How Your Blog Can Attract Clients and Boost Your Business

Larry Roberts [00:00:09]:

What is happening, everybody? I'm Larry Roberts.

Sara Lohse [00:00:11]:

And I'm Sara Lohse, and this is Branded, your comprehensive guide to creative branding.

Larry Roberts [00:00:16]:

And on this awesome episode of the podcast, we have another amazing guest that's going to talk to us about, well, how to transform your blogs into your most reliable source for getting new clients and sales. So Jon Clemence joins us today. Jon, thanks, man. Really appreciate you rescheduling and getting with us today.

Jon Clemence [00:00:36]:

Yeah. Larry, Sara, I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to talk. I'm excited to get into it.

Sara Lohse [00:00:41]:

That's awesome. Excited to have you here, and I'm finally not outnumbered, by AI people. I there's actually another writer, and this is so exciting for me.

Larry Roberts [00:00:52]:

Look, guys. I'm I'm just gonna say it right now, Jon. You you don't know this, but when I wrote my book, which is bing right behind me here under the red hat, I did write

Sara Lohse [00:01:00]:

Chapter 3.

Larry Roberts [00:01:01]:

Chapter 3 all by myself. I wrote it myself. I took the I jumped on the keyboard and pounded it out. So I wrote an actual chapter in my book. So I I'm a writer too.

Sara Lohse [00:01:11]:

And we're very proud of him.

Larry Roberts [00:01:14]:

So Jon, how long you've been writing, man? What what got you into writing and is it a creative outlet for you? Is it a professional outlet for you? Tell us about a little bit about your background and how you fell in love with with writing.

Jon Clemence [00:01:28]:

Yeah. So for a long time, it was just a creative outlet. I've actually so I'm a big nerd, and I just own it. And so I just you know, that's just who I am, and it's cool. I'm good. I'm I'm good with that. So I was the kid in high school English class who loved Shakespeare and, like, enjoyed, Yeah. Right? I was the guy's, like, Romeo and Juliet.

Jon Clemence [00:01:45]:

Sweet. Can we read Midsummer Night's Dream next? You know? Well, all the other kids look at me like I'm a moron.

Sara Lohse [00:01:50]:

Oh, I I can recite Hamlet. It's we're good.

Jon Clemence [00:01:53]:

Yeah. So that was me. Right? And I was also the kid, and this was, you know, high school, college. I even went to seminary. So even during seminary, I was the guy who was like, hey. You want me to proofread your paper? Find all the mistakes? Like, I'll do it just because I like to do it. So that was my passion. It's been that way for a long time.

Jon Clemence [00:02:11]:

But to make money, I was actually in the corporate world, which was great. I did 15 years. It was great the first 10 years, and then it became really not so great. So I well, I've been married 18 years, and, actually, I'm doing good. We've Sounds like

Sara Lohse [00:02:25]:

you're married. Problem.

Larry Roberts [00:02:27]:

Where am I at? I'm at 23 myself. So, yeah, we're we're we're we're good job on 18, man. You don't hear that very often. Yeah. You don't hear that often at all.

Jon Clemence [00:02:35]:

I told her after we've been married about 60 years, we'll we'll see where we're at if we wanna keep going or not.

Larry Roberts [00:02:40]:

We'll reevaluate. Yeah. Reevaluate.

Jon Clemence [00:02:44]:

Yeah. So I was I so, again, you know, 1st 10 years is fine. It was a paycheck. The last 5. So I used to work for a very large aerospace company based in the Pacific Northwest. I won't say which one. But, you might remember the news, you know, about 7 or 8 years ago, they started crashing airplanes, and people started losing their lives. And I said, guys, I can't, like, I can't do this anymore.

Jon Clemence [00:03:06]:

Like, that's just not cool with me. So I moved on to a different company, and that didn't get really any better because there is it just wasn't for me anymore. But I was too scared to know what to do, but COVID came along. You might remember that portion of the street.

Larry Roberts [00:03:21]:

I've got some vague recollection.

Jon Clemence [00:03:22]:

Yes. That happened. And I lost my job. Right? The economy crashed and I was a casualty. So that gave me this opportunity though to say, wait a second. What do I actually wanna do with my life? How can I actually, like, take my passions and help people and also make an income? So at 40 years old, I'm sitting here starting a new career, and I decided to get into proofreading and editing. And so that's what I did. I got on Upwork.

Jon Clemence [00:03:46]:

I just started at $10 an hour, you know, just doing basic proofreading. And I just grew it from there. I did more and more, raised my rates, got better clients, got into the writing game as well. And so that's now where we are now. You know, well, I guess, 4 about 4 years later. So I'm doing writing. I'm doing editing. I have an agency I'm trying to build up to do the, the same thing on a larger scale.

