Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

The Key to Becoming More Discoverable in 2025

• Neal Schaffer • Episode 392

Share episode

This episode explores effective strategies for improving discoverability in 2025, emphasizing the importance of adapting to video content and content repurposing. Marketers are encouraged to leverage their existing assets and create tailored content to engage audiences on various platforms. 

• Importance of content as currency in digital marketing 
• Shift towards video-first strategies for discoverability 
• Understanding the need for tailored communication across platforms 
• The power of content repurposing for maximizing existing resources 
• Role of AI in enhancing content strategies 
• Balancing content creation with audience engagement 

Learn More:

Speaker 1:

In a previous episode, I talked about how 2025 was the year for discoverability, and in this episode, as a follow-up, I want to give you my best advice on how you and your organization can become more discoverable in 2025 in an efficient way. So make sure you keep listening in to this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 2:

Digital social media content, influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, vlogging, tiktoking, linkedin, twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, seo, sem, ppc, email marketing there's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil on your side, because Neil Schaefer is your digital marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital-first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach and this is Neil Schafer.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, this is Neil Schafer. Welcome to episode number 392 of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. In episode 390, my last solo episode, I talked about how 2025 was all about being the year of discoverability. How we as people, as companies, get found is well undergoing a pretty significant shift that, I would argue, really began with COVID, with the emergence of TikTok and of short form video and generative AI and chat. Gpt has only further changed the landscape, or transformed the landscape, shall we say. So if you haven't listened to two episodes ago episode number 390, I highly recommend that you first listen to that.

Speaker 1:

I got a lot of great feedback from that episode and therefore I wanted to do a follow-up with my advice on how to become more discoverable in 2025. And really, you know, I like to tie together several digital threads, thus the name of the book that I wrote. But you know, when we talk about discoverability, it also reminds me of when I wrote the Age of Influence, and I talked about influence. Also, this next book that I'm writing about personal branding, it is the same thing. The only way to become discoverable, to be found, to be known in a digital first world, is through content. Now it's more than just content. It requires a profile, it requires building a community, it requires engaging with others. But at the heart of it, content really is the currency of social media, of digital media. It is the foundation of influence and also for becoming discoverable. It is as important as ever Now.

Speaker 1:

I am a Gen Xer, so I am from a generation where we didn't really like to share a lot of personal information online. It is why, even today, I still do not share photos of my children or my beautiful wife, beautiful children, online. Just never, never, really did that. Right Now, when we think of millennials, gen Z and maybe a lot of you listening, you're very used to sharing your life online. You're used to uploading photos and maybe even short form video. So for you I think it is going to be an easier transition than for those that are older than that are just not used to this. But if there's anything that the coronavirus pandemic brought to us, it is also the fact that a lot of us are now used to showing up online and video. Right Before Zoom and all that was. You know what is this and do I have to turn the camera on? And all that, but with remote work and the pandemic and the prevalence, if not the ubiquitous, of Zoom and online meetings, and you know Microsoft Teams and all that I think we're very much used to showing up online in video, and that is really the key to becoming discoverable.

Speaker 1:

Now I wanna read to you, as I did in episode number 390, I wanna read to you a different chapter from Digital Threads, because I have a chapter that I think is most relevant to today's conversation about becoming discoverable, which is about content. It is chapter 12, grow content. Now it begins with a quote. Like every chapter in this book, did I really enjoy finding relevant quotes? Now, I do not know the name of this dude, or you know. I do know the name of him, I should say, but I don't really know much about him, other than this quote is highly attributed to him, which is to repurpose an old thought, idea or memory to a new purpose is the height of creativity, and I'm going to continue on, because this is really going to set the framework, the foundation for my advice for today.

