Why you shouldn't listen to me

AI and ChatGPT are amazing tools; without them, I sometimes wonder what my workflow would look like.

But I see a lot of people on Twitter, and even in the SERPs, that are completely dependent on them to the point that they’re outsourcing their entire thinking process to ChatGPT.

They’re putting their digital presence in the hands of AI, which is a HUGE mistake!

And I understand that it helps you produce more content in a shorter period of time. I use it myself too.

But there’s a difference between “using it” and completely “outsourcing your brain.”

Let me explain:

Yes, you can produce hundreds of Tweets and blogs in a couple of minutes.

But nobody is going to trust you after reading that unedited garbage.

Because it doesn’t resonate with anyone.

You need to understand that humans are emotional creatures. And to get them to trust you — and eventually buy from you — they have to resonate with them on a very deep, personal level.

There are THREE main stages in a customer journey:

Awareness > Trust > Purchase

Without awareness, there’s no trust.

Without trust, there are no sales.

Tweeting a bunch of AI content isn’t going to get a reader to stop whatever they were doing and read your content. 

They're either going to block you or mute you.

Likewise, if you publish a blog, and the content doesn’t resonate with your readers, then they’re going to go back to the SERP and find a new result. 

The same goes for learning SEO

A lot of people outsource their entire thinking process to gurus. 

They blindly trust people like Neil Patel, John Mueller, or even myself.

Seriously. DO NOT blindly trust me.

Here's why…

We all view SEO through a different lens. For example:

• Neil produces content to build his digital empire, but his agency sucks on execution. It’s a widely known fact among the SEO community that his agency (NP Digital) gets terrible results and often his clients get penalized.

• John Mueller… honestly, you don’t want to hear my thoughts on this 🤦

• And I produce content that is strictly eCommerce x Shopify-specific.

If you do local, SaaS, or even B2B, there are other people out there that you should follow instead.

Even if you do WordPress, WooCommerce, Wix, or Squarespace, there are better SEOs to follow aside from myself. 

Now…

I’m not telling you that you should unfollow me and unsubscribe from this email list.

I may say something that finally connects the dots for you in your B2B or local niche. 

I follow SEOs in other verticals to see what they’re doing and test out some of those strategies in eCommerce. 

But that’s the thing – I test before I trust. 

Not every industry is the same — local is different from eCommerce and even within eCommerce, not every SERP functions the same. 

Here’s an example:

The strategy that helped us rank a women’s fashion brand in the #1 spot won’t work to rank a supplement brand in the #1 spot. Sure, there are overlapping principles, but the execution will be different. 

Similarly, what works for a website like Forbes will not work for your budding eCom brand. 

Everything in SEO is nuanced.

And if you continue to outsource your brain to us — Neil Patel, John, and myself — and follow everything that we do to a T, then there’s a pretty good chance that it won’t work for you.

I’ll leave you with one final example:

John Mueller advises people not to buy backlinks, but look at me. 

I buy backlinks all the time for our clients and it works!

But if I blindly accepted everything John said as a fact, I wouldn’t have a successful agency. In fact, I’d probably do something else entirely. 

You have to collect information.

Then test what you’ve learned. Learn some more. Test some more. And repeat forever.

If you were to read through hundreds of my tweets, it is possible that most of them wouldn’t be relevant to you.

Let's say I posted a tweet about how we tripled the XYZ brand’s traffic with ABC strategy.

If you copied everything in that case study and duplicated it for your brand, it’s unlikely that your traffic will also triple.

Because I build custom strategies for all the brands that we work with.

And I don’t outsource my brain to ChatGPT or other gurus. 

I learn, I observe, I test, then I implement.

Until next time.

Kai Cromwell