When top marketers begin to say the same thing and they seem to be in alignment as far as what's working in 2025 for online marketing, you lean in and you listen. That's exactly what we're going to cover today in this week's episode. Stay tuned. Welcome to Amplify Your Authority Podcast, your go-to resource for AI-powered marketing strategies that help solo business owners grow and thrive. If you're a coach, consultant, or service provider, this show will help you confidently promote your brand, attract high-quality leads, and build a business that aligns with your life and values. I'm Marissa Shadrick, a marketing strategist, certified copywriter, and AI whisper. Each week I share actionable strategies, expert insights, and AI-driven shortcuts to help you simplify your marketing and amplify your authority. Don't forget to follow the show and leave a five-star review. And now let's listen to this week's episode. Hello, hello, and I'm so glad you're here for this episode. I recently went to San Diego and attended social media marketing world where there's always like incredible speakers there that talk about branding and marketing and video content and social media. They go on and on. But the big topic today has been AI. So what I did was I took Vurious Notes. And then when I came home, I decided to take those handwritten notes. I took a snapshot with my Chat GPT, the phone app, and then I had it summarize and be able to give me a summary of the things that these marketers agreed upon and where they differed. And I did that to give you kind of a snapshot of what's happening today in 2025. So you as a personal brand can begin to work on the things that will give you the most bang for your book and your time. So without further ado, let me go through some of this and I'm going to pull my notes because these are perspectives of different marketers. I was only able to attend 14 of the sessions with 14 speakers. It was a two-day, two and a half day event, and I took about 35 pages of notes. By the way, if you're one of those people that takes notes at conferences and you take typewritten notes, you can upload those into Chat GPT and have it create not only summary, like clean summary sheets for you with subtitles and in sequential order to make sense of your notes, but you can also ask it to give you one action step based on the expert. So you can immediately implement something that's relevant for your business. And of course, you give ChatGPT a little bit about your business, who your audience is, so it can give you some great advice. Those are some tips. Now I happen to do handwritten notes, and so I had to take a snapshot, but same thing. So either way, you can use ChatGPT for that because most of the time those notes get buried and nobody benefits from it. Not the person that listened, because after a whole three days of conference, you forget what you learn on day one, right? So let me pull my notes because I want to give you some value. And the way I set this up so that we're not here like forever for three days. I want to keep this very succinct, is that I'm going to do it more like a QA format, and I'm going to share where they agreed, and then I'm going to share where they differed. Now, it differ doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means that they do it differently. And you have to assess for yourself what works for your business, what the best strategy is for your business. But we're incorporating all the tips of video, AI, everything that you need for a personal brand. So let's start with the first point. Many marketers still agree that content is king, but so is consistency and clarity. It has to be content that your readers are looking for or interested in, are clamoring to get their hands on so that it's effective. So your podcast, your newsletter, your videos, even AI-assisted content, as long as it comes from you and you're writing this and you're having AI help you clean it up, as long as it delivers consistent value, you're good to go. It's not just about volume, it's about value. And they all agreed with that. AI can help you do that much smarter, much easier, and faster. And many of the experts, including Michael Stelsner, share this. Dan Sanchez, Judy Fox, Jerry Potter, they all agreed with this. Now, the interesting thing about this when I listened to Michael Stelsner's keynote was that not everyone is on board with AI yet. And he gave kind of a breakdown. I'm going to give you that breakdown. He said those marketers, those businesses that have never used AI, they're in the 12% bracket. Those that have used it for less than six months, 17%. Those that have used it between six to twelve months, twenty-seven percent. Those that that have used it between 13 and 18 months, 19%. Those that have used it between 19 and 24 months is 12%. And more than 24 months or more than two years is only 13%. So what does this tell us? If you're not on board yet with AI, you're not too late. In fact, Michael Stelsner even said that you might be early. So you're not too late. And it's interesting because as I look at this, I've been using AI for I'm probably within the two, two and a half year range. So I'm right in there within the 12, 