Speaker 1:

Content is truly the currency of digital marketing. Like every other form of currency, its worth comes from ensuring you get the most out of spending it, finding your keywords, understanding your audience and developing the written word is a lot of work to just create one piece of content. The good news is that publishing your video or blog post or podcast is not the end of the line for the currency. In fact, if we transform the way we think about content, it is just the beginning. You see, content is an asset, a gift that keeps on giving. It pays dividends, above and beyond all the benefits we have covered, when we repurpose it for every type of digital marketing container in our arsenal. Digital marketing containers is a concept that I cover earlier in Digital Threads. In order to grow, we don't necessarily need to be creating more content from scratch. We can simply repurpose more of what we already have in more formats.

Speaker 1:

Wanting to meet your customers across different platforms, even in different mediums, as new social media platforms rise, is natural. As my friend and fellow marketing author of Content 10X, amy Woods, reminds us, people consume content in different formats like two diners at a restaurant one who wants the buffet and the other who wants a set menu. Finding the time to create original pieces of content that work organically and natively on each platform is time consuming. That's where your repurposing content strategy comes into play. Your company might be swimming in content without realizing it. Every blog post, every email newsletter, every event that you host, every time one of your employees speak, every webinar that you do, these are all different content. Once you record and develop these, they can become a powerful engine, exponentially creating more pieces of content across different platforms. When you make content repurposing part of your marketing DNA, it becomes much easier to meet the needs of the digital economy of today.

Speaker 1:

Being active across different platforms doesn't have to equate to creating lots of content On social media. The goal is to develop and maintain relationships. That means communicating your message in ways that work on each platform. You need to understand the language and ways to communicate across different networks. Reposting the same piece across platforms won't necessarily work. It lacks strategy and ignores the fact that different communities and different platforms require different approaches. It's throwing your message to the abyss and hoping for engagement. Different platforms also engage. Different languages, different ways of communicating. To truly take advantage of a platform, you need to take this into consideration. Using the Gen Z meme-centric approach of TikTok on Facebook might misfire. Trying to push it on LinkedIn might discredit your message.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes the algorithm can penalize reposting content from one platform to another. Instagram has clarified that videos that are clearly recycled from other apps will be less discoverable on the platform. While it has yet to be proven, many marketers believe that even if you try to remove the TikTok watermark, it seems there are ways that the algorithm recognizes that the video is not native to the platform. The algorithm is the data-centric gatekeeper, but the audience in different platforms won't engage with your content in the same way as on another platform. This difference needs to be dealt with to make it easy for the algorithm to put it in front of your audience.

Speaker 1:

You should primarily focus the energy and time you spend on building content that lasts longer in search engines. This is what I talked about in episode number 390, blogs, youtube videos and podcasts. In building your library of content, almost every piece of content you created is evergreen in nature the best content for repurposing. One way to begin is to look at your analytics for pieces with high engagement metrics, positive feedback and long-term search engine traffic. These provide the strongest foundation for future iterations. As with platform authentic content, the content needs to work on the platform you post on without calling for the user to leave the platform and go to your site. At least, you should not call for them to leave.

Speaker 1:

Often, for most businesses, content creation will probably focus on text first, such as blog posts, lead magnets, email newsletters, etc. Or video first, like webinars, zoom interviews, video recordings of podcast interviews, youtube videos, etc. So I wanted to read you that post entirely, because you've probably heard about this term called content repurposing, and this is really the key to becoming found is to be able to check the boxes of the platforms where both search engines and large language models are actively indexing content. So we know that the textual format, or blogs, is the starting point, but we also know that videos, youtube transcripts are also being ingested by large language models. We know that podcast transcripts are always being ingested by large language models, and we know we need to be active on social media as well. So if you put all of that together, you begin to realize that the textual focus that we've had up until now up until really, I would say, instagram With Instagram, we started posting photos, what have you? I think most businesses are still very, very textual centric.