Jon Clemence [00:04:07]:

And, and I'm my own boss, and so it's pretty incredible. It's not without its challenges, but I really enjoy it.

Larry Roberts [00:04:13]:

That's amazing. And and what do you that puts you at about 44, 45?

Jon Clemence [00:04:17]:

So I think I'm about I don't know. I was born in 1981. So whenever you're listening to this, do the math. Wow.

Larry Roberts [00:04:22]:

Yeah. I can't do that. That's way too much math. 43.

Jon Clemence [00:04:26]:

43. I just turned 43. That's it.

Larry Roberts [00:04:28]:

Okay. Congrats, man. Yeah. You don't you you don't look 43. So good good job on that.

Jon Clemence [00:04:33]:

Thank you.

Larry Roberts [00:04:34]:

And and, you know, that's an amazing story because we hear those types of stories often, but we have a hard time going, did it really happen? And here you are today talking about how you started on Upwork, you know, I mean, Fiverr, Upwork, the same platforms, and you grew it into a legitimate business because of your passion and your skill set. And I commend you for that. And I love the fact that you're here as living proof that people can actually do that. So congratulations.

Jon Clemence [00:04:58]:

Hey. Thank you so much.

Sara Lohse [00:05:00]:

You were actually able to take your passion and turn that into a job. What is it about blogs specifically that makes you passionate about it? Like, what is it about that medium that is so powerful?

Jon Clemence [00:05:14]:

Yeah. I think it's a really great way to kind of put forth who you are to your to your potential customers. Right? So like if you think about how Google rates things to like do all their SEO, a lot of times we wanna get real deep in the weeds with, like, the technical aspects of SEO, and that's good. But really at the end of the day, what is it looking for? Authority and expertise and trustworthiness, right, and experience. So all these things, that's really what it boils down to and a blog is like a great place to do that. You get to kind of show your personality and your voice. And when you make it about that your potential customers and your potential readers and you can talk about how to do that, but and you start solving people's problems and providing value to people, okay, now you've really got something. Now you've got something that's gonna resonate with people.

Jon Clemence [00:06:01]:

It might grow your email list. It might grow your lead list. It might lead to, you know, more more sales and more customers. So to me, it's like this great way to just get yourself out there, especially if you're not maybe comfortable in front of a camera. And if you are, there's also ways to kind of duplicate that effort, you know, in in those avenues. So, really, it's just like a great platform to say, hey, world, this is who I am. This is the value I can provide and just let's go on a journey together. So that's that's why I like blogs.

Sara Lohse [00:06:34]:

Yeah. I love that. With posting a blog, how is it that you're able to then turn that into clients? Because I know with your business, you use blogging as that lead generation and what why, Larry?

Larry Roberts [00:06:49]:

Because I had a spec. Right? I had no. I had a I had a white spec sitting here on my

Sara Lohse [00:06:54]:

shoulder.

Larry Roberts [00:06:54]:

And while you were talking, I was gonna knock it off, but you had to make a deal out of it. So now it's gone, but now it's also a deal. So it's It's

Sara Lohse [00:07:03]:

a deal.

Larry Roberts [00:07:04]:

So, yeah, I was just trying to be I I wasn't going, oh, shake the haters off or anything like that. I was just I really had a speck right here that was irritating me. Sorry. So how do we take blogs and turn them into clients?

Sara Lohse [00:07:20]:

We told you we've never done this before. Yeah.

Jon Clemence [00:07:22]:

That's right. The first thing you wanna do is you wanna make sure your clothes are nice and and and clean.

Larry Roberts [00:07:26]:

Gotta be crispy, dude. Gotta be crispy.

Jon Clemence [00:07:28]:

Thing. Yeah.

Larry Roberts [00:07:30]:

Gotta have that drip. Right? Is that what the cool kids say?

Jon Clemence [00:07:33]:

They do say drip. I'm not cool, so I don't, you know, I

Larry Roberts [00:07:36]:

don't know. I don't know either.

Sara Lohse [00:07:37]:

I just say things are rad, so I'm way out.

Jon Clemence [00:07:39]:

Hey. Good for you. My my friend Josh says that. I love it. So I keep saying it. So there's a ton of things you can do, to take this take your blog and and basically make it into something that's going to actually benefit your business. And I actually like, if you go to my website, and I think there will probably be a link at some point anyway, you can download a a self assessment. They'll give you a ton of them.

Jon Clemence [00:08:02]:

But rather than going through, like, 15 things, what I thought was maybe we could just go through 3 basic things that, like, anybody can do and that you can take you can either you can apply this to new blog posts. You can apply this to blog posts you've already written. You can even apply it to social media posts. You can apply it to sales emails. Basically, any kind of business content. So I wanna go through those, I think. And I think that's gonna provide some serious value to your listeners. Sure.

