#129 Why You Still Need a Website (Even If LinkedIn Is Working for You)

Jonny Ross

-: 00:30

Hello, welcome. It is the 90 day website mastery program podcast. I hope you're well. I'm here with my co-host, Pascal Fintoni.

Jonny Ross

-: 00:30

Are you all right, Pascal?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 00:36

I'm very good. I can't just say, I hope it's not wrong to say, but I love this intro. I just like

Jonny Ross

-: 00:47

it a lot. I love the music. This is episode 48, can you believe it? We're excited to bring you even more valuable insights and practical advice to help you enhance your website's performance.

Jonny Ross

-: 01:05

Join us as we explore strategies to make your website work harder for you, reigniting your pride in your online presence. As always, we're live on LinkedIn, we're live on Instagram, and we are live on YouTube. Perhaps you're listening to the podcast or watching the video replay. However you are here, we love that you're here.

Jonny Ross

-: 01:23

Thank you for joining us. Please keep giving us feedback. Please keep giving us questions because one of our first segments is going to go into one of the questions we've received very recently or certainly something that happened at a recent workshop. So, as I said, it's episode 48.

Jonny Ross

-: 01:34

This one is called why you still need a website even if LinkedIn is working for you. As always, we have four segments. Perhaps we should just dive in. What do you think, Pascal?

Jonny Ross

-: 01:39

Let's do this. Let's do this. You ask, we answer.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 02:28

Thank you very much. And people watching the video version, you could tell just before this intro that I was getting myself really ready to tackle this, because this is what happened to me last week, Johnny, hence the inspiration for your Ask, We Answer by the title for this recording. So I was doing a workshop on AI for digital marketing, and there's a lovely, lovely little i'm kind of activity what we use notebook by google to my favorite platforms and we use it to get to do a critique of the website we use the overviews we use my maps would use all kind of things and then one of the participants just put his hand up and said i don't have a website and to be honest with you I'm doing fine with LinkedIn.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 02:35

I've got a LinkedIn profile. It's working fine. So what would I want to have a website now? And some of the participants have been on previous workshops.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 02:53

Actually, a lady had bought the book, Wepram, and she burst into laughter and said, well, if anyone's going to tell you why you need a website today, even though LinkedIn is working for you, that's Pascal. But I tell you what, I'd love, you know, if it had been you in that room, Johnny, what would you have said or responded perhaps during the coffee break?

Jonny Ross

-: 03:03

Yeah. I mean, okay. So first of all, I'd be kind to them and say, well, actually, you know, you know, LinkedIn, uh, there's a, an audience there. Absolutely.

Jonny Ross

-: 03:19

If it's working well, then that's brilliant. Um, but you are of course, controlled by LinkedIn, uh, and LinkedIn could soon change the algorithm and things could change. Uh, and, and also you're not really getting across. your brand, your presence, your, you know, so many things.

Jonny Ross

-: 03:48

So I think there's probably sort of five things that jump to mind for me. One would be about credibility and first impressions. So the ability to really create far more trust and awareness and in terms of that look and feel, instead of just having a profile that everyone's got on LinkedIn, you really can control that. Because I was in something last week about brand isn't just a logo and a font, it's a feeling.

Jonny Ross

-: 04:13

And that's what our website should give, that feeling, that first impression. The second thing would be the ability to control your own narrative. So if you've be able to, whether that be thought leadership or whether that be humor or whatever it might be, to be able to just sort of put your own content out in your own way and not in a very uniform LinkedIn way. The third thing is visibility beyond LinkedIn.

Jonny Ross

-: 04:41

So obviously you're just in that LinkedIn ecosystem. And there's so much more out there. There's only a proportion of people that are on LinkedIn, and nevermind that, that are actually active on LinkedIn. And that obviously leads into things like scalability and lead generation as well, being able to tap into other audiences and bring in things like case studies and testimonials to really back up what you're doing.