Speaker 1:

It's only going to be seen, it's only going to allow you to become discoverable by a very, very small number of people. And I say this because if you think about the social media piece, and I do the same thing. When you're publishing a blog post, you're sharing the link on social media. That is the worst thing you can do. The worst performing content on social media is linking out externally, right. So we need to break that habit, and the easiest way to break that habit and the content that gets most discoverable today is visual. And if we had to pick one, it would definitely be short form video. I mean, you cannot be on YouTube shorts or TikTok without short form video. We cannot get a lot of engagement outside of our followers on Instagram unless it is a real right. Even LinkedIn now has a dedicated video tab. Unless it is a real right, even LinkedIn now has a dedicated video tab.

Speaker 1:

So my first suggestion for becoming more discoverable in 2025 is really to lean into videos, and this is nothing new, but we have a new emphasis now because of the emergence and really the competition from large language models of how they're ingesting content. So we really need to have a video-first content strategy and short-form video, long-form video we can do both, but every social network will obviously accept that video, right? The question is well, what are we going to talk about Now, the podcast is an interesting one because it allows you, especially if you record interviews. It gives you all the content you need, right? And if you don't do a podcast, you can do your own talking head videos or demonstration videos, whatever. It might be long form videos, but each one of those formats because it is starting with longer video allows us to easily repurpose that into shorter video, right, and it allows us to easily take the audio and record it as a podcast.

Speaker 1:

Now, obviously, when we talk about Instagram, tiktok, youtube, it's video. But there's other networks as well, right, and I'm thinking primarily outside of those big networks. We have LinkedIn, where video is gaining in popularity, but obviously other content formats still do well there. Now, I've talked about this before, but I've realized for my own posting that newsletters are seemingly doing well there, right, newsletters attract subscribers. Newsletters keep people on the platform. Newsletters also get indexed by large language models.

Speaker 1:

So by taking a video podcast and doing a LinkedIn Live and a Facebook Live and a YouTube Live and then having it archived on YouTube, but also creating something textual about that on LinkedIn in a newsletter format, is going to get me more engagement, more impressions, than if I was just to share a link to a YouTube video or to a podcast or even to a blog post on my own website, right? So we're leaning in to what works on each platform and that's the key thing. You might find, as I do, you post the same thing on TikTok, instagram, youtube. Definitely every platform is going to be different, but you're going to find winners and losers and you may decide. You know what. If I want to do better on TikTok, I need to do a different type of content, but at least I mean I just mentioned it's a best practice to really customize your content for each platform. But at least if you start with that same content on those three major platforms, you're going to get a feel. You're going to get some benchmarks as to which one is going to do better and maybe for which content buckets you're going to do better on as well.

Speaker 1:

Now, another approach is, if you don't want to take a podcast approach is really to consider short form video as if it was a blog, right? Instead of writing a blog post, you're going to give a 30 to 60 second talk on maybe one thing you might've talked about from that blog post, maybe one H2 section, maybe one H3 section, in fact, if you have a blog post, you can simply repurpose it into video in that way. I have a client and they repurpose blog posts into Facebook and Instagram ads right, where they take the five main points of the blog post. Facebook and Instagram ads right, where they take the five main points of the blog post and for each one they have a two to three second video, like stock video, and that becomes the advertisement for their product, which they basically, you know, talk about the benefits of using their product in that blog post and therefore it all works together in a nice ad that has converted very well for them.

Speaker 1:

Of course, if you have images, you can repurpose those in the videos, but I do believe the video first approach right, either starting with long form videos you already have, beginning a podcast for the purpose of repurposing them into shorter videos, repurposing blog posts into shorter videos, or, because this is the age of generative AI, it is not difficult to have a conversation with your favorite LLM, be it Chachi, pt or Claude, explain who you are, explain what you're trying to achieve and get ideas for a series of videos that you could be doing, and the thing here is you don't need to be doing these, like several times a day. Right, there are 30 days in the week, there are 20, well, let's say there's 25 work days in the week. It's 25 videos, right, if you can create 25 videos. I know it sounds like a lot, but if you were to sit down in front of a camera it can be an iPhone over the course of a day and you already know what you're going to talk about and you just need to say something, 30 seconds to a minute at a time. I believe it's doable, especially using a chat GPT, to organize bullet point scripts in advance. Right, then you could send them off to editors. I am working with a short-form video editor on Fiverr. It does not have to be that expensive, right. We're talking about editing probably 25 videos. I would say you could probably get that done for like $100. I kid you not, right? Maybe between 100 and 200, maybe a little bit under 100, but this does not have to cost a lot of money. The cost really is in your time and your ideas and making sure that that content is really relevant in your time and your ideas and making sure that that content is really relevant to your message. Now, how much is short form video going to get indexed compared to longer video, obviously you're at sort of a disadvantage, but in terms of getting engagement on social media platforms and being discoverable, obviously short form video is the way to go. But if we can do long form video as well, even better you could do, you know, a five to 10 minute long form video Once you get comfortable speaking in front of a camera. Then you can repurpose that into a few shorts as well.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to give you further advice, because this is something I've really been spending a lot of time on recently is the repurposing of longer form video into shorter form video. And once you have a video first content creation policy and you have DNA and of repurposing in your blood, you begin to look at content a little bit differently. You begin to think repurposing in mind before you even create the content. So this has led me to adjust the way that I record videos. For instance, I know that when I publish a podcast, I'm going to have an intro and an outro, so I begin the video as if I've already done the intro. Right, for instance, I also will to have an intro and an outro, so I begin the video as if I've already done the intro right, for instance, I also will switch the camera angles to really focus in on my guest, to make it more engaging by not just having two talking heads next to each other the whole time, but having transition screens. What have you? So these are little things you can do, but the big thing is you end up with an hour video. What should you repurpose in the short form video?

Speaker 1:

Now, generative AI holds a lot of promise here. It is not perfect yet. There are apps like Opus, clip, nealschafercom, slash. Opus is the most famous one. I've played around with it as well. The problem with Opus is it goes through an hour interview and it's going to give you 30 short-form video ideas like off the bat, and I have found that I just get lost in the content. So I have started experimenting with both ChatGPT and with Otter.

Speaker 1:

Now Otterai is where I have started to do the transcripts of my podcasts or YouTube live streams, youtube videos, and then create an SRT file which I export back to YouTube and then I create various languages from that. That's the multilingual approach is a whole different thing to talk about here, but what's important here is that, depending on the large language model, you're going to get very different answers. So I can go into otterai on a video or audio that I just uploaded and, based off of the transcript, I can say hey, I want to create, you know, 10, 30 to 60 seconds engaging snippets from this interview that include both my question as well as my guest's answer. Please suggest 10 timestamps to me, and then what would the title, what would the caption? 10 timestamps to me, and then what would the title, what would the caption, or what would the hashtag, or what would the thumbnail image be? I mean, really, whatever you can think of, whatever you want to do, whatever you want to accomplish, you can have that conversation with the AI and get the ideas. So I do the same in ChatGPT. With ChatGPT, I upload the transcript and immediately I have two now variations and they're both recommending different snippets.

Speaker 1:

But now, because I'm only going through 10, and because I think the AI I mean, at the end of the day, tools like Opus Clip are really using large language models and they're adding a skin above it. But I'm really going back to the source here, which I believe is ChatGPT, although Otter obviously is really good with transcriptions because it is a transcription company. But now I can go through and, instead of having to go through 30 videos, right, the Otter interface is really cool because the videos right there, the timestamps, are really there. It's really easy for me to just go into the timestamp and then, you know, find that little snippet and so, really, these 10 snippets, I'm spending 10 or 15 minutes, but I feel like I'm more a part of the content creation process.