Jon Clemence [00:08:28]:

And yeah. So let's talk about this. So the first thing is to remember that, like, we live in an attention economy. Right? Like if you're scrolling through your your feed, like, you're just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, cat video, you know, basketball highlight, whatever. And so everybody wants your attention as as as a Internet user. So how do you get someone's attention? You need to write a good hook. Like, that's the very first thing I would say. So the first sentence or 2 of your blog post, let's say, it's really gonna determine how well your blog is gonna perform.

Jon Clemence [00:08:59]:

So you really wanna make it good. And so you can make a a hook any way you want. There's a 1,000 different ways, but just a couple different things you can think about. So especially like in a business context. A statistic is always a great way to start, like some kind of startling statistic. So for example, I'll give you one. So did you know if you have a blog, for your business, you're 434% more likely to rank on Google than if you don't have one.

Larry Roberts [00:09:24]:

Wow.

Jon Clemence [00:09:24]:

That's a big number. Wow. That is a big number. So I've got your attention now. So I could write a blog post about why that's important, how to do it because, like, oh, wow. That means I could potentially, like, make more money. I am into this now. Like, let me read this.

Jon Clemence [00:09:38]:

So a statistic can be, a great hook. So it can, like, a controversial statement. So for instance, like, if I said, if I start posting

Larry Roberts [00:09:47]:

is dumb.

Jon Clemence [00:09:48]:

Harry Potter is dumb. Well, you're gonna get

Sara Lohse [00:09:50]:

I'm leaving.

Jon Clemence [00:09:51]:

Right? You're gonna get some attention with that. My fault is

Sara Lohse [00:09:56]:

Scrolling right past you.

Jon Clemence [00:09:57]:

I think Harry Potter is fine. I mean, it's fine.

Larry Roberts [00:10:00]:

And you said

Sara Lohse [00:10:00]:

when you said the, like, company before from that, like, had the airplanes, my first thought was Grunnings, and I'm like, oh, I nailed it. It was Grunnings. That's the drill company that uncle Vernon worked for in Harry Potter, and I realized that, like, that's 2 minutes later.

Jon Clemence [00:10:14]:

And Something I worked for. Yeah. Ryan's with, with Going.

Larry Roberts [00:10:18]:

Yeah. It's kinda what it that's that's exactly what I meant.

Sara Lohse [00:10:20]:

Second guess after the Harry Potter.

Larry Roberts [00:10:21]:

That's exactly where I went was going. So Mhmm. Yep. Anyways, let's get going back to what you were saying.

Jon Clemence [00:10:27]:

Yeah. So another one like, one that I might use that would probably in a business setting would be like I I might start with stop using AI if you wanna get results. Because that's now I'm like, oh my gosh. Right? You're so and I don't really mean stop using AI, but it's gonna get your attention. And then I can go into don't use it like this, use it like that. Right? And so so there you go. And maybe the best way, honestly, is just a personal story. So if you have a product or service that you offer and you can tie it into something in your life, then that's because think about it.

Jon Clemence [00:10:57]:

Like, we've been telling stories to one another since we've been we were sitting around on a campfire, right, like 100 of 1000 of years ago. So a story connects in ways that pretty much nothing else can. Maybe maybe a song would be the only other thing.

Sara Lohse [00:11:11]:

Which is generally a story.

Jon Clemence [00:11:12]:

Which is generally a story. Yeah. So writing good hooks, getting people's attention right away, that's like the number one thing I would suggest, because that's gonna hook people and get them interested in what you had to say. Sure. The second one is actually it sounds kind of pedantic, but it's actually super important. And that's you gotta get your formatting right. And so, you know, you're probably thinking like formatting, who cares about formatting? Why? Well, it's actually super important because of a couple of reasons. Number 1, you may not know here's another stat to kind of crunch on in your head.

Jon Clemence [00:11:43]:

61% of people who visit your website are on their phone. So think about that. If you're on your phone and you're trying to read a website or a blog post or whatever and it's just a wall of text.

Larry Roberts [00:11:55]:

Mhmm.

Jon Clemence [00:11:56]:

Oh my gosh. That's the worst. Right? I'm not reading this. I'm gonna

Larry Roberts [00:11:59]:

scroll

Jon Clemence [00:11:59]:

to the bottom. Is there like a highlight? Is there like a TLDR? Right? I don't wanna read this. So a super simple thing you can do is just break up your paragraphs. Right? Make every paragraph 2 or 3 sentences and then hit the enter button. So if you can hit the enter button, you can do this. Like, it's really that easy. And then also, add headers. If you don't have headers on your text, add them because something like 84% of us, we do, we just kinda skim your article before we read it.

Jon Clemence [00:12:26]:

Right? We wanna know if it's got what it needs. So headers, that's how you do that. You tell people what you're gonna tell them.

