Do you know Google is your new business card and it’s your favourite child to educate?
Join us as we explore the concept of Brand SERP and why managing it effectively can shape the perception others have of you.
The Brand SERP Guy, Jason Barnard takes us on an enlightening journey, uncovering the secrets behind cultivating a powerful online presence and harnessing the potential of search engine results pages.
Through engaging and thought-provoking conversation, we uncover the importance of understanding how Google views your brand and the impact it can have on your reputation and visibility.
And we have a FUN challenge for you today! Are you ready?
We want you to Google yourself today and see what comes up! You will discover the digital footprint that Google has painted for you. Who knows what surprises await? You might find fascinating nuggets of information of yours, delightful achievements, or even some humorous anecdotes.
Happy Googling! 😉
Guest Resources:
Jason Barnard Website: https://jasonbarnard.com
Jason Barnard Youtube: / kalicube
Welcome to The Show Up Show With Joyan Chan, AKA the Confidence and Visibility Queen
[00:00:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): A quick hello, and we’re good to go. Welcome to your show, Joyan Chan.
[00:00:07] Joyan Chan: This is The Show Up Show. Helping coaches, service providers, leaders, and entrepreneurs to master showing up to build their brand, authority, and grow their business. Whether it’s showing up on social media, in front of an audience, on a light interview, or an extra stage, this podcast is going to help you overcome visibility fear to confidently brand yourself as the authority in your industry.
[00:00:36] Joyan Chan: I’m Joyan Chan, aka the confidence and visibility queen, and I am on the mission to share how I went from a nobody to the confident leader I am today, what I have learned and what I have done to build my brand and business from scratch and help you do the same, so that you can make an impact in the world with the meaningful work that you do.
[00:01:00] Joyan Chan: Whether you are new to the business world or feeling unsure about battling visibility, or you want to be seen and heard in a way that doesn’t feel icky but authentic to you, you will discover how to become visible in your own unique way and show up as the confident entrepreneur you have always dreamed about becoming. Now it’s time to get you show up and be confident and visible, so you can easily attract more clients and opportunities for yourself.
Introducing the Guest, Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy), for This Episode of The Show Up Show
[00:01:36] Joyan Chan: Joining us today is the CEO of Kalicube, a software company that leverages Google to create future proof brand focus digital strategies for businesses. He is titled as the one person Google says has as much insight on their knowledge algorithms as their own insiders.
[00:01:53] Joyan Chan: However, his journey began when he was the voice of a cartoon blue dog and was responsible for the organisation’s website. He grew their website for children to one of the 10,000 most visited sites in the world. When that happened, he realised that the power behind a brand search strategy is not just about where you show up, it’s about how you show up. Today he is known for empowering business leaders to understand and feed AI knowledge algorithms.
[00:02:23] Joyan Chan: He is also the author of The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business and host of Branded Search and Beyond Podcast. He helps his client control their brand narrative, boost their authority, and dominate their industry on Google, Microsoft Bing, Apple, and other big tech companies and platforms. So, guys, help me on welcoming our guest today, The Brand SERP Guy, Jason Barnard. Hi, Jason, welcome to the show.
[00:02:53] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thank you so much. That was a wonderful introduction, Joyan. Thank you so much.
Why Does Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Always Wear Red?
[00:02:57] Joyan Chan: Thank you. I want to start off with this because the reason why I’m wearing this colour is because of you. I want to match you. Because when I was doing my research, I came across this video that I think it was quite recent that you just posted this video on your YouTube, saying there why you always wear red. So, I didn’t want to watch the video because I want to ask you this question in person so that my listeners can hear. I know it must have something to do with branding, I suppose, I assume. So, tell us why do you wear red all the time.
[00:03:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right, yeah, I quite like this question because it’s such a delightful story. People think I like red, and I don’t particularly like red. Some people say, you look great in red, but I never wear red except for the professional role. So, it is all about branding or it became about branding. Because it actually started from a concert I was playing seven or eight years ago, and I played the concert wearing a red shirt.
[00:03:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it was the red shirt of Manu Chao, who is, if you don’t know, a famous singer from France, a Spanish French singer. But it actually belonged to a friend of mine. So, I said to the friend, what I will do is take the red shirt, take it off halfway through the concert and throw it to you, because then you will have had the same red shirt from your two heroes, Manu Chao and myself.
Jason Barnard Discovered That He Looked Interesting, Fun, and Exciting When Wearing a Red Shirt
[00:04:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I threw him the shirt in the middle of the show. It was all very funny, and we all had a good laugh. And then I watched a video of the show afterwards. And in the first half with the red shirt, I looked really interesting and fun and exciting. And in the second half with the blue shirt, I looked really boring and I disappeared into the background.
