, back in the day. Like, keywords were king. You had link farms and keywords and that's, that's how you made your bread and butter. And now it's not singular keywords or groups of keywords that are driving the most discoverability, especially for authors. Especially when you think about LLMs, you know. And again, that's the direction Google's heading in as well, is with Gemini as an LLM and less like a traditional search engine. So. But it's the, the broader picture that the LLM is able to string together between keywords and testimonials that might be out there, and reviews and subreddits about your book or your brand and, you know, if you have a Wikipedia page, and – all of these elements together create a picture. And that picture says yes, this person, what they write about, if you’re nonfiction, is accurate, educational, packed with value, people generally seem to like it. I'm going to offer this content up. That's how the, the brain works. And then, you know, if you're fiction, it still takes that whole complete picture of not just the keywords. It, you know, it looks for those trust signals. Are there other people talking about this author online somewhere? In Reddit, you know, on TikTok, and all these other places? And it looks like, or it looks at, you know, sentiment. Does it look like these conversations are positive about this author? If the answer is yes, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna serve this up. So it's, it's taking a more complete picture and stringing all those things together, versus back in the day where it was just like, did you have the right keyword stuffed in there? If so, Google indexes that, sees it, pulls you up towards the top of the search engine results. And so it was all about keywords. They would base, you know, your website, or your blog oftentimes as well, on, on an authority score that was based on how many links you had out there in the world pointing back to your content. So that was their way of determining authority. Cause the way they thought was, if I have a website here and it's got 6,000 links out there that are pointing back to it, it must be a reputable website. So we're going to boost their authority score. It’s not quite, you know, it's not quite that easy these days.

Lauren: Well and that is still, that is still one of the, the consideration factors that we've talked about in other episodes. Is that, like the referential, like the more that other sources or known trusted sources –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – it's just lower down on –

Matt: Well.

Lauren: – the scale of, of weight.

Matt: But it's also more in depth. So again –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – like I said, back in the day, it was purely, mostly, about the number of reputable links. Whereas now an LLM, if you're in, you know, Claude and you're asking Claude, you know, what are some of the, the, the latest authors in the cozy sports romance genre that I should be reading or following? Or maybe you're doing a very specific search on a very specific author. It doesn't care about the total number of links. What it's gonna do is, is look at the content where those links live. What does that content say about this author? So again, it's, it's really about the more complete picture.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I think it's also – I'm going to say something that's both off book and potentially out of pocket.

Matt: No, not you.

Lauren: This just kind of occurred to me, as you were saying that. So please –

Matt: What does off book mean?

Lauren: I actually used it incorrectly in here.

Matt: Oh.

Lauren: Because it what it actually means is –

Matt: I love that you used it incorrectly, and I caught it.

Lauren: I know.

Matt: What did you mean for it to mean?

Lauren: That I'm, that I'm going off of –

Matt: Off script?

Lauren: – I’m deviating from the outline. Yeah.

Matt: Off script?

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: Which is also what it means, the actual –

Matt: I like out of pocket, everybody knows what that means.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: And you're generally out of pocket.

Lauren: Yeah. Well that's true.

Matt: Yup. Okay.

Lauren: But in, in the real world where people use the phrase off book, it means - it means off script.

Matt: Gotcha.

Lauren: But it means like I, you know, I need to be off book by the end of this week, because we're doing dress rehearsals next week kind of thing.

Matt: Weird. Okay.

Lauren: I was not a theater kid. I don't know why I know these things.

Matt: Yeah? So what were you going to say that's out of pocket?

Lauren: Anyway. I think that something that might appeal to people who are a little bit resistant, within the robot revolution here. And are like, why do I care about targeting or marketing to speak to robots and to appeal to robots? I think that what you're actually doing, what Matt just described here, is actually prioritizing proof of humanity. Because –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – the keyword –

Matt: In a weird, ironic –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – sort of way, right?

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: You know, the keyword stuffing of like, I am going to generate the most perfectly keyword optimized metadata possible. Any half decent generative AI program could do that for you. So that no longer really helps whether it's intentional or not. Like –

Matt: Yeah, but –

Lauren: – that is something that any old program could do.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But not any old program can prove authority and value across multiple channels.