Sara Lohse [00:12:33]:

So I used to, I was a ghostwriter for a while and, one of the contracts that I worked with was for forbs.com, and forbes.com is one of the probably most successful blog out there because it kind of is what it is. It's a blog. People get contracts and they can post to this website, And they have so many formatting rules, and one of them is you need to have headers and subheads because they know that people aren't going to sit there and read the whole article. They're going to skim, and they need to have those subheads to catch their attention and make them like, okay. I'm gonna actually read this section.

Jon Clemence [00:13:09]:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Larry Roberts [00:13:10]:

Well and and that's kinda where I was going to is with the formatting. I mean, we've got h 1, h 2, h 3, and 4, 5, and 6 headers. And a lot of people don't use those when they're writing blogs or even writing their newsletters. If people are sending out newsletters, they're not formatting them correctly. And that's absolutely critical for ranking in SEO as well is to to use that that markup structure.

Sara Lohse [00:13:31]:

Now I have a question.

Jon Clemence [00:13:33]:

Mhmm.

Sara Lohse [00:13:34]:

So you seem very smart with, like, formatting and SEO. I generally make my subheads, like, h, like, 4 or 5 specifically because I don't like the size of h 2 and 3. They're too big. Is that making it worse for SEO?

Jon Clemence [00:13:50]:

Oh, what a great question that is. So I'm not a technical expert by any means. I know that's not the best practice. How about that? So, yeah. You generally want to have 1 H1 header, which is your title, and then H2s and H3s. And then, you know, H4 and H5 if you want to really get down into the weeds. So I would guess that that's not the best practice and you should probably do something a little bit different, But I don't have, like, the stats or the data to back that up.

Sara Lohse [00:14:18]:

Makes sense. I'm pretty sure all I have to do is change the settings of my h two to be smaller, but that's a lot.

Jon Clemence [00:14:24]:

I would I would guess. Yeah.

Larry Roberts [00:14:26]:

And we are we are deep in the weeds here, folks. Let me ask you this though, Jon, because, I mean, we we we hear all the time about how to how to get discovered. Discoverability is everybody's biggest challenge. I mean, we're we're deep in the podcast space, so that's one of our primary focuses for our clients is that discoverability. How how do we overcome the discoverability challenge for our blog? I mean, I I had a blog back in the, I don't know, was it eighties, nineties? What was it? Nineties for Myspace was was Cat Daddy. And, it nope. No. No one no one no one no one read my blog.

Larry Roberts [00:14:58]:

So how do we overcome that discoverability challenge there with our blogs?

Jon Clemence [00:15:02]:

Yeah. Excuse me. Yeah. That's where it gets into the marketing side of things. Right? And now you've got to figure out how you're gonna market that because there are people who have written blogs and have relied purely on organic SEO, just Google search results, and they have grown their business. And that's wonderful. I sometimes wonder if that's more a matter of luck than anything else because there's tons of blogs that are out there that are great and that don't get that. So, you know, that's that's a a way you can do it.

Jon Clemence [00:15:30]:

But, like, for me, here's one of the things I do is once you write a blog post, now you have infinite social media posts at your disposal. Right?

Larry Roberts [00:15:38]:

Mhmm.

Jon Clemence [00:15:38]:

You can repurpose that blog post a 1,000 different ways. So that's what I do. Right? I get on LinkedIn. That's my primary social media for my business, and I can take one blog post. And you know what? I can write 5 different, social media posts that I can stick on LinkedIn. And the trick for me is to follow the same format, right, is to start with an attention grabbing hook. Ensure there's plenty of white space, short sentences, short paragraphs. And then the third thing that we didn't get to, but I'll I'll bring it now, is having a good call to action.

Larry Roberts [00:16:11]:

Yeah.

Jon Clemence [00:16:11]:

Right? Which for which doesn't have to be selling necessarily. It could be, you know, hey. Leave a response in the comments. Share this with your friends. Right? If if growing your views is what you wanna do. Sign up for my newsletter, link in the description. Right? Or buy my product or or book a call with me, whatever it might be. So, like, this call to actions are, I think, a super important part, and that's really the third tip of even a blog post is you have to tell people what to do.

Jon Clemence [00:16:42]:

Like, we don't know what you want us to do. Mhmm. So if you're saying, how do I get more visibility to my blog? Well, the answer is start posting on a social media or start sharing it with people in your newsletters or whatever. And then have the call to action be, share this with a friend. Right? That's a great way to grow your blog presence. So that call to action is a super important tool. And so I would recommend every blog post, every social media post, every email, every newsletter, give that call to action. Tell people what to do next because we honestly don't know.

Jon Clemence [00:17:16]:

We don't know what you want us to. You have to tell us.