[00:04:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I realised that when you’re standing on stage, being bigger than life is super important. So, then when I started giving conference talks, I wore the red shirt. And then I realised if I wear the red shirt all the time, every time, people will end up recognising me as much for myself as for the red shirt. So, it’s pure branding there.
[00:05:08] Joyan Chan: Love it. Yeah, I knew it. It is about branding, but I love the story behind it and how you discovered that. It’s about standing out in the crowd, especially when you’re on stage. And of course, we are not going to go into colour psychology, but there’s a whole theory behind it, like what colour represents, what the meaning is, and all sorts of things.
What Does SERP Stand for and What Is the Meaning of a Brand SERP?
[00:05:28] Joyan Chan: So, the other question that I want to first ask is that you call yourself The Brand SERP Guy. And what is Brand SERP? Because not many people might have heard of this term. So, tell us about that. What does it stand for?
[00:05:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, the first thing is SERP is search engine results page, and I tend to forget that people don’t necessarily know that. So, a search engine results page is what Google or Bing show you when you search on their search engine. And a Brand SERP is therefore the result on Google or Bing for your brand name or your personal name. And I focus on that.
[00:06:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because a) Google is your new business card. Everybody googles you before doing business with you, whether you’re a company or a person. But also, b) Google and indeed Bing can give you immense insights into your branding and your marketing strategy, because they reflect in that Brand SERP what it is they believe your audience will find helpful, useful, and valuable. So, it’s a reflection of their opinion of the world’s opinion of you.
What Is the First Step to Start Building Your Brand on Google and on Social Media?
[00:06:40] Joyan Chan: Okay. So, it’s the reason why we should care about it. And I love how you coin it. Google is your new business card. So, how do we measure? Because for so many business owners, entrepreneurs, especially ever since COVID happened, so many entrepreneurs, online entrepreneurs, they want to start online business. And maybe they don’t really have a marketing background or a business background like you.
[00:07:08] Joyan Chan: So, what is the first step? People are usually getting overwhelmed with all these marketing strategies out there, all these never ending trends on social media online. So, can you maybe perhaps share with us a simple strategy, marketing brand strategy to start building your brand, not just on Google, maybe across all social media? Just one strategy.
That’s the beauty of Brand SERPs. Because they’re reflecting the world’s opinion of you, you can immediately see where you need to focus.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)
[00:07:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, that’s a huge point and a great way of presenting it and a great question, Joyan. That’s the beauty of Brand SERPs. Because they’re reflecting the world’s opinion of you, you can immediately see where you need to focus, and that’s across the web. So, if you search your company name or your personal name, you should theoretically rank number one. So, that says start with your own website.
[00:08:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then if Twitter is number two, it’s saying Twitter is something that’s working for you, keep working on it. If you are working hugely hard on Facebook, but Facebook doesn’t show when somebody searches your brand name or your personal name, that means that you are not doing a great job on Facebook and you should perhaps adapt that strategy. Because if Google can’t see that Facebook is important to your brand, then it means that either you are not making the best use of Facebook and Google feels that it isn’t actually helpful to your audience or that you are not communicating very well with Google about that.
A Metaphorical Idea From Tonya Eberhart of Using Sequins and Light in Looking and Focusing on Your Brand SERP
[00:08:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, I would say this is all a critique of your brand strategy, your marketing strategy. It allows you to then prioritise where you focus and stop getting distracted by the latest, let’s call it a glittery sequin. A friend of mine, Tonya Eberhart, who helped me with the introduction that you used, she came up with a lot of that stuff.
[00:09:06] Joyan Chan: I know Tonya.
[00:09:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): She’s brilliant.
[00:09:09] Joyan Chan: Yes.
[00:09:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): She was talking about every morning the sun shines, and your garden is full of sequins. And the light will bounce off one of the sequins this morning. Tomorrow morning, it will bounce off another sequin. And it’s really difficult not to keep switching from one sequin to another every morning. So, you need to wake up in the morning, appreciate the sequins, but remain focused on the important sequin that you had chosen initially, if that makes sense.
[00:09:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, my sequin is to look at Google’s results for my brand or my personal brand, and to focus on the sequins that Google is pointing me to and not the sequins that my peers are talking about or social media is talking about. So, let Google be the sunlight shining off the right sequin, because Google will be very consistent about which sequin it makes glow in the morning the most.