Jonny Ross

-: 05:09

And then I guess future-proofing, because digital landscape is constantly shifting, and there is always movements between these platforms, and you need to own your own so that you've got that future-proof as well. So yeah, I think it's good that LinkedIn's working for you, but this isn't just about a backup plan, this is about a real credibility and first impression behind LinkedIn, way more important.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 05:22

Thank you so much for that, Alice. Perfect. Listen, I was kind too, you know, I did not hit the man with the webcram, copy webcram on the head. But actually what I did was actually look at it and say, well, since you enjoy using LinkedIn so much, you know, tell me more about it.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 05:37

And so I got to the point, I said, well, would it be nice if you wrote maybe a LinkedIn post or LinkedIn article? Would it be nice? if this was available for not just a week. And that's actually very ambitious, a week worth of visibility on LinkedIn for anything you do.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 06:02

Would it be nice if, in months or years to come, somebody else can actually access your wisdom, your thoughts, and so on? And I could see the spark. I can't be sure that I convinced him completely. I could see the spark of this idea, OK, Yeah i can see that and then when we moved into the second activity about how to be part of the AI summaries i could see a bit more the spot become a very small flame but you know everything you

Pascal Fintoni

-: 06:16

heard from from johnny is correct and for me it's this ability to. Enjoy nurturing your online presence because you have full control of your website. And LinkedIn, you can't change it. It is the way it is.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 06:26

And the algorithms are just as helpful or awful as they come. For me, the website is actually to enjoy practicing digital marketing and that's the best platform for it.

Jonny Ross

-: 06:50

And for me, playing the Google game, which by the way, when I say Google, I'm including every AI bot under the sun as well now. But that game of being visible and being at the top and being mentioned, and that's a constant game and you can do far more with a website than you can with a LinkedIn profile. So yeah, I would agree with that as well. Great first segment.

Jonny Ross

-: 06:53

Let's move on to our next segment, which is website stories.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 07:13

So the story you could say that I've chosen for this segment is an article from Adweek. And I keep an eye on it. I don't read it as much as I used to in my younger days. But this one really kind of jumped at me.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 07:43

So the title is as follows. Johnny, AI is disrupting everything, why not podcasting? This was written by Mark Stenberg and is the senior media reporter for Adweek and he attended a podcast conference and he was kind of reflecting on this experience of being there at the conference where he was saying that it's evident to me that AI has been very supportive with regard to podcast creation, what we call the backend efficiencies, or maybe the marketing.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 08:17

But actually, nobody is talking yet about AI being actually used to create and be the voice of those podcast episodes, until a startup company in the US created a completely new show, completely new kind of channel, thousands literally of podcast episodes costing them less than a dollar per episode, becoming almost like a content factory. And saying, you know, we need to have a conversation, everyone, which wasn't the case in the conference. We need to have a conversation about where do we go from there?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 08:31

Because now we have the co-existence of purely AI produced audio content. And of course, we have humans creating their content. And are we going to fight it out? Are we going to collaborate and so on?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 08:43

We need to have that conversation. And the article, can I just say, by the way, from Mark, superbly written. It's a very enjoyable form of written content. I recommend everybody to check the hyperlink in the show notes and have a look at it.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 09:01

But I wanted to ask you quite simply, really, would you listen to a podcast that you know for a fact is not human generated, it's AI generated? Would you consider using it for your business? And is there something in there about the future of written form of content and, of course, video form of content?

Jonny Ross

-: 09:38

The short answer to this is yes, I would listen to an AI podcast. We all prefer content in different formats, whether that be reading, whether it be audio or visual. And I much prefer audio and visual to text-based content. And if I just think about the use of how much use I've done of Notebook LM, and whether that be for research, whether that be for understanding documents or even just taking strategies and putting them into that to then get some bigger picture.

Jonny Ross

-: 10:22

And how that turns it into a podcast in effect that is written by AI, voiced by AI, I listen to that and the whole thing suddenly becomes real and suddenly I'm immersed in this and the fact that these two people talking are actually AI doesn't really affect me in any way shape or form. You could say it's a bit bizarre, but I really engage with that, like really engage with that. And so therefore, as long as the content is good, as long as I'm getting value out of it, as long as I'm not wasting time, because I've only got so many hours, minutes in the day, but if it's content that I want to devote time to, Actually, yeah,

Jonny Ross

-: 10:40

I don't mind AI. I think I think we, you know, I certainly wouldn't want to lose authenticity of human. I think I think the where the content comes from, I'm confident there's a hybrid approach and a bit of both worlds. But in answer to your question, Pascal, I wouldn't be put off by an AI podcast.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 10:49

Yeah, that's interesting. So give a couple of examples of what I do now. So I spend quite a bit of time in the car now. We're back to doing truly in-person events, you and I.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 11:19

And there's a time where the radio doesn't work for me and so on and so forth. So what I've done is been using Copilot quite a bit to have either conversations, so literally I'm expressing that I'm reflecting on this or a question on behalf of a customer, have a back and forth with the AI assistant, which is a very odd practice. Or what you can do with Copilot is you can actually, in advance, book a podcast. So you could say, I'm exploring maybe the impact of the forthcoming UK AI Act.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 11:41