Sara Lohse [00:17:19]:

Yeah. With so when you share the blog, I mean, we we talk about repurposing content all the time with podcasts, but I always think of the blog as one of the repurposements of the podcast versus actually repurposing the blog. So that's genius, and now I think I've overlooked so many opportunities. But when you post the blog and all of the repurposed pieces onto social, is your call to action the same call to action as the blog or is your call to action to go then read the full blog?

Jon Clemence [00:17:48]:

For my business, and this is just for me, so it may not apply to you. So for my business, my goal is to ultimately get people to book a call with me so we can sit down and have a conversation just like we're having, and I can find out, you know, what kind of help do you need from me? Do you need editing help? Do you need writing help? Like, what do you need? And then and then will it work? Will this partnership work? So most of the time, my call to action is going to be book a call. And then on LinkedIn, the parallel to that is connect with me. Right? Send a connection. It's because it's virtually the same thing. Occasionally, I will just say I want my call to action to be go read the full article because I'm trying to get website views. So my honest advice, and this is what I've read and and learned from marketers, is figure out what your call to action is, your big call to action, and use that one most of the time. And then sprinkle in others as you can.

Jon Clemence [00:18:38]:

So, again, if your goal is to get more views to your blog because you wanna monetize it with ads, then the call to action is click here to read more. If your goal is to sell a product or service, maybe it's sign up for my newsletter or here's a freebie that I and right now you're into your sales funnel type stuff. So that's how I would approach that is it really depends on your sales funnel, your goals, what you're trying to do, and then pick one CTA that's kind of your primary CTA.

Larry Roberts [00:19:05]:

And do you structure the blogs in order to drive that CTA? Meaning, do you write your blogs on topics that align with that CTA and align with your ideal client?

Jon Clemence [00:19:17]:

Yes. That's what it well, that's my goal anyway. I tried very hard to do that. So when I write a blog, like, if you go to my website, you can check it out. Every blog post is either something you can do in the editing and writing world that will that will help you do you do those things better or reasons why it makes sense to subcontract subcontract out that work to someone like me. Because people are in different situations. Some people have the the budget and they want to get that off their plate because that's not the what they got into the business to do, and other people just have to do it themselves. And I understand that.

Jon Clemence [00:19:52]:

So I try to, like, provide value and then also say and also, if you don't wanna do it or need to get this off your plate, guess what? I can do it. I could probably do it better than you, you know, in a nice way. Yeah.

Sara Lohse [00:20:03]:

I love that method, and that's kind of the method that I use for most of what I do as well. And what we do, at Branded is tell them how to do it. And I've I gotten some pushback from people when I tell them to tell people how to do it because, like, well, then they don't need me. Like, people value their time a lot more than they value money, especially, like, in the business world, especially the higher up you get, because money for them is far more of an attainable resource than time is, and they're not going to sit there and learn how to do it. They don't have the time for that. But if you tell them how to do it, all you're doing is proving that you know how to do it. So you're just laying out, like, I know what I'm doing, and I just proved it because I told you how to do it. So now save your time, spend the money, and have me do it for you because I already know what I'm doing.

Sara Lohse [00:20:54]:

I'm gonna do it better, and I'm gonna do it faster because I don't have to learn it.

Jon Clemence [00:20:58]:

And that's that's exactly what I'm trying to do as well. So that's that's amazing. Yep.

Sara Lohse [00:21:02]:

With your with the blog piece of it, so you're trying to get people to have you ghostwrite for them. Is that kind of part of it?

Jon Clemence [00:21:09]:

No. We kinda so I have an agency, which means anything that has to do with words, we can do it. So it really depends on what you need done. So if you enjoy writing blog posts, wonderful. Then just hire us to come edit and clean it up and do that back into work. Maybe you're really good at ideation. Maybe you've cracked the code of AI and you know how to use it for brainstorming. And you're like, alright.

Jon Clemence [00:21:34]:

I've got 20 great topics and and I wanna write a blog, but but boy, I don't, you know, I don't have 200 hours to do this. You know? Okay. Well, we can write it for you. Like, we can do that work. Maybe, like, Larry, you've written a book and you're like, alright, cool. I've got this great first draft of a book. Now I really need someone to come in and edit it and find all the mistakes and fix all the formatting. Well, we can do that too.

Jon Clemence [00:21:57]:

So it really depends on the customer's needs. I'm kind of I'm the kind of person I don't like to do the same thing all the time. I like doing all kinds of things, so I kind of I guess I've kinda grown my business into that. Right? Whereas we do all kinds of things, but it's all based on the written word and what you particularly need help with.