13%. And so this is very telling. So if you're thinking, oh my gosh, I hear it all the time, I see it all the time, especially now on LinkedIn. If you scroll through that video feed, that's all you see. Everyone is talking about AI because everybody's affected by it. All our tools are using AI now. We can't get away from it because it is here, it is here to stay, and there's more to come. Wait till the AI agents start coming in. We've got uh tools that do workflows now, and there's gonna be tools in the future here very soon that's going to be able to help make decisions for you. So it continues to evolve. We haven't even started yet. So this information I hope is going to be very helpful for you today. So Michael Stelsner also shared that, and I'll quote this, because I found it very interesting. He shared a graph and he said, an AI-enhanced employee, that means non-human, an AI-enhanced employee performs better than a team of employees without AI. I'll say that again. That's a brain twister, right? An AI-enhanced employee performs better than a team of employees without AI. That's quite telling. Quite telling. And so we want to realize that the future is going to embrace AI, whether we're ready or not. The best thing to do is align yourself and become ready and begin to learn and just take it one step at a time. I have a private membership where I bring people kind of up to speed with AI and we talk about list building and we help them with their branding, with their audience persona, with strategy implementing, with custom GPTs, all of this because I've had to. Frankly, to be totally transparent, I saw the writing on the wall. And as a copywriter, I knew I had to pivot and begin to figure out how I integrated AI with my coaching to be able to be aligned with the trend and with the changes that are going on. And so I think it's been very helpful to do that because now my clients can execute much faster as I teach them how to use AI and marketing through that filter of copy and be able to use custom GBTs to get work done faster. So the other point that came up is should you start a podcast? Now, this is an interesting question because podcast is one of those. Although I love the podcast after I create it, before I create it, not so much because it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work, right? But the consensus was yes. And make it the engine that fuels everything else. That's what Jerry Potter said. Make it the engine that fuels everything else. Why? Because these days podcasts are not just audio, they're video. And so you have long form content that you can then take and repurpose because it takes so long to create a podcast, because you're doing keyword searches, you're trying to figure out the topic that's going to resonate with your audience, you're creating all of the notes when you're recording, then you do all the show notes, then you create the video and you create the audio and you put it on your website, and it's just on and on and on, right? So there's a lot of work, but they're saying that it is a great idea to use a podcast as your long form content because then you can turn that long form podcast into a newsletter, short video clips, carousels, emails, blog posts. There's so many ways that you can do that. So they said it's a great idea to do that. And so that kind of fueled my fire because I was like, oh, do I really need to do this? But they said yes, do it. And by the way, if you're listening to my podcast or watching on YouTube, would you please go to Apple Podcasts and rate and review it? I would really appreciate it. That would help a lot. And some of the tools of choice, a lot of people mentioned Descript. I don't use Descript because I use Riverside. There's those people that love Riverside, those people love Descript. I'm happy with Riverside, and so I continue to use it. But a lot of people recommended Descript. So if you haven't started a podcast yet and you're thinking about it, you might want to take a look at that. And they said that once you do this, you create this ongoing feed of content. It makes it a lot easier. And then you can also create your short little posts for social media as well from that. Okay, the third point is video still worth the effort. Is video still worth the effort? Well, there's a couple of speakers that really, really uh said absolutely, and most of them said yes, this is what's going on, and especially on LinkedIn, video seems to be something that LinkedIn is favoring. We never know what's going to happen tomorrow, but right now, yes. And video in short form. So, for example, on LinkedIn, it would be a short video, kind of like a reel that you would see on Instagram, not so much like TikTok, but something short that's valuable, about a minute and a half to two minutes, that gives value to your audience. And they said, even though video is still worth it, the style is changed in how we produce videos. They said and recommended to skip over all the polished videos to stop. Just be authentic, be real, even be slightly imperfect is better because people are starving for authenticity. They want something that looks real, not something like, oh yeah, how long did that take you? Like three