Speaker 1:

I'm now being a little bit more choosy and I'm saying you know what, out of this hour interview, there's maybe only three really golden nuggets that I think stand on their own as a short form video. Before, when I was using Opus Clip, I'd be able to create like 10 or 15 videos that were okay, but now that I look back at it, it's like you know what I think, if you're really going to create repurposed content, you really want to have these golden nuggets. So every short form video content that you create isn't just through the art of repurposing, it really stands on its own as a short form video. And I think that people are well, I'm not going to say people are getting sick of seeing those short form videos. But I think we really need to raise our game and this is the way to do it.

Speaker 1:

So by doing that, I believe that I have found a system which doesn't have to take up a lot of time, and then, when I have those time snippets, I'm sending them over to my editor on Fiverr. A few days later they're done, usually within one revision. They're perfect, and then I could schedule out those posts. Right now I am trying to publish three of these a week and as I get more of these done from the backlog, I want to try to increase that to five a week, if not every day, if possible. But now it gives me video to speak about. Now, you know, thinking about LinkedIn, if I could publish three videos a week and then two newsletters a week, that's a pretty robust publishing schedule, right.

Speaker 1:

And then, knowing that those videos are being archived on YouTube they are in podcast format and I'm creating that LinkedIn newsletter and, yes, there is a podcastneilschafercom where the transcripts are being indexed as well by search engines you begin to see that it really is helping me become discoverable. So you need to have video. That's the key thing here. Without video, with just text, you're really only and especially with the way that search engines are changing, you're really only going to be seen by a smaller and smaller group of people. So we've always been saying we need to do more video, we need to do more video, but I think in 2025, really, the writing has always been on the wall, but with these latest changes and just through the need to work harder to become more discoverable, we really need to take it to the next level and I'm hoping, I'm hoping that by listening to this podcast, you got some new ideas, or I should say this episode, you got some new ideas as to how you can become more video.

Speaker 1:

First, ideas for creating of the videos, better ways of content repurposing, better ways of using AI. Really, ai is not about content creation. Ai is about content repurposing. If you ask AI to create a video for you, it is not going to be good. If you ask AI to create a video for you, it is not going to be good. If you ask AI to create a blog post for you, it will not be good. If you feed AI a transcript and you say I'd like you to summarize this into an engaging blog post with additional prompts, you can create something that's really good because it started with your own content, and that is the key here. When you start with your own content, ai is incredible at recommending ways of repurposing that content.

Speaker 1:

You don't have to use an AI tool for the actual repurposing. In fact, it's almost better to use a human editor, I would say so that you can add things that these AI tools even Opus Clip, for being an amazing tool that it is still cannot add. Certain things they can add you know B-roll but they can't add special effects, for instance. Certain things they can't do which a human editor can. So don't rely on AI to create everything for you. Use it intelligently as part of your process, but always begin with your own content. If you could begin with your own video content and you could create this video content consistently, that is the key to becoming more discoverable and I do think you will see a lot of benefits to your organization once you do so.

Speaker 1:

Now, I mentioned content. Creation is not everything to become discoverable, especially when it comes to social media. There's another side of the coin, which is engagement, and for any of you that have read not digital threads, but Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth my other new book that I released a few months ago I talk a lot about engagement as being part of your playbook for LinkedIn specifically, but really it needs to be part of your playbook for social media. I'm going to cover that in episode number 394, which hopefully I'll publish next week, but I want to stop here, I think, hopefully, this has been great advice. Love your feedback.

Speaker 1:

What do you think about this episode? Tag me on social, send me an email, neil at neilschafercom. I'm still on my quest to get to 100 reviews by the end of the year. If you learned anything from this podcast, I'd be honored if you could go over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen. Just one or two sentences letting everybody know what you learned. This obviously helps the podcast algorithms. Allow this podcast to become more discoverable. On the same theme of discoverability for 2025. And make sure you take a screenshot. Let me know. I would like to thank you personally for that. All right, well, that is my shameless request for this episode. This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schafer, signing off.

Speaker 2:

You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links go to podcastneilschafercom. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilschafercom to tap into the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your Digital Marketing Coach.