Larry Roberts [00:22:15]:

So it's interesting you you pointed out some AI things there, and I'm curious because these types of creative positions are what are most threatened by the inclusion of AI. So as somebody that's a creative, as somebody that's a writer, which obviously right now generative AI is granted there's image generation as well, but it's primarily focused on text based content. How are you overcoming those challenges when you're competing with AI? I mean and and I'm not saying by any stretch of the imagination, AI is better in any way, shape, fashion, or form, although it works it's it's great. But at the same time but at the same time, I mean, if I'm being serious, there's no human creativity. There's no soul to it. Right? It's just a digital output. But how are you countering that AI revolution that we're all experiencing right now as a real creator, as a real author, as a legitimate writer and copywriter? How are you overcoming some of those challenges?

Jon Clemence [00:23:20]:

Yeah. It's tough, man, because we're all learning this as we're doing, and it's changing so rapidly that about the time you got it figured out, it changes, and so you gotta kinda go learn more about it. So I think part of what I do is just I'm just trying to learn about it, and I'm trying to figure out what does it do well, what does it not do well. And you hit the nail on the head. It doesn't have a soul. So at the end of the day, with content editing and content writing, the best way that I've found to look at it is to treat AI like an assistant, not like an employee. Mhmm. Love that.

Jon Clemence [00:23:54]:

So use it for brain it's really, really good at brainstorming. I mean, really good. Way better than I am. So that's what I use it for. Right? Hey, I've I I have a website and I sell dog toys. Hey, AI. Give me 20 blog post ideas. Here's my here's my customer.

Jon Clemence [00:24:12]:

Here's what I'm trying to sell. And it'll spit out 20 ideas. And 5 of them will be really good, 10 of them will be okay, and 5 of them will suck. And so you gotta, you know and then you have to engage your brain and go through and figure that out. So in as a way to assist you and to and to streamline your creative process and to help you with those brainstorming tasks, I think it's great. What I try to do, like on LinkedIn, for example, I try to write about and talk about AI and when it's and its benefits and its drawbacks. And so what I say often over there is don't outsource your writing a 100% to AI, and for God's sake, don't outsource your thinking, please. So, like, if you wanna have a website that fills a page with text and that's your goal, then don't hire me.

Jon Clemence [00:24:58]:

Use AI. You can do it in 5 seconds. Now, if you want text that resonates with people and that, actually engages with them and shows who you are and the value you provide, I don't think AI is there yet. I mean, it can help, but it's just not there yet. And the other thing that I try to, you know, to argue is, like AI can't read the room. Okay? As a human being who's an editor and writer, I can read what you wrote and go, well, is this really gonna reach the person you're trying to reach? What if we did this angle or that angle? Or, hey, I noticed you started, you just kinda dove into things. Do you have, like, a story, like, a personal story that, like, ties in that we could start with? Right? Like, it's really hard to have a conversation with AI about that. It's really hard to have a relationship built on trust with AI.

Jon Clemence [00:25:50]:

So like I said, it's a challenge. Everybody wants a shortcut. And so if you're just about shortcuts and just about doing it as fast as cheap as possible, I'm probably not your guy anyway, whether AI existed or not. But if you really want it done right and done well, and you really want it to resonate and and and grab people's attention and push them along the customer journey, I don't think AI is gonna achieve that for you. And I don't think it ever will because it's not a human being. So So it's not to say don't use it, but just know what it is and know what it isn't. So that's what I try to argue is, you know, use it for what it's good for, but it don't treat it like a shiny new object. Don't treat it like a cheat code because it's that's not what it is.

Larry Roberts [00:26:35]:

Well and I love the fact that the the cheat code thing. I was trying to think back to that. What was that thing we had back in the day where you could plug it on the front of your PlayStation cartridge, and then you plug it in, you get all the cheat codes? Game Genie. Yeah. It's like Oh,

Jon Clemence [00:26:47]:

yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you're

Larry Roberts [00:26:48]:

old enough to know what Game Genie is because I'm I'm I'm about 10 years older than you. But but, yeah, Game Genie look at Sara's like, what are you talking about? Sara hates gaming.

Sara Lohse [00:26:56]:

I'm about 20 years younger than Sara.

Larry Roberts [00:26:58]:

Sara hates gamers. So I don't hate gamers.

Sara Lohse [00:27:02]:

I just don't understand that.

Larry Roberts [00:27:03]:

Gamers and your listing right now know Sara hates you.

Sara Lohse [00:27:05]:

I don't hate you. I just think you're kind of a dork, and I don't what you're talking about. The door I like dorks.

Larry Roberts [00:27:11]:

Okay. Apparently, you're my cohost and and business partner, so it works out great. But, you know, I love what you were saying there, Jon, because you were talking about no soul and it and if you wanna tell a story, a personal story, you know, you can't use AI for that. And my book is an example of that as well because that's why I wrote chapter 3. Chapter 3 is the story of the red hat. Why the hell does Larry show up wearing a red hat all the time? And that chapter is the story of the red hat, how it happened and why it happens and what it's done since then. And you're right. AI can't deliver that.