Matt: Well, but again, some of the irony there too, though, is that these days when you're designing specifically for keyword stuffing, right? Like, like you said, let's just say I go into Claude and I need a blurb about a book, and I want it to be stuffed full of all the keywords that match this book's topic and tropes and genres and all this other stuff. Later when somebody goes to search for my book and that same LLM, Claude, goes in and sees that that asset, it's going to realize that a human didn't write that.

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: It's going to know. And it's gonna say, like, this is not authentic. You know, there's not a trust signal here. And so you have to be careful with that. Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah. And I think – But I think that that's where, that's really the positioning that we're at right now, is that whether it's proving your humanity to other humans or proving your humanity to robots –

Matt: Correct.

Lauren: – one way or another, the more that you can prove your human content creation – 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – the better optimized you're going to be.

Matt: And that other humans like your content.

Lauren: And that other – yes.

Matt: That's the important part, yeah.

Lauren: Yes. Because it's – you're proving it to the humans and you're proving it to the robots.

Matt: Yeah. If the robot can't ascertain that there's a level of general sort of, you know, you know, desire for your content from other humans, then it's not going to offer your content up to the human –

Lauren: Right.

Matt: – that’s pulling it. It's just going to think you're irrelevant.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: But again, yeah, if you can prove that humanity and the fact that other humans enjoy your content, as evidenced by all of the, the things that they are finding across the web, all these things that are strung together to show trust and authority and, you know, humanity. Then you're good. So.

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: Yeah.

[17:31] – Other Notable Shifts

Matt: Some of the other things that that have changed. You know, one of the things we like to do as marketers and that we tell other people to do in marketing, is to create campaigns. If you're launching a new book or a new product, create some campaigns around it, put those campaigns into market, you go and you put some money behind them and you say, okay, I want to run this for 14 days. They're very, you know, specific in, in what they're marketing, and they're often time boxed or they have a timeline associated to them. And so they're not permanent, or what we would call evergreen. And I think what, what you're seeing right now is that, that that time box campaign based or flight based content is really not something that search engines and or LLMs respond to very well. It may work in marketplaces, and that's probably where I would, you know, isolate those to. So if you're running Amazon ads, fine. Keep running Amazon ads. But I wouldn't put campaigns into market across things like Google and other places. even things like, necessarily, paid social campaigns. Yeah, maybe experiment with one or two. But the more evergreen content that you have out there, the more content that you put out there that will stand the test of time and again prove that you are human, that you write for humans, that your content speaks and relates to humans, the better off you're going to be. So having, you know, content that's out there in a more consistent cadence and fashion, I think, is what the LLMs and the search engines are now responding to, much more favorably. And, you know, you're going to save a little bit of money that way, too.

Lauren: I think this is something that is... a lot of the stuff that we're talking about in this episode is across all different types of niches, industries, whatever. Like it's it's kind of, you know, marketing in general.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But this one in, in particular is something that I think impacts a lot of authors, because a lot of authors are used to the concept of I'm launching a new book, I need to do a pre-launch book campaign, or a launch – And we are not saying that those are no longer valuable, of course they are. The – Your pre-launch campaign, your launch week is still a significant and valuable time for you. But I think that a lot of authors fall into the trap of that is the bulk of my marketing effort, like –

Matt: Oh, just paying for a bunch of ads –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – and stuff like that. And then –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And then I'm gonna spend my whole like marketing campaign budget on the two weeks before and two weeks after my book launch. And then for the next six months, I'm not going to do any paid book promo or brand promo. And that is – that's no longer effective. not – I don't, I don't think that was very effective even ten years ago, but I think it's less effective now, still. And because also, you know, that, that dated, specifically kind of content, whether it's time stamped because you're, it's about a launch or an event or time stamped in the sense that, you know, you're, you're running a promo. I am still getting Instagram ads that have Black Friday sales copy in them.

Matt: You know, I did get one...

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: A couple of weeks ago, but I thought, wow, that is really... and it's not Instagram's fault.

Lauren: No.

Matt: Somebody forgot to, to put an end date on that thing. Also sucks for you, because you're paying for those impressions, but.

Lauren: You absolutely –

Matt: Whoever that is.

Lauren: – are. But the only the only person that I'm going to, or the only entity in that scenario that I am going to judge is the brand.

Matt: Right, yeah.

Lauren: Like, I'm automatically not going to have any interest in whatever you're promoting to me, if I'm getting six month outdated content from you... Like, ooh, I don't trust you, what are you doing over here? You don't even know how to do a basic Instagram campaign.