With All the Other Social Media Platforms, What Made Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Specialise in Google?
[00:10:13] Joyan Chan: I want to go back to something that you mentioned earlier. You said whenever someone wants to do business with you, they will first go to Google. Because right now, I’m seeing Instagram is also getting a lot of traction nowadays and even TikTok, but I guess it depends on who your ideal clients are, where they’re hanging out. Maybe if I’m looking for a service provider, just for example, if I’m looking for a coach, I might want to go to Instagram and search their name over there and see what content are they creating. So, what would you say about that? With all so many social media platforms, all the sequins out there, what made you specialise in Google or why Google?
[00:10:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Well, actually it’s exactly what you said earlier on, is that I built this children’s website to be the 10,000th biggest site in the world, and a lot of that has to do with the presence on Google. And as you said, I learnt that it’s as much how you show up as where you show up.
[00:11:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And what we realised with the children’s website was that because we were consistent across our website, but then also incredibly consistent across all the different channels and across all of our different presence, it made it incredibly easy for Google to understand and then to rankers as well to put us near the top of the results across the board.
When Thinking About Doing Business With a Person or Company, Most People Would Revert to Google
[00:11:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But also, it meant that whenever people came across Boowa and Kwala, which is the cartoon characters we mentioned earlier on, they would see a consistent message. And that is hugely important in branding and marketing as we know. But it also means that the number of touches we need to have with each individual before they google our name becomes less, because they understand more easily and more quickly who we are, what we do, and which audience we serve. Can we serve them?
[00:12:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): At which point, I would argue most people would revert to Google to search for you rather than going onto Instagram. There are certainly exceptions, so I’m not pretending that it’s always, always Google. But certainly when somebody is down towards the bottom of the funnel and they’ve seen you multiple times across the web and they’re thinking, am I going to do business with this person or this company? They will google your name either to research you or because they don’t know where your site is. In either case, you’re getting that Google Business Card.
The Explanation of Jason Barnard’s Saying: Google Is a Child and We Have to Learn to Educate It
[00:12:44] Joyan Chan: Wow. Okay. So, you said Google is like a child and we have to learn to educate Google. So, can you explain that to us? How do you educate Google?
[00:12:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I actually started eight years ago talking about empathy for the beast. There’s a song called Sympathy For The Devil, which is a song by The Rolling Stones, and I just adapt that to empathy for the beast. Let’s call Google the beast. And that’s how most people perceive Google. It’s this enormous machine, and they’re scared of it.
[00:13:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But if you have some empathy for what it’s trying to achieve, which is to recommend the best answer to the user’s question or the best solution to the user’s problem, because that’s what we do when we search on Google. We’re expressing a problem to which we’re looking for a solution or a question for which we’re looking for the answer. And Google’s role is to get them to the answer or the solution as efficiently as possible.
The Concept of Understanding, Credibility, Deliverability, and E-E-A-T
[00:13:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And for that, it needs understanding, credibility, and deliverability. It needs to understand who you are and what you offer, it needs to understand that you are the most credible solution for its user, and it needs to know that you have the correct content that will serve the user’s purpose, be it information, video, or even the product that your person is going to buy.
[00:14:11] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, this idea of empathy for the beast then developed into, well, Google wants to understand who you are, what you do, which audience you serve. It wants you to show you that it’s credible. Google call that E-E-A-T, experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. And it wants to know, do you have the content, do you have what the user actually needs?
[00:14:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And from that perspective, it’s simply a child trying to understand. And we are in the position where we can and should be teaching it who we are, what we do, which audience we serve, why we’re the most credible solution, and packaging our content so that the child can give it to its users as the solution to there problem.
An Advice From Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) About Content Creation and Marketing
[00:14:57] Joyan Chan: I see a lot of people, they are struggling with content marketing. It’s like, we have to create, we know we have to create as business owners, entrepreneurs, or thought leaders. We have to create content, but we are just so too overwhelmed by content creating marketing. And so, at the end of the day, we do nothing or we don’t create content all because we’re overwhelmed.
[00:15:21] Joyan Chan: And so, how would you help people? I’m not sure whether you help people with that, but what would be your advice for people who are feeling overwhelmed and they don’t really want to create content? They want to improve their business, but they don’t want to create content. Is there a way out?
Focusing on the Platforms Where Your Audience Is Hanging Out to Produce the Right Content and Give It to Them in Order of Priority
[00:15:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yes, there is, definitely. And we just turned the table on Google is the beast to Google is a child. And it’s lovely to flip the table on Google, so we’re no longer scared of it. I’ve now got us all into a position where we’re not scared of Google. It’s a child, and we’re the responsible adult in the room. From there, you can say, well, let’s ask this child what it thinks about us. So, you search your own name, and it shows you what it thinks about you.