hours, or you pass it on to your team to clean it up and put all the emojis and all the other stuff to it. They want something that's real. And so this was a relief to me because those are the kind of videos I like to shoot. I just now got a mic for my phone. I mean, that's how bad it was. I was just literally took the phone and recorded something when I was at the conference. And I thought, man, the audio is really bad. You could hear the wind blowing. But I said, hey, it's the value. I'm bringing them some tips hot off the press, right? So, but they said, not that bad. I mean, don't create videos that are that bad. But the point was you don't have to try to figure out how to grab another tool, how to add all this flowery stuff to it. They said, just skip over being overly polished and just make it real. Even if you make a mistake, that's human. And so they said, just keep it real, keep it simple. Simplicity and slightly imperfect is good, is not bad. And then they they also said to create how-to videos that answer a specific question that people are already looking for. The next point is what's one underrated strategy? And again, my friend Michelle J. Raymond, she loves to really support and help people. This is what I'm so aligned with her. She said, Amplify others, and I love it because she used the word amplify, because my podcast is amplify your authority. She said, Amplify others, lift others up. Don't be the spotlight, put the spotlight in other people. And she recommended once a week on LinkedIn to take 10 minutes to find three relevant posts and comment on these. Comment, share, create a follow-up post that adds value to that person that is posted. She is very much a LinkedIn expert and she talks on company pages as well. And she said everything is really relationship-based marketing. You know, that's what we need to do and focus on. And when you do that, as I've always said before, take random out of random acts of kindness, it goes a long way. The next point is where should your content live? Should it live on social media? Where? So Michael Stelsner and Dan Sanchez, who are part of Social Media Examiner and Michael Stelsner was the host of Social Media Marketing World, they said that your content will best serve you if it lives in the form of email newsletters, not just putting things on your website and trying to get organic traffic to your website. Google's generative search is changing. It is changing. What we've known as SEO, that is changing, that's evolving, and I'll talk more about this as well. But they said focus on owned media, which is your list, your email list, your newsletter, your voice. So email marketing came up as one of the very valued means of connecting, of engaging, of meeting your audience where they are. If you have a well-built-out form and you know if they're just kicking the tires or if they're thinking about maybe working with you, then your emails are going to reflect where they are in the customer journey. And it's one of the best ways to communicate with your audience, those people that raise their hand and have become part of your email community. And so we want to make sure that we send what they need when they need it. So in the customer journey, they may be unaware, they may be aware, they may be engaged, they may be ready to buy, but we don't know that unless we ask questions. And we can ask questions in forms, we can ask questions if we have private communities, we can ask questions. We need to find out where they are and know so much more about them than what we have known about them. We need to find creative ways to be able to send them exactly what they need to hear and not too much and not be salesy or pushy or spammy, because nobody likes that, right? If somebody is kicking the tires and they're looking at something and they download some information just because they want to learn and they want to understand, and all of a sudden they get blasted with all these opportunities to buy, and you know, this is a last-minute thing, last call, you're gonna have to pay twice if you don't get it now. I mean, nobody likes that, right? And so they said that your best content lives in the form of email newsletters, not just what you put on the website. It's really nurturing that email list, and email came up a number of times. So, moral of the story, grow your email list. The next point is what's a smarter way to use AI? Now, there's lots of ways to use AI, but one of the things that came up, and I think we're preparing for what's to come, is to systematize, create systems with AI. Now, this is something that some people are using make to do this, they're using Zapier or Zapier, whatever you want to call it. I call it Zapier. Um, you can do that, but those tools are still, you're setting the parameters, you're telling it what you want it to do after very strategically thinking through, and you probably have some custom GPTs that it goes through the GPT process. There's something already set and created, they go through so that by the time it goes through the system and you receive whatever the output is via email or some other form, everything has already gone through its checks. It's already started, it's already