Matt: Which takes us to our next topic.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Which is, you know, something else that's changed as it relates to discoverability is that, again, years and years ago and even just, you know, barely a year, two years ago. I think what everybody was striving for on social media and some other channels was what we would blanket under engagement. So I need to get likes, or I need to get comments, or now I think what everybody’s saying is you got to have bookmarks. Like, people need to bookmark your posts or this, that and the other. All these signals that, that show, you know, engagement. But in the end, again, most of these discoverability engines, they're looking for trust signals. They're looking for signals that show, again, there are humans involved in what's happening here. Because so many bots live out there on social media channels that are capable of liking a post, bookmarking a post, and even leaving some arbitrary comment. Engagement signals like that have moved a little further down the priority list. And, and the discoverability engines, LLMs and search engines, they know how to ferret out trust signals. Sometimes that's a comment, a comment that's very much left by a human because of the content. But again, it's looking for things well beyond, you know, how many likes did this post get? Because any bot can hit the like button for you. So understanding that, you know, you're not necessarily creating content to just encourage somebody to hit the like button. You want to be creating content that encourages a much deeper connection and conversation. You want to make sure you're creating content that's adding value where that person comes away from that post, whether it's social media or they just read your email newsletter, and then they take to the internet to talk about this amazing article they just read out of your newsletter. Or they just put your book down and they want to go on to, to Reddit and their book club and talk about, you know, the book. So trust signals are much better than these vanity sort of engagement metrics and things.

Lauren: Yup. I think these are all things... as kind of the final point of what really has changed. We used to feel like we had more control over all of this stuff.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And I think, you know, I don't want to scare anybody with that. But the general feeling is that there's less control over specifically the distribution of, of your content. You can't control, like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy 10,000 followers that I know are bots that are going to like all my stuff. So that's going to boost my posts automatically, because it's going to get more engagement, because I spent a little bit of money on it. You can't – that control doesn't work anymore. Or I'm going to optimize my keywords 100% in and like go crazy on that –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – or whatever. The, the ability to control that manually is diminished. It's not gone entirely, but it is definitely less than it used to be.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But it is much more weighted on the influence that you can have over your ecosystem as a whole. And that – So if you are doing the best practices in terms of building a relationship with your audience, putting out content that actually matters and has value. Not content for the sake of content or content for the sake –

Matt: Consistently.

Lauren: – of likes, but right, consistently putting out valuable content that has those trust signals attached to it, or that has other references or authority points surrounding it, whatever. You can't do as much manual control over stuff, but you can have much more influence over how your, your brand as a whole is being perceived.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really good point.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I also like the fact that you started off by saying, you know, we'd like to think that we have control but we really don't. In some areas, but yeah.

[25:43] – What Authors Are Doing Wrong

Matt: So let's talk about some mistakes that authors are making right now.

Lauren: Absolutely. Authors, and also I think, to be fair, this is not targeted exclusively to authors. I think a lot of people are making these mistakes right now.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: Our audience is authors. but I –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – just, I don't want anyone to feel like I'm singling them out by saying.

Matt: We're singling you out.

Lauren: You.

Matt: Let's talk about some mistakes that authors are making.

Lauren: Specifically you. I think the first one... We're kind of in a place that we're still learning and understanding how, how this new system is working. We are still very much where, you know, there's kind of the running joke of the algorithm’s always changing, or there's constantly new tools being put out, new functions within tools being put out. We are very much learning as we're going with a lot of this new landscape here. I would not put any trust in short term hacks that are like this, this quick like five step thing is the best way for you to game the system. And, and it's going to make sure that your content is delivered all the time in top search results. We haven't had enough time to prove most of those. So instead of focusing on long term strategic shifts or long term positioning, where you're really putting effort into building your brand and doing all of the... proving trust and authenticity and value and all of that. People that are focusing on those untested short term hacks.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I just want to be clear. Don't confuse this with experimenting with AI. You know –

Lauren: Oh, of course.