[00:16:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then you can start to say, well, I think it’s got it wrong. So, if I think it’s got it wrong, for example, the example I gave earlier on, it’s not showing Facebook and it should, I need to reassess my Facebook strategy, or perhaps I’m wrong about Facebook and I should be focusing on Instagram instead. That’s point number one. And you can go through all of that, including review platforms, news sources, social media platforms, video, what topics are you covering, and assess by what you see, what needs to be prioritised.
[00:16:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then the next thing where we can flip everything is to say, well, let’s not think about creating content for Google, let’s think about creating it for our audience. And we’ll use Google to understand where our audience is hanging out and where we can actually produce this content and give it to them.
[00:17:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then obviously as business owners, we should theoretically understand what our audience wants, what problems do they have that we can solve, and how can we present our solution to them in the best possible way on the platform where they’re already hanging out, be it Facebook, Instagram, the New York Times, review platforms, comparison platforms.
Creating Content That Is Truly Useful, Helpful, and Valuable to Your Audience and Repackaging It for Google
[00:17:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And if we create content that is truly useful, truly helpful, and truly valuable to our audience, and we place it on these different places where they already hang out, then all we need to do is repackage it and present it to Google so that Google can then use that content to present as a solution to its users problems, because your audience is a subset of Google’s users. And you want to solve your audience’s problems. Google wants to solve its user’s problems. So, there’s a match in terms of what you’re trying to achieve.
[00:18:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, what we generally do at Kalicube when we’re helping clients is say, focus on creating content that serves a purpose and is valuable for your users where they’re hanging out already, and then bring it onto your own website, repurpose it, and package it so Google can deliver it and send the subset of its users, who are your audience, to your website for that exact same solution.
What Is the “Hack” to Rank Higher on Google and Improve Your Brand SERP?
[00:18:35] Joyan Chan: Because it seems like everyone is fighting, we talk about SEO and all that stuff. It seems like everyone is fighting for the same spotlight. Everyone wants to rank number one on Google. So, is there a hack, not that you could hack into Google or whatsoever? Maybe you can share with us one simple way, I wouldn’t want to call it hack, but one simple hack for us to rank higher on Google whenever someone searches for a business in our areas.
[00:19:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): There used to be lots of short term hacks, and that’s what I mastered when I got that children’s website to the top of the queue. Part of it was short term hacks, part of it was branding, part of it was marketing. But even back then, Google got the brand, and it was paying attention to how the brand was represented across all of the different platforms.
[00:19:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But today, the hacks have gone. So, there is only one hack now, and that’s hyper topicality. Pick your topic, stick to your topic, make sure that you are consistently answering your audience’s real questions and solving their real problems and then packaging it for Google. And unfortunately, it’s a long term hack in the sense that it’s not going to change your website’s traffic or your presence on Google in six months.
[00:20:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): In a year, you will start to see some traction. And in a couple of years, you can start to dominate your hyper niche. So, you need to focus on your niche. You need to focus on a two year to three year strategy. And if you can do that and feed this child with the information and the content that it needs in order to solve its user’s problems, you’re going to win.
Jason Barnard’s Order of Priority for Your Business: Marketing, Branding, and SEO
[00:20:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But what’s really hugely interesting about everything I’ve talked about up to now is what we are doing is simply great marketing and great branding in the traditional sense that we should be doing as business owners anyway. And the SEO aspect is in third place. The priorities are marketing, branding, SEO.
Don’t be afraid of Google. Google is a child. Serve Google with the content that you want to serve your audience.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)
[00:20:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, what I’m saying to people is don’t be afraid of Google. Google is a child. Serve Google with the content that you want to serve your audience with anyway, but just packaged in a way that this child can understand and will appreciate. And therefore, you’re actually focusing on your business. And you are focusing on your business if you’re using the Brand SERP to analyse what’s right and wrong with your Brand SERP, search engine results page for your brand name.
[00:21:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You can prioritise all of the other work that you’re doing. And as you said earlier on, not get overwhelmed with the 15 platforms you need to be on. You can prioritise and say, well, I’ll do number one, number two, number three, number four, number five. It becomes incredibly easy, and it gets rid of that frustration that you’re not doing everything all at once because you know what the priorities are very quickly.