checked keywords, it's already gone through AI, it's already been delivered to you to review. But what's coming with these agents that are coming is that it's going to start making decisions. It's going to predict the next action. And so it's taking it one step further than just you creating a workflow. So the systemization of what we have right now is important, and we need to kind of realize or at least get our feet wet a little bit on what's happening so that we can understand what's to come. So she suggested uh Nicole Leefer, she suggested to build custom GPTs for tasks that you repeatedly do, like for email writing or content strategy or research. Uh, she suggested to create those prompts either in a chat GPT or a prompt library. Some people like a library, some people don't. If you begin to give a lot of input and knowledge to the AI tool, you may not even need to create a library anymore because you'll have these PDF files. And a lot of the even in projects in Chat GPT, you can give it files. And even though the project is, for example, um producing a podcast or creating a LinkedIn post, and that's all that project is for, it has the knowledge it needs to be able to use it for each and every post that you do. So I know it's really hard to understand when I'm just talking about this, but I just want you to know that the systemization, using AI to systematize, is important now for what's to come. And then also to let AI do some of the heavy lifting. Now, today, we can have AI do things that we don't know how to do. Isn't that crazy? It can create code. I have it create code so that I can create certain charts on Notion or create a certain chart maybe on Google Drive or Google Sheets. It will code it and give me all of that. So all I have to do is copy and paste or upload it. So I don't even know how to do the code, but it can do it for me. And so it's getting to the point where AI can do things that we don't even know how to do, so that you can do the things that you do best, right? The next point is how do you grow your YouTube channel? Okay. We had some experts share about YouTube, and one expert, I think it was Nick Nim Niman, N-I-M-M-I-N, he shared not to start with the video, but to start with the title. Very much a copy thing, because the reason I'm behind it is if the title doesn't stop the scroll, if the title doesn't catch them, right, they're not gonna even click or even look at the video. So he was really emphasizing the importance of having a good title. And the title on your thumbnail doesn't necessarily have to be the title of your video, they could be different. In fact, they should be different. And so you're leveraging all that real estate. But he said, don't start necessarily with the video, do everything and then figure out the title, start with the title. And if you're gonna work backwards even further, look for keywords. And he said test titles and thumbnails first before filming. He said use polls or use Google Trends to pick the most clickable angle. And so you want to do a little bit, you don't even have to nerd out on this. If you just do a little bit, if you even just go on Google Trends and you can have Chat GPT even recommend some keywords and then just put them through the test and use some of these keyword tools, or just at the very least, use Google Trends and see what it shows so that you could be more strategic in the titles that you choose. And then build the video around what people actually want. So now we're gonna transition into where some of these experts differ. Now it's not like they disagree, they don't disagree, but they just have a different perspective. I mean, you have a different perspective, I have a different perspective, but I thought it'd be interesting to see where they differ. And the one is SEO. Some people live and breathe by SEO, some people are saying SEO is dying. Uh experts like Michael Stelsner and Dan Sanchez and others said no, SEO is not really staying the same. It's not that it's changing or not relevant anymore or dying, it is evolving. It is evolving. SEO is evolving. SEO is shifting because of AI, SEO is shifting from search to suggestion and engines. Not a search, but suggestion. I mean, it's crazy, right? And I looked this up, and here's what uh I found as far as this SEO shift, and I'll read it to you. Google is indeed evolving from traditional search engine into what can be described as a suggestion engine, leveraging advancements in artificial intelligence, AI, machine learning, and natural language processing. This transformation is reshaping how users interact with Google's platform and how information is delivered. Where is the opportunity? Is this a bad thing? There's an opportunity here. Create content that's helpful and searchable. If you create content that's helpful, and again, we're going back to content is king, but there needs to be value. You need to give people what they're looking for, right? You're going to be fine if you do that. So this is one of the things that is happening right now. You might hear more about it in the future. SEO isn't dying, it is evolving, it is changing, but there's still plenty of opportunity for visibility. So the next point where things differ is what's the best way to stand out as a brand? So Rory Vaden he spoke on the focus of one niche to be seen and known. And he challenged everyone to find what is the one word that you help people with? Put the problem, pain, problem, struggle, all of that into one word. What is it? And then what's the one-word answer that represents your brand that brings a solution? So he gave some examples. I had to think about this, and I had to think of complexity. I help people with the problem around complexity. Complexity about copywriting, complexity about marketing, complexity about AI. And the value I bring through my brand is simplicity. So you want to think of one word. It's pretty challenging. It's kind of like Brene Brown, you know her for shame, right? And so that is the word. So he says, find the word, and then what is it that your brand brings as a solution? So I found mine, I was thinking about it a little bit on the plane, and I thought, well, it's complexity. I want to simplify everything. And the solution is simplicity. And then Pat Flynn, he um he did a great presentation on branding. And again, we're talking about the best way to stand out as a brand. Pat emphasized magical moments that create connection at every stage. I love that. Magical moments. Can you create magical moments? It's almost like back in the day when we used to say overdeliver, right? What can you do to create a magical moment that your brand provides some kind of solution? Your brand provides some kind of answer, but how can you make it magical? How can you just give it that little extra? And Roy, again, emphasizing the domination of one space, being clear about what you want to be known for. What is the one word that you tackle with your business? The next point is should you focus on short form or long form video? Well, I think this one we kind of covered earlier, but I'll go ahead and cover it again. We need to focus on both, not one or the other. We need to create long form content that's really thought out really well as far as what the topic is, keywords, all of that. Create it, and then you begin to cut it up into smaller pieces of content or repurpose it into newsletters, blog posts, and so forth, which we covered earlier. Short form might convert fast if you just focus on short, but the long form builds depth and trust. And I think it also builds your credibility too. So think of that as far as creating the podcast or some long form content that you can cut up into smaller pieces of content. The nice thing about a podcast with audio and video, you can create video clips, you can also create all the other pieces of content like we mentioned earlier. The last question where experts differed a little bit in their point of view was this do you need fancy tech to succeed? And the answer was no. You don't need teleprompters you don't need fancy cameras, you don't need a whole bunch of AI tools, you don't need all of these gadgets and gizmos. You can come very easily with just your phone and create great content. It's really about what's in the content more than the things that you add to it. So they agreed that the iPhone with a good mic would be just fine and natural light. You don't even need a ring light or a special light if you don't have it. You can just use natural light, you can use your iPhone, and you might want to just get a little mic that'll cost you about 10, 20 bucks. It's not a big investment whatsoever. You can really simplify your tech stack and not overcomplicate things with tons of tutorials and begin to just create excellent content. If you want to grow your brand, if you want to increase visibility, those are some tips. And you can kind of hear the common thread. It really is about valuable content, figuring out what is it that your audience wants to hear, learn about, discover, understand, and then start there. And once you create that large piece of content, break it up into smaller pieces. And if you're one of those that likes to blast it on all the social channels, go right ahead. If you're one of those that likes to stick to one and really engage and deep dive, that's okay too. Test, figure out what works for you, right? Because it's your business. So you make the decisions. So hopefully this was helpful for you. I found it really interesting, some of the things that they were saying. I kind of felt in my gut this was a direction, but it's always nice to hear confirmation from leading experts. Because sometimes, you know, even myself, you know, you kind of doubt and you go through imposter syndrome and you think, is this all in my head or am I going the right direction? It's kind of nice to hear that they're all on the same page. And I love how people are really leaning into relationship marketing. It really makes my heart feel good. So I hope you got a lot of value out of this podcast. And if you enjoyed it, I would love it if you would rate and review the podcast on Apple. I would appreciate it so much. I'm trying to get a few more ratings and reviews to boost the podcast. And I've got some expert speakers that are going to be coming up here this spring and summer. So I hope you'll be looking forward to it as I am. And until next time, take care.