Matt: – let's say Claude to help you create some content for a few social media posts because you want to test out you know, some of the very things we're talking about. You know, content that really speaks and resonates a little more, you know, in this one direction versus the other. So, you know, we're not taught when we say AI hacks, we're not talking about some of the very much accredited and proven ways that I think some of these AI tools can help you with some of your marketing efforts. And you know what a hack is when you see it.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: It gives you the ick when you first see it.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And then, you know, quite frankly and realistically, the after you step back from it for a minute, you kind of start thinking about it and you're like well... No. Like, trust your gut. If it gives you the ick upfront, like, just steer clear of it.

Lauren: If it gives you that feeling of, I'm putting in a cheat code, that's not a strategy shift –

Matt: Yeah, yeah.

Lauren: – or an experiment or, or doing AB testing or something like that. That is a hack.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And it is a hack.

Matt: For the most part.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Also don't over-focus on one platform. Don't get hung up or stuck on one platform. You don't want to go super wide either.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: We'll always say, and since the dawn of time, some of the best marketing advice is don't be everywhere at once, right? Like pick a few channels that you're comfortable with, or a few platforms and, you know, focus on those. Wherever you're comfortable, wherever you feel like you can show up authentically and consistently. That's where you should focus. But, you know, again, somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. Don't just focus on one channel, but also don't go and try to focus on every channel. Pick a few, get comfortable, try to stay locked in, you know, for a good 30, 60, 90 days. So you have quite a bit of time under your belt to look at the data, to look at the returns, and to really see which of those channels are actually working for you.

Lauren: And this, this sounds, like, generic. Like, of course, we and experts in marketing have talked about this for years. But in this specific context, you know, Matt has already said several times the point about how these search engines now are looking for trust signals from a variety of different places.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: So if all of your audience building, if all of your content, if everything that you've done for your brand is, is hosted on one or two –

Matt: Facebook.

Lauren: That – yeah.

Matt: It's the most common, like –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – we talk to so many authors where the only place they market, the only place they create content is basically Facebook. Like that is... not okay.

Lauren: And, and we're not saying don't do it at all. Because we do know plenty of authors, we've had people comment on our episodes before that, that have called us out for talking, talking down about Facebook, which is fair. That's valid. If you find success there, great. But it should not be your only point –

Matt: Right

Lauren: – of success, because that's not going to carry as much weight.

Matt: It's like when you're on, you know, your your maps app on your phone and you find a coffee shop and you're like, oh, I want to check out this coffee shop. And you click on it, it pulls up the thing and then you click on website and it takes you to a Facebook page. Right? Like.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Anyways.

Lauren: Which, I don't even have Facebook on my phone. So if it does that I'm already out of luck.

Matt: Yeah. I don't have Facebook, so.

Lauren: Hand in hand with the idea of not building your whole audience base or content channel on one platform is, of course, the idea we've shared once or twice about exclusively building on rented land.

Matt: Yes. Making sure that of those couple of channels that you're using, one of them should be an owned...

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Like email or something like that. Yes.

Lauren: Yeah. Something, whether it's email or a website or whatever it is, [there is something like] as you are deciding what, what limited but varied platforms, you are going to be using, one of them should be something that you own and control.

Matt: That's right. Another thing that we see often, when authors basically only do marketing around a launch. So in between launches, they're virtually doing zero marketing. You know, marketing is something that is reserved only for book launch time. And that's a huge no no. Like, I mean, that goes against everything we're kind of talking about right now. To, to build credibility, authority, trust, stability, you have to be marketing regularly. There has to be an evergreen presence. There has to be new content being created, whether that's a, you know, a three sentence post every other day or whatever that translates to for you. You have to have content, marketing content that is, that is going into market more regularly than just whenever you're launching a new book.

Lauren: It's the same thing as when we have said in the past that you should be marketing your brand and not your product. You're not going to reinvent the wheel for every new book that comes out. But in this particular context, in the context of this episode and discoverability specifically, if you're starting from zero with every new book that comes out, you're also starting from zero with proving content and credibility and value and authority to these search engines.

Matt: Pretty much, yeah.

Lauren: And why would you want to do that?

Matt: I don't know.

Lauren: You wouldn’t. 100%. You would not want to do that.

Matt: Yeah. Doesn’t sound like fun.