[00:21:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that’s what we do for our clients at Kalicube, is they come to us and we analyse it. I’ve got a huge platform called Kalicube Pro that analyses all of this automatically. And we can come up with a master plan for a future proof digital marketing strategy using exactly what I’ve explained. And we simply say, here’s what needs to be done, here’s the order, and here’s how we package it for Google.
ChatGPT: Using It for Copywriting and the Effect It Has on the Big Machines Like Google and Bing
[00:22:23] Joyan Chan: The other thing I want to ask you is what do you think about ChatGPT? Because everyone is talking about it now. Do you think it’s a great tool for every business owner who want to adopt for their copywriting, I would say, because it’s mainly for that, right? What do you think of that?
[00:22:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. There are multiple questions all wrapped up in that one seemingly simple question. Everybody is using ChatGPT to write content, and that is fine as long as you understand that ChatGPT is going to repeat what it already has understood from the web. And I say understood in a very wide sense, it’s a machine, it doesn’t actually understand. So, whatever it produces will be a repetition of what already exists, whatever it says will not have your voice, and whatever it says will not have the experience and the expertise that you have that’s exclusive to you.
[00:23:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, if you do use ChatGPT to write articles or to formulate texts, you need to be sure to go back in and rewrite them so that they include your expertise and your experience and that they have your tone of voice. And in that way, you are using it to its strengths and not relying on it to replace who you actually are. And if you use ChatGPT, you will lose your brand voice, and that’s hugely, hugely problematic.
[00:24:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): What will happen over the next few years is some people will lean on it and use it too much, and not take the human step to give it their voice and their experience and their expertise. And those people will get caught in a hole, where all of these machines, Google, Bing, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, will recognise it. And they will simply demote it and throw it into the bucket, into a hole somewhere, and it will never pop up again. So, just be very, very, very aware that it’s a tool to help you move forwards, save you some time, but it does not replace you.
ChatGPT Is a Predictive Machine; It Speaks in a Passive Voice and It Has No Imagination
[00:24:44] Joyan Chan: Yeah. Well, that is so true, yeah. Because I was just having this conversation with someone, and she was recommending that I use ChatGPT to even write a book. I was like, no, I’m not going to use it to write my book. I want to write my own book. I don’t want to use another voice or another machine to write something that is close to my heart. And so, yeah, I love your perspective. It’s so true that we will only lose our voice and lose our branding as well, if you keep using it. I’m sure we can use it for maybe replying to some emails or some daunting task that you don’t want to do, so yeah.
[00:25:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): One thing there that actually just adds on to that is ChatGPT, as I said, doesn’t understand. What it does is predict what the next word will be. It’s a predictive machine. So, it simply says, if you give me the word, Joyan, it will predict what the next word would be, which might be is a podcast host or is a coach. So, what it’s doing is predicting what the next word would be, and that has two main outcomes. Number one is it speaks in a passive voice. And number two, it has no imagination.
[00:26:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And what you then end up with is texts that are incredibly boring to read. And I found myself, and I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, trying to read a ChatGPT text. And after a couple of hundred words, I can’t concentrate anymore because there’s no personality, no voice, and it’s very passive. So, writing a book with ChatGPT would be a book that nobody could ever get through the first chapter of.
[00:26:34] Joyan Chan: Thank goodness. Yeah. There is no personality in it. There is no essence. Because I was just trying it out, I was just playing with the platform. I was asking some question, helping me do some research. And I felt it’s very structured, it’s very professional. It’s not very professional, which is not what I am. I’m professional, but it’s not boring professional.
Kalicube, Jason Barnard’s Company, on Building a GPT-4 Fine Tuned Model for Their Voice
[00:27:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that actually then brings us to what we were talking about earlier on. Somebody said to me, every major corporation will end up with what we call a fine tuned GPT-4 model. ChatGPT is based on a technology called GPT. Now it’s 4. And what we can do is add our own data, our own texts, and our own voice to ChatGPT and then ask it to emulate our voice. But you have to remember, it’s not on 200 sentences that you can do this.
[00:27:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): At Kalicube, we’re building a GPT-4 fine tuned model for our voice, but also the information that we have. And we have currently 1,500,000 words that we’re injecting into it. Because with that amount of information, it will be able to come much closer to emulating our voice, our tonality. And it will have some of the information or a lot of the information that we have, but we still have to retain the human element. We still have to go in and make sure it’s not too passive, make sure that it’s got the imagination, and make sure that we’re adding new information, new expertise, new experiences that we have. So, it’s a constant work.