Larry Roberts [00:27:43]:

So if you're trying to deliver those personal stories that really resonate on well, we'll even say on a human level, then you still need to get in there and you still need to click those keyboards yourself, or you need to hire somebody like yourself to to help you along that path. So I love the fact that you're driving that home, and I tend to drive that home in my because I I speak on AI. I'm doing one tonight as a matter of fact. And tomorrow, I speak on AI a lot. And this is always part of that conversation is to let people know that, yeah, it's it's not gonna do it all for you. And if you wanna tell that human component, you still can't do it. So I love the fact that that's that's in your messaging as well.

Jon Clemence [00:28:20]:

Yeah.

Sara Lohse [00:28:21]:

I feel like I've seen so many people that just start using AI, and they just that's becomes, like, their their tool. That's what they do now. And you can see from one post to the next, like, okay. You've stopped writing. You have stopped. This is no longer you. And a lot of it, it all sounds the same. Like, I've read the same post from 4 different people because they just put the same, basically the same prompt, and and it spits out the same answer.

Sara Lohse [00:28:49]:

And I think that's people have to really understand that that is brainstorming. That is, like, first draft at best, and you have to go in and put in the human. You have to put your soul into it and put your passion into it, or else you're just putting out content for the sake of content. And we have enough of that. There's, like, 60,000,000,000 pieces of content put into the world every single day. Like Yeah. We don't need more. So unless you're putting something out there that actually has a purpose and it's gonna share something, just don't.

Larry Roberts [00:29:22]:

Did you say 60,000,000,000, a billion a day?

Sara Lohse [00:29:25]:

Believe it's 60,000,000,000.

Larry Roberts [00:29:27]:

Do you have there's 8,000,000,000 people on the planet. How many people were posting multiple times a day to get to 60?

Sara Lohse [00:29:33]:

I got it from a book. I think it was hook point. Maybe it's 60,000,000,000, but I'm pretty Yeah. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's 60,000,000,000.

Larry Roberts [00:29:41]:

Wow. That's that's a that's a ton of content.

Sara Lohse [00:29:43]:

60,000,000 then I apologize, but that's still a lot of content. Yeah. That's still too much.

Larry Roberts [00:29:47]:

Billion, billion. I mean, if you if you have $60,000,000,000 and you have $60,000,000,000, you probably are still buying the same shit.

Sara Lohse [00:29:54]:

You know what? I quoted it I quoted it on my website, and I'm checking right now to see which one it is.

Larry Roberts [00:30:00]:

Alright. Let's see. Oh, that's not it. Do

Sara Lohse [00:30:06]:

we have the different? How many zeros are in a 1,000,000,000?

Larry Roberts [00:30:12]:

1,000,000,000. Nine. Yeah.

Sara Lohse [00:30:14]:

Alright. It's sick there are more than 60,000,000,000 pieces of digital content posted online each day.

Larry Roberts [00:30:18]:

Sweet lord. Oh, yeah. Some people need to put their phones down.

Sara Lohse [00:30:21]:

I also remember some this isn't just people. It's businesses.

Larry Roberts [00:30:24]:

Yeah. Well, they need to put their you know, it's funny because I'm heavily involved in a conference called Podfest. This morning, I woke up. I had 5 freaking emails from Podfest. 5. I'm like, bro, dial it back, man. 5 a day? That's freaking insane. But, yeah, 60,000,000,000 pieces of content.

Larry Roberts [00:30:41]:

That's that's hard to that's hard to even comprehend. Yeah. But

Sara Lohse [00:30:45]:

It's it's insane. And if when they're all AI generated, like, why are we even putting anything out to begin with?

Jon Clemence [00:30:50]:

Yeah. I mean, I to to your point and and, I mean, Larry, you your nose better than I do, but, you know, AI another one of the issues that I see with it is AI is never gonna come up with a unique new idea, a new spin on things. Right? It's gonna take those 60,000,000,000 pieces a day, read them all, and just give you the average of what those things are. And so, again, that's the back of that soul piece. Right? Like, yeah, totally use it for brainstorming. I do it. You should do it. Everyone should do it.

Jon Clemence [00:31:16]:

But if you're not injecting yourself into that stuff and I don't know about you, but, like, just as a consumer, as soon as I start reading something and I go, oh my gosh, this is why does this sound so lame? Why do I not wanna read anymore? It's probably because someone wrote a crappy prompt in the JAD gbt and just, you know, copied and pasted.

Larry Roberts [00:31:34]:

So Yeah. It

Jon Clemence [00:31:35]:

just drives me away. It makes me not wanna trust you or read you anymore.