Lauren: So. Absolutely not. And then I think another one of the big mistakes that, that we see a lot are people that are really confused with their messaging. Whether it's because they don't know it.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Or because it's disconnected between their different channels, their different audiences, their different platforms. If you can't tell, and your audience can't tell, what your identity and what your messaging is across the internet, then the search tools that are responsible for delivering your content to new people also can't tell. They can't tell who to deliver it to. They can't tell who's going to find interest and value in it. They can't tell whether or not it's, it's authentic –

Matt: And worse, you know, they'll just make the determination on who should see that content if they do want to serve it up to somebody. And often times it will be the wrong audience.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Or in the wrong context, or something like that. So yeah, making sure that you're aligning your content, your assets for messaging across your channels, super important. But this is also, I think, an easy trap for people to fall into. You know what I mean? Like, I think in most people's minds it makes sense to to keep certain things separate. Like they, they can justify that, to a degree. And, you know, in some instances you can get away with a little bit of that. Like if you're trying to keep, like, let's say your Instagram just for friends and family, you know what I mean? Because it's a little more personal and it's not something you, you know, but everything else in your, your, your portfolio is geared towards you as the author and the content you create in your brand as an author, you know, you can probably make that work. But if you're disjointed across multiple channels, if you're, you know, at all ends of the spectrum with your, your content, your messaging from one channel to the next, like you said, that's just, it's working against you. It's not only not best practice, but it's actively working against your efforts. So you're doing more harm than good.

Lauren: I think it also goes hand-in-hand with the idea of being too broad, as opposed to having your tilt or your niche or whatever it is. Which –

Matt: I think it's worse than even being too broad. I think you said it right the first time.

Lauren: Yeah?

Matt: I think it's just confusing.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Like being broad is not great. But if you're, if you're broad but still in the context of romance, let's say, but you're just not niching down to, you know, sports romance.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: You're doing yourself a disservice there, but at least you're still broadly in the category of romance.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So your content will get served up. It might just get served up to somebody who likes cozy Amish versus sports. Right? And – god I can't believe I know all these things. That's not the end of the world, but it's not as bad as if... it's just confusing. And so it doesn't get served up at all.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: Not even in the broader context of who you're going after. So I think you, you said it right the first time. Confusing is just bad all around.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Broad is not great, but it's not as bad as confusing everybody. That's totally different.

Lauren: And I think that is something – it sounds vague. It sounds like something that's vague. But I think every single one of us has had the experience of looking at a post on some social media channel of choice and going... Why? Why is, why is am I, why am I getting this?

Matt: Every day.

Lauren: Why is this on my feed?

Matt: Every day.

Lauren: Every day. I get it every day. And it's almost always like something that it's like, oh, this was there's no clearly defined target audience here. Or they made one broad assumption about one thing that I know is in my like, demographic profile, and assumed that this content would apply to me because they didn't have more information. And by they, I mean the algorithm.

[37:15] – What Authors Are Doing Right

Matt: Which brings us to, you know, the next thing we'll talk about, the authors that we see, you know, kind of proactively doing things right. You know, the first thing would be making sure that you are clearly defining, you know, who you are, what your books are about, what your genre is, your niche, you know, your intended audiences. Clearly defining who you are and making sure that the signals that you're putting out there, they're, they're all in alignment. And so that when, you know, the LLMs, search engines, anybody is really looking for you or your type of content, everything is woven together harmoniously like we talked about before. There is no confusion there. These reviews over here match what people are saying about you on Reddit, and your books on Reddit, which matches you know, some of the posts that you may have put out, or somebody else put out on, on Instagram or TikTok. And so all of that kind of works in conjunction in your favor, in a positive light to where the LLM goes oh yeah, okay, I'm going to serve this up, because this, this seems right.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: You know? Making sure that you're, you're putting those signals out there in a way that's consistent and completely aligned with who you are and what your content is.

Lauren: And I think that's something that doesn't have to be necessarily like, you have to be so siloed that you can't ever step out of your lane.

Matt: Sure.

Lauren: But I think that the people that we're seeing finding the most success with this are the ones that are clearly establishing who they are and who their brand is across multiple channels. Which then on the occasions that they see, that they, you know, step into a different parallel or something or test the waters somewhere. Whether it's writing in a new genre or launching a product they haven't done before, or a new channel or something like that, you've built that credibility already. You have the leeway to kind of try something new, because you have clearly defined and established who you are already.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Another thing that we're seeing kind of with that is a focus on the kind of content that you're putting out. And specifically focusing on content that proves value, proves authority and credibility and relevance, and stuff like that. It's not the perpetual cycle of buy my book, buy my book, buy my book, buy my book. That's not valuable. And even the AI knows that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But if you're putting out content that, that teaches, that adds to the conversation in some way, that engages people, that isn't just content for the sake of content, or content for the sake of sales... That proactive approach –

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: – is really helpful for your brand.