[00:28:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And a friend of mine called Andrea Volpini, from a company called WordLift, talks about a dance between humans and machines, which I love. So, as humans, we’re feeding the machine, the machine gives us output, we correct the output, we improve on the output, we put it back into the machine, and we are dancing backwards and forwards. And that dance will never stop.
The Idea of Search Engines, Answer Engines, and Assistive Engines and Their Potential Developments in the Future
[00:28:45] Joyan Chan: Yeah. I do believe machines can never replace humans. Because like you said, they have no emotions. Because I don’t know how at once we can go, when it comes to technology, we can never know. But I just want to say, yeah, it can never replace and it should not replace. Because what are we then, what are we for? Our own existence has no meaning at all, has no purpose.
[00:29:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, a hundred percent. And the really interesting thing about this whole ChatGPT thing is that Bing have now released it on their search engines. So, Microsoft Bing now has a ChatGPT option where you can chat with the search engine. So, what they’re saying is it’s no longer a search engine, it’s an answer engine.
[00:29:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, search engine would be Google, which offers 5, 10 choices where you decide which is the one that you want to choose. So, you are searching, it’s searching and it’s offering you options. Something like ChatGPT on Bing is saying, here’s the answer. So, it’s an answer engine and we can exchange with it and dialogue with it until we get to the point of an answer.
[00:30:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that’s almost where the next step will be, which is assistive engines. But an assistive engine would actually be predicting what we need before we know it. So, if we take an example, let’s start at the assistive at the top, is I wake up in the morning and my assistive engine says to me, don’t forget it’s your mother’s birthday, buy her a present or give her a call.
A Simple Explanation of Search, Answer, and Assistive Engines and How the Three Could Coexist in the Future
[00:30:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): An answer engine would be if I’ve forgotten her birthday and I type in, what is my mother’s birthday? And it would just answer me with the date. And a search engine would be, I’ve forgotten who my mother is. So, that’s the idea. Obviously it’s a bit of a silly example, but it shows you the different approaches of each of these different types of service.
[00:30:56] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And Fabrice Canel from Bing, who’s the program manager at Bing, who works heavily on ChatGPT and Bingbot, was talking about the fact that Microsoft Bing is working towards having all three of them. They will coexist because they each serve a different need.
[00:31:17] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that search will not die because the what will happen is what we call in economics, supply will create its own demand. As you introduce answer engines, you create demand for answers, but that doesn’t necessarily reduce the need for search. So, we should be looking at a future where we have search, answer, and assistive engines living side by side, all serving us as users.
If you communicate solutions to your audience on the platforms that they need or that they’re using, you repackage it for these search, assistive, and answer engines.
Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)
[00:31:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And from us as brand managers and marketers, that then begs the question, how can we possibly manage to optimise and to be present on all three types of engine? And the answer is incredibly simple, exactly what I’ve been explaining since the very beginning. If you communicate solutions to your audience on the platforms that they need or that they’re using, you repackage it for these search, assistive, and answer engines.
[00:32:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You teach these engines like children, what you can provide to whom, why you are credible, and what you can actually give them. And they will all recommend you to their users when they have a problem that you can help with. At which point, this simple strategy of looking at your Brand SERP, working on your own content, then repackaging it for these children, these child machines, will allow you to win whoever and whichever type of service your audience are using.
The Important Exercise of Googling Yourself to Know What to Prioritise on Your Google Business Card
[00:32:55] Joyan Chan: I love how you are just summing up, because I was about to ask, so what is the next step? Because we have all this information, what do they need to do right now? So, I’m so happy that you answered that question before I even asked.
[00:33:12] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Excuse me, sorry. I was just being an assistive engine. I was answering the question before you even knew you had it.
[00:33:19] Joyan Chan: Yes, I love that. Because I was going to say that your homework for today after this episode is go google yourself, because I’m sure a lot of people actually don’t google themselves, they have never googled themselves. So, your homework for today is go google yourself and see what comes out, and you’ll be surprised. You will laugh or you might cry.
[00:33:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, exactly. And it’s a nice exercise if you think, what do I expect to see? Then you google yourself, and you look at what you do see and you compare the two. Then you think, what do I want to see? And you want to move to what you want to see from what you do see. And also, search my name, Jason Barnard, and look at what you see for me. This is what happens when you work on this consistently over time. You will get a really lovely presentation of yourself that prioritises the aspect of yourself that you want. That’s for a person.
[00:34:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And for Kalicube. If you search Kalicube, you will see a representation of what we can offer to whom and why we’re credible as a solution for those people. Those are the perfect Google Business Cards, and those Google Business Cards are exactly what will allow you to segue your brand from search to answer to assistive engines.