Sara Lohse [00:31:39]:

Yeah. I I said this before, but I about, like, I don't know, 2 weeks before actually publishing my book, I rewrote most of it because I had done that. I'd set like, I I wrote it. I looked at them like, this isn't long enough. Put into Chat GPT. It said make this longer. Then I was like, cool. Now it's long enough.

Sara Lohse [00:31:55]:

And then I went back and read it. I'm like, what have I done? And I had to go back and take out all of that content that ChatChiBT wrote and write it myself because I'm like, this went from being something that was me to something that was just not. And I think that's that's We're just shutting on Larry's life work right now.

Larry Roberts [00:32:12]:

I was gonna say that's why you need to watch my video, my top ten tips on how to make Chat gpt sound just like you. Yeah.

Jon Clemence [00:32:18]:

It's great.

Larry Roberts [00:32:19]:

It's available out there on YouTube and on LinkedIn as as a matter of fact. No. I'm just kidding. It is there. But, anyways, Jon, look. We we got way off on the AI tangent, which is super super easy to do when I'm on the call, and I apologize for that. But at the same time, you know, we're talking about using a blog to gain clients and and grow your business. Before we start wrapping this thing up, man, what would be your number one numero uno tip on using a blog to gain clients?

Jon Clemence [00:32:45]:

You know, I it it goes back to the 3 things that I mentioned before. I know it's not one, but, you know, you have to be engaging from the sentence number 1, like, from the get go. So make sure it's engaging. Make sure it's personable. Get the formatting right. That formatting is so important, and I see so many examples where it's just, like, makes my eyes wanna bleed because, like, oh my gosh. It's just nothing but a wall of text. I'm not reading this.

Jon Clemence [00:33:10]:

So get the formatting right. And then like I said, from a business perspective, man, that call to action is so important. Tell people what to do next because we don't know. So if you can just do those three things or if you don't wanna do them, hire me to do it for you, whatever, you're gonna be ahead of so many businesses out there, and you're gonna see so much better results just just with those three things alone. So that's what I would say.

Larry Roberts [00:33:35]:

Right on. Love it. Love it. Jon Clements, we really appreciate you joining us today, man. It was a fun conversation. Probably a little offbeat for you compared to some of the other podcasts we've been on, but, you know, we just we just take it as it comes here. We just roll with the punches. Alright.

Larry Roberts [00:33:48]:

So, Jon, do us a favor, man. Where can everybody find you if they're looking to work with

Jon Clemence [00:33:52]:

you? Yeah. There's 2 places you can find me. Number 1, you can go to my website. It's cedarpressproofreading.com, and there's a button right at the very top. It says book a call. If you wanna get on the phone with me, a Zoom call, whatever, we'll just we'll just have a conversation. It'll be cool. And if you wanna get ahold of me on LinkedIn, you can find me over there too.

Jon Clemence [00:34:08]:

You can search for my name, Jon Clemence, or Cedar Press Proofreading. So I encourage you to go over there, send me a connect request, and we'll just have a conversation.

Larry Roberts [00:34:17]:

That's cool, man. I gotta ask, though. Cedar Press, are are you a big fan of Cedar or where where did that name come

Jon Clemence [00:34:22]:

from? That I chose that name because it sounded like a legitimate business.

Sara Lohse [00:34:28]:

I love that answer.

Larry Roberts [00:34:30]:

I freaking love it. That is freaking amazing. And here, I'm gonna share a story, and I probably shouldn't because there's a little profanity included, but I'm just gonna abbreviate the profanity. But, I have a tech background. I was in IT for 21 years at this one company. And, me and another friend of mine, we were always we always had side hustles. Right? And we were gonna start a consulting company. And, we were trying to come up with a name.

Larry Roberts [00:34:52]:

Right? And we ended up with DH 2 Solutions. And, but that sounds cool. Right? It sounds official. Sounds technically based. Right? But it really just stood for 2, pieces of male anatomy. And because that because we're both just a couple of those, and it was just 2 of us. So, yeah, that was the name of our company, but it sounded official. So that was what we called it.

Jon Clemence [00:35:17]:

Yeah.

Larry Roberts [00:35:18]:

D h two solutions was that's that's where we're at. So, anyways, with that hey, guys. If you're looking for some solutions to your branding needs, then do us a favor. Hit that subscribe button so we can continue to bring you these amazing insights and

Sara Lohse [00:35:35]:

amazing ads. Brand.

Larry Roberts [00:35:38]:

I've been through so many brands. Thankfully, the Red Hat hit, and that's where we're at today. But we would love to have you join us each week for these awesome conversations and these amazing guests like Jon. So we appreciate you listening. With that, I am Larry Roberts.

Sara Lohse [00:35:52]:

And I'm Sara Lohse. And we'll talk to you next week.