Matt: And it doesn't mean you can't ask for the sale.

Lauren: Sure.

Matt: Like, again, we are all about selling books. But there's a way to do that, you know what I mean? Without just being one big sales pitch.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: So like you said, you know, seek to add value, tell a story, relate something personal that happened that day. Whatever you're social and, and just general sort of strategy is with how you create content out there around your brand and who you are as an author and the things that you do. You know, there are ways where you can also ask for the sale within that content. But it shouldn't be the crux of it necessarily, and it shouldn't be the only thing that you're putting out there all the time. Yeah.

Lauren: It's the shift of instead of the asking for the sale being the opening pitch, it's it's at the end of the line. It's the... let me, let me tell you first who I am and how I can help you, and then –

Matt: Or just relating a story.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Something that happened that day. And then, you know, you can always wrap that up by like, this reminds me of what happened to so-and-so in book two of my series of, you know, whatever. Like... completely straight, non –

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: – whatever, hockey romance. Non-straight. You know? Whatever.

Lauren: Go on, keep going.

Matt: I don't know what that stuff is. Anyways, one of the other things that we see people doing, which I think is great, is creating for multiple paths of discovery. This kind of speaks to, you know, the whole idea of like, don't focus in on one channel. When we say going wide, especially you and I, we don't mean just digitally going wide across different channels on the internet or different social media channels or, you know, even from email to social to, to blog to whatever. We're also talking about other things that aren't digital. Like in-person events or, you know, doing a reading at a library or, you know, things like that. Just designing for multiple ways that your content can get discovered and get talked about. I think that should be a goal. And in fact, I think that, you know, whenever you can tie those things back to something on the internet. Like, that's an in-person event. You made an impression on that person. They went back to the internet, Reddit, wherever it was, talked about you. It's a massive trust signal for an LLM or a search engine, when they see something like that.

Lauren: Even something as simple as you’re doing a session at your local library. You're not going to sell a single book, like it, that's not the point of the event. You're not there to sell books. You might not even be necessarily talking about your book. You are just going to be speaking as an event at your local library. Then your name and your brand is on the library's website, on their calendar of events, and then maybe on their social media after the fact that it happened. And the library is a trusted authority signal. And the generative search engines that are pulling the, all of the content out there about you, are seeing that and saying, oh, here's, here's a trust signal. And it has nothing to do with buying your book. Maybe several steps removed, somebody might buy your book, but it's, it's still effort that you're putting in that is adding to your marketing by way of increasing your discoverability.

Matt: And it's all part of that web of discoverability –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – that you're building –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – and interlinked experiences, digital or otherwise. Right?

Lauren: Which I think is... realistically that's, that's where we're seeing the authors that are being proactive and finding success with that, is understanding that this is an interconnected system. This isn't siloed, I'm doing marketing efforts and I'm doing book launch efforts and I'm doing event efforts and whatever. This is not separate tasks on a list. This is all part of one interconnected ecosystem. And when you're approaching it that way, when you're doing it that way, you're going to have more success than the people that are still doing it the old school way.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I think that last point that we're seeing a lot of authors do well is, we've kind of already said this, but just to really emphasize it, prioritizing credibility over virality. Maybe it doesn't really matter if you get a 100 Amazon reviews, if 95 of them are so generic and vague that they look like bots wrote them.

Matt: Or they were written by bots.

Lauren: And they probably were written by bots. If you can get really solid, a few really solid testimonials or reviews, but reviews from people that are proven people, like some... You've got a micro-influencer on TikTok that is absolutely raving about how much they loved your book. That is something that is proving credibility over virality. Or...

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Like, quantity over – or, quality over quantity. Quantity over quality, everybody.

Matt: That's the old way.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: The new way is quality over quantity.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And that's the important shift. And the people that are recognizing that and, and working on that as opposed to just trying to hit the numbers, I think those are the ones that are going to continue to see more success moving forward.

Matt: Yeah.