The Entrepreneurship Journey of Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)
[00:34:52] Joyan Chan: Thank you so much. So, they have a homework to do. Actually, I wanted to ask one more question that is out of topic, that is out of this Google thing. I just want to know about a bit of your journey, entrepreneurship journey. Because when I was doing my research, I want to know how did you go from playing double bass in a punk folk band to being a blue dog in a cartoon series and to living in a desert island, if I’m not wrong, to now running a branding company. How did it happen? What happened actually?
[00:35:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, it’s a mixture of entrepreneurship and creativity. Because I moved to Paris and I was asked to join a music group, and I joined the group. I played double bass. We played in the streets. We played some concerts. And then I decided that I would like to release an album, a music album.
[00:35:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): We tried to get record companies to release our album, and nobody wanted to. So, I created a record company and released my own album. Then I tried to get companies to organise tours for my band. Nobody wanted to do that. So, I created a company that organised tours for the band too. Then we stopped with the band.
[00:36:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And with my ex-wife, we created a cartoon called Boowa and Kwala. And nobody wanted that either. Something in my life is that nobody ever wants what I create. So, I created a company and built the website and made a TV series with ITV International and Radio Canada and TG in France, and it was released in 25 countries. So, each time, those first two’s, I created something. Nobody wanted it. So, I created a company in order to be able to make a living out of it.
While Transitioning Into Digital Marketing, Jason Barnard Realised the Importance of Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels
[00:36:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And this last one might seem much more pragmatic. But in fact, I realised when I was trying to transition into digital marketing to become a consultant, when I talked to potential clients, some of them didn’t sign on the dotted line, even though I thought they would. And what was happening is that they were searching my name on Google. They were seeing at the top, Jason Barnard is a cartoon blue dog. And that lost me a lot of deals.
[00:37:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, what I then did was learn to influence Google so it showed Jason Barnard is a digital marketer at the top, and then it says he’s also a blue dog but it says it in tiny letters at the bottom, because I don’t think we should lose our past in order to promote our present.
[00:37:32] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that got me into this idea of Brand SERPs and Knowledge Panels. A Knowledge Panel is the information box you see on the right hand side on Google. And if you google my name, you’ll see a magnificent Knowledge Panel, which is Google’s understanding of the facts. And that’s hugely important. Yeah.
Jason Barnard Created Kalicube as a Way to Research, Understand, Offer Service, and Educate Everybody About Brand SERPs
[00:37:49] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And once again, people didn’t get overexcited about it like I was. I thought this is a huge, huge, huge issue. This is a huge question for every brand. And when I talked about it, people said, well, I rank number one, that’s good enough for me. So, I then created Kalicube as a way to research, understand, offer services, and educate everybody in the world about the importance of the search result for your own name.
[00:38:20] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because it seems so small in the sense that bottom of funnel audience, I rank number one, I don’t really mind what I look like in my Google Business Card. But then if you start extrapolating out, you say, well, it is a reflection of your digital strategy. It can and does help you to optimise and organise your digital strategy and prioritise your resources efficiently and effectively. It also allows you to manage your brand across the entire digital ecosystem.
[00:38:55] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it’s also the springboard, and I’ll say it again, from search to answer to assistive. So, at the end of the day, Kalicube for eight years, I’ve been working towards this exact moment, which is the emergence of answer engines, the beginnings of assistive engines, when this is suddenly going to become the single biggest and most important aspect of any brand’s marketing strategy.
[00:39:24] Joyan Chan: Wow. Well, I’m really blown away by this conversation. I’m learning so much. I’m just taking down a lot of notes.
[00:39:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant.
[00:39:32] Joyan Chan: Yeah. And there’s so many, a lot of new information, to be honest. And I’m going to go do my research on this topic even more, uh, or I could just have you back on the show to talk about it.
[00:39:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yes, indeed.
Where Is the Best Place to Find and Connect With Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)?
[00:39:44] Joyan Chan: Yeah. So, tell my listeners, other than Google, where is the best place for them to find you or connect with you personally?
[00:39:53] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, there are two aspects. Number one, if you’re interested in the search engine results page for your brand name, Brand SERPs, your Google Business Card, Knowledge Panels, visit Kalicube.com. We’ve got a huge help section, FAQs, podcast episodes, a lot of free information. I’m sharing this for free, so you can learn pretty much everything you need for free on Kalicube.com.