And you literally press Submit. And then the next morning, you have a six-minute conversation pre-recorded between two podcast hosts about that thing. So you've got that. Now the article, which may help this conversation, suggests that the coexistence is probably the way forward as opposed to trying to stop the AI audio content being there.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 12:07

I don't think you could if you tried. But if you accept that there's two types really of content, two types of listeners. You've got listeners who want the content and those who want the connection. And therefore, for formats like a recap on the news, business news, recap on the weather, on the sport, a very dry subject like the UK AI Act, where you don't need the connection, you just need the content, then maybe AI has a role to play there.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 12:47

But of course, if you want the connection, because you want the storytelling, you want the interview, you want that, what I call, as you know, the elegant kind of clumsiness of being human, then you'll be looking at that. So I think that we're going to have, people are going to self-serve and probably say, for the kind of very disposable form of content, I'm happy for this to be an AI generated, and I will select the voice that suits me before the storytelling, one that way it gives me a recharge, help me recharge my creativity and batteries. I'll choose the storytellers and be fascinating to explore someone's Spotify, let's say, can list in the US time compared to today for sure.

Jonny Ross

-: 13:38

Yeah I do see this hybrid approach I really do and I think a good mix and I can completely understand how bringing a subject to life by pre-asking a podcaster that when you when you're about to go on a drive or whatever For me that really does bring it to life, whether I'm prepping for an event, whether I'm prepping for a meeting, putting some of that information into an AI2Creator podcast is the sort of thing I'm already doing with Notebook LM, you're doing with Copilot as well. And so it's no stretch of the imagination to just start listening to podcasts that are written by other people, but are voiced by AI. So yeah, I'm not against it in the slightest.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 14:04

So can I ask very quickly before we move on to the next segment. So do you think that there is room on a website for the kind of roundup type content to be done by AI? And that would be acceptable to both the website owner and the visitors, and therefore the business owner is freed up to get on with the real storytelling and the real kind of content that creates connections?

Jonny Ross

-: 14:21

Well, yeah, for sure. This is about repurposing content, isn't it? So it's about, you know, you've got that piece of content that you're doing on a regular basis, whether that be a weekly, daily, monthly, quarterly, whatever it might be, that consistent piece of content. But then it's how you repurpose that.

Jonny Ross

-: 14:44

you know, it then turns into an email campaign. It then turns into a, you know, the segments of that content go into email. So it would, it would be absolutely right to then take something to round that content up in some kind of audio podcast format and having a digital assistant that is your AI voice and being really clear about it. Uh, I think is, is really normal.

Jonny Ross

-: 15:32

I mean, you know, on a totally separate subject, but, but related, uh, I'm working with a sales team that have just implemented, uh, AI outbound sales calls. So this is where they've had inbound inquiries, uh, and they now need to, uh, qualify the person and take them for a process and then book them in for a consultation. under and they've now implemented a i to do this this isn't to replace jobs by the way this is to improve efficiencies and to allow the humans to do better things i'm being more productive and be more effective it's absolutely not replace jobs either but what. The interesting bit is that the AI is being clear that it's a virtual AI quite early on in the call within the first sort of 30 seconds.

Jonny Ross

-: 15:47

And so far, no one has rejected continuing having the call. So it is really interesting. And yeah, so I back it up with that as well. Thank you very much.

Jonny Ross

-: 15:52

Excellent. Let's go to our third segment, the website engine room.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 16:05

So Johnny, what wonders have you discovered that could make life easier as a website manager or content creator then?

Jonny Ross

-: 16:14

Yeah, for sure. So I never really give any reflection on Microsoft. I'm a very Google person. I'm very open source.

Jonny Ross

-: 16:32

But I thought, you know what? A lot of my clients, a lot of my audience are Microsoft. Whether they'd like it or not, it could be that it's their IT manager that's told them they're Microsoft. So I thought I would share the graphic design tool, MS Designer, which is designer.microsoft.com.

Jonny Ross

-: 16:48

And having a play, it really does allow you to create some stunning designs in a really quick way. You can integrate it seamlessly with the Office tools. There's loads of templates on there. Of course, AI is integrated and embedded in there.

Jonny Ross

-: 16:59

So yeah, so it's a tool that if you are into the Microsoft ecosystem, you should definitely have a look to msdesigner, designer.microsoft.com, a little nice graphic design tool.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 17:