[45:49] – What You Can Start Doing Now

Matt: So how can you take a lot of what we talked about today and apply that to what you're... you're doing now, or starting tomorrow, or whenever you decide you want to tackle this? The first thing is you just want to take an audit of what you are doing. Sit down and take an honest look at, you know, what are the things that you have done in the last 30, 60, 90 days that would be considered book marketing? When you look at the content you're creating, whether it's in an email newsletter, or an Instagram post, or a blog article or, you know, an ad that you created for LinkedIn or Amazon, doesn't matter. Is it pretty clear across all of those channels who you are, what you're offering, or what your brand is? Or what's your genre, niche or topic of choice is? Making sure that you're delivering clear, consistent content across all of your channels combined. And does that content align between you, your books, your branding, your audiences? Like you said earlier, I think that's really important as you're looking at the content you're putting out there and ascertaining whether or not there are some changes that you need to be made.

Lauren: A lot of authors, content entrepreneurs, especially the people that are doing this on their own, or largely doing this on their own. Sometimes the, the last step of looking back on your performance metrics is the thing that falls off the to do list. Because it doesn't feel like a priority, because you're like, you know, I don't have time to sit here and gather all this data and analyze it right now. And it's not going anywhere, the data is still accessible, so I'll do this later and I'll look at it later.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And especially if you're somebody who does this somewhat regularly and you're like, okay, well, you know, other than like a little bit of fluctuation, the performance over time hasn't changed in my like, tried and true marketing systems. If you're in either one of those positions where you either haven't had the time or you haven't felt the need recently to actually evaluate the data that you have available to you, now is the good time for you to do that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Because you might not notice. You might just be thinking right now. Yeah, like, my tried and true techniques are still working really well for me. And maybe they are. And if they are great, good for you. But maybe they're not. And maybe you're actually wasting your time by repeating these things that you used to work and are steadily declining in their performance and success. And now is the time to go look at that and say ooh. Ooh yeah, actually, now looking at the big picture, this has kind of degraded pretty significantly.

Matt: Yeah. Also when you're auditing and taking a look at what you're doing, remember at least one of the channels that you're, you're working within should be an owned channel. Something that, you know, can't be controlled by algorithms, can't be controlled by an eccentric billionaire who wakes up one day and decides he's going to completely transform that platform into something else and you lose all your content and followers, or, or something like that. Now is as good a time as any to, to make sure that you are starting an email list if you haven't, everybody has to start somewhere. Getting yourself a website, if you don't have one already. There's so many tools and platforms out there now that make it so easy. Like, there really is no excuse.

Lauren: Ask yourself the question of, whatever your primary channel is, whatever your most popular channel is, if that shut down tomorrow...

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Would you have a way of speaking to your audience, and would they have a way of finding you somewhere else? And if the answer to either one of those questions is no, that's the next thing you gotta do. And that does, that sounds like, what does that have to do with marketing and discoverability? But it absolutely is essential. That's an essential part of this, because –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – all the rest of this is wasted effort, if one eccentric billionaire is the difference between your channel living on to see the, the next day and, and you being gone from the internet forever.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And your whole audience with it.

Matt: You really need to be build- sort of building, you know, a signal-rich presence. We talk about signals, trust signals, authority signals, thinking about when you're creating content, you know. That versus like, what's just going to drive one more click to my website, what's going to drive one more like, you know, on my post, or whatever that may be. Think about more of, of building signals, of building trust, of building authority, of building this, this almost sort of, presence where an LLM can't deny the fact that this is a great human creating content that people are interested in. Secondarily, again, you really want to create content that is designed specifically for these discovery systems, you know, so when we talk about building a signal rich presence, we talk about creating this content that is specifically for things like the LLMs and Google search and you know, if you're in Europe, the Bing is still popular. Again, creating content that humans would want to consume, that humans would find value in. That's the same kind of content that LLMs are now flagging as valuable, as trustworthy, as authentic. Right? And the same for Google search. So.

Lauren: And that's – I don't want you to hear what Matt saying right now and hear keyword stuffing or hear, like –

Matt: Nope.

Lauren: We’re not – we are not saying write content –

Matt: No.

Lauren: – that is targeted towards the robots. We're saying write content –

Matt: The opposite.

Lauren: – that is targeted towards humans, because that's what the robots are looking for.

Matt: And ultimately there will be some overlap.

Lauren: Sure.