[00:40:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If you want to learn more about me personally, I tend to hang out on LinkedIn and Twitter, but I don’t do very much social media, generally speaking. But if you come to Jasonbarnard.com, you will find all of my life story with the songs, the kids characters, the music and the digital marketing, which are the three things which I think represent my life journey. It’s punk folk, double bass, blue dogs and yellow koalas and cartoons.
[00:40:52] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And trying to get to the point where I can confidently educate these child machines so that they have an understanding of who we are, what we do, and who our audience is, that we are the credible solution for their users, and that we have the correct solution that will help their users and allow our businesses to flourish.
[00:41:25] Joyan Chan: Yeah. Before I let you go, I just want to say I really love the fact that you are embracing your past, being a cartoon, and then you were putting it on your website. I was a bit shocked, to be honest. I was like, who is this guy? He was a cartoon, cartoonist, and now he’s running a company. I was like, I just don’t understand.
You are Jason Barnard because of your past, because of what you have built, what you have went through, and all that.
Joyan Chan
[00:41:44] Joyan Chan: But I love how you are embracing it because it makes you different. You are who you are because of your past. You are not just another software company, CEO, director. You are not a digital marketer. You are Jason Barnard because of your past, because of what you have built, what you have went through and all that.
More About Jason Barnard’s Books: Google Is A Child and The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business
[00:42:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That’s a really interesting point. I’m writing a book with a friend called Mike Ulmer, and the book will be called Google Is A Child. And it will be an explanation of this entire approach of Google is a child, we need to learn to educate it and we can teach Google to love our business, which is a lovely, lovely approach. And he’s going to work with me to tell it through the story of my life as well.
[00:42:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, what was really interesting about talking to Mike and working with him on this book is that he was saying Google is a child is something that you now talk about a great deal, but it doesn’t come from thin air. It comes from your life experience, it comes from the way you got here, and it comes from who you are and the personality that you have. I’m having an enormous amount of fun working on that with him. And we hope to release the book in June for my birthday.
[00:42:59] Joyan Chan: An early birthday present.
[00:43:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I want to press the publish the book button on my birthday. That’s my plan for this year. I’ve got the current book up here behind me, The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business. And in fact, the reason we started writing the Google Is A Child book with Mike is he said that’s the worst title in the entire world. The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business is so dry and so boring. It should have been Google Is A Child.
The Difference Between the Content of the Two Books and Why Jason Barnard Recommends to Read Both
[00:43:30] Joyan Chan: That I agree. Yes, I do agree, because the title is so important, I would say. Because it has to grab people’s attention. It is like a hook. We all know there is a hook. So, you have to hook people, grab their attention, make them want to read about, okay, so what’s Google? Google is a child. Okay, tell me about it.
[00:43:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, exactly.
[00:43:52] Joyan Chan: But we all learn our lessons, I’m sure. We all made mistakes and learn our lesson. I’m sure it’s a great book.
[00:43:57] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, it actually is a really, really, really good book. I wrote it with a company called BrightRay Publishing. A lady helped me write the book and move it from an incredibly geeky presentation to a much simpler presentation of how to use your Brand SERP as a guide for your digital marketing strategy. So, it’s exactly what we talked about today. This book covers that in a pragmatic but easy to read manner.
[00:44:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Whereas Google Is A Child is going to move us forwards into a more philosophical approach about how we can approach these machines, which is slightly different. So, I would actually recommend, I hate to say this because it sounds very salesy, I would recommend reading both.
Ending the Show With Reminders on How to Contact Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) and Joyan Chan
[00:44:50] Joyan Chan: Okay, yeah, all right. So, guys, I hope you are learning a lot from our guest today. If you have any questions, you know where to find me, find Jason. You can send me or Jason a message on LinkedIn. I think that’s the best place. Or just leave a comment below, if you are watching this on YouTube or Instagram or whatever platforms that you prefer. If you haven’t subscribed yet, hit the subscribe button so you won’t miss another juicy episode. Thanks for watching and tuning in today. Until next time, show up. Success doesn’t show up for you until you show up and pursue your own success.
[00:45:22] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): A quick goodbye to end the show. Thank you, Joyan. It was a lot of fun.
[00:45:28] Joyan Chan: We’re done. Oh my God.
[00:45:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): There you go. So, you’ve got two little singing clips.
[00:45:36] Joyan Chan: Thank you for listening to The Show Up Show with me, Joyan Chan. If you want to create more confidence, visibility, and authority in your business, send me a message on Instagram at @joyanchancoaching. DM me the word show up, and I will send you my free feature training visibility creates possibilities that you can watch right away to start exploding your visibility today.