Matt: Right? So, you know, in creating content for humans, right? Some of those keywords are going to appear anyways, because that's just part of the process. But.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: You know, the old way of just, you know, taking as many keywords as possible and then plugging in a few words around those keywords to make coherent sentences, that's just not the way anymore. So.

Lauren: No, it's not. But you are going to want to still have multiple discovery paths.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: So making sure that not all roads are leading to buy my book, buy my book, buy my book, but that you have an online presence, that you are creating this content or sharing content or building this ecosystem that has multiple different entry points and multiple different avenues that it could go to.

Matt: Yeah. And then lastly, Lauren touched on this earlier, you really should be prioritizing credibility over virality. You know, if you happen to get one that goes viral, great. But, you know, that's an outlier. It's nothing you can necessarily plan for or recreate on purpose. What you really should be prioritize is gaining credibility. And that's through those activities of things like testimonials, reviews, you know, really providing value, so that people want to go out there and talk about your content. Whether it's fiction and nonfiction, it doesn't matter. But really prioritizing gaining credibility and authority and trust over like, oh, I wonder if this is going to make me go viral.

Lauren: When I first read this, I’m squinting at the screen over here, I thought that said prioritizing credibility over rivalry. But I actually want to add that as a caveat of something that's important. Because I do think that a lot of people in certain industries, and I think that author communities can be one of them, they get so precious about their own content that they don't really want to interact with their peers. And that is actually something that is going to hurt you.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: In this new digital landscape. If you are trying to prove your credibility and your trust to the internet at large, whether it's robots or humans, having interactions with other authors, with other people, you're sharing trust. You're sharing credibility. You are borrowing their, like, platforms that they've built and their engagement that they've built with these search engines. So that that's helpful to you. So, you know, prioritize credibility –

Matt: That’s a great point.

Lauren: – over virality, and also credibility over rivalry.

Matt: Over rivalry.

Lauren: Unless it's a really heated rivalry.

Matt: Oh my gosh.

Lauren: And you know, not to end on a negative note, but also when it comes to what you should be doing, what you're being proactive with, don't forget the mistakes that you should not be making. And number one in those is if you're wasting your efforts on things that, that don't add value and have not been proven to add value, then you're not going to have the time to focus on building these things that will actually help you.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: Yeah.

[55:13] – Episode Wrap Up

Lauren: I just realized I've been like, progressively leaning into the microphone. Sorry to the listeners, and also sorry to future me.

Matt: I also realized I never started the clock, so I don't know how long we've been talking. So just in case we've gone too long, we're going to go ahead and sign off now.

Lauren: I think that's a safe bet.

Matt: Create content for humans please.

Lauren: Yeah. TLDR, create content for humans.

Matt: And it’ll work, it'll work with the robots.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: That's the, the beauty of it. Speaking of humans, hit our like button. Give us a review. Subscribe.

Lauren: You know what? Actually, speaking of humans, I see –

Matt: There’s a lot of sass coming –

Lauren: I know.

Matt: – from you right now.

Lauren: And, you know, I'm going to lean into it a little bit.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: Okay? Speaking of humans, the – I know that people are listening to this podcast. Because I see our engagement metrics and I see data and I see numbers. But it must be humans listening to this podcast. So tell us. I don't care if you hit the like button on this episode or not. Leave a review.

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: Leave a comment. Talk to us, let us know who's listening. I know people are listening. I have the proof they're listening. But who's listening? Where are you listening?

Matt: That's fair.

Lauren: What are you doing out there?

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Say hi, let us know.

Matt: Or let us know if we suck.

Lauren: I mean, you can open yourself up to that if you want to.

Matt: You don’t, you wouldn't want to know that?

Lauren: It depends on whether or not it's something I can control or something I care about.

Matt: Alright, well, do all those things or don't. Either way.

Lauren: Whatever feels right for you.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: You're not a robot. You can do whatever you want.

Matt: Take note, Lauren's wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt today.

Lauren: I am, but it's also an emo shirt. So.

Matt: Of course it is.

Lauren: Of course it is.

Matt: What does it say?

Lauren: It's got Taking Back Sunday lyrics on it that I actually don't know that I could say on YouTube without it getting censored.

Matt: Okay, we'll take a hard pass on that.

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: But Matt and I are both wearing Mickey Mouse shirts today.

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: So, shout out to that.

Matt: We'll see you next time.

Lauren: Can't wait. And until then, thanks for listening.

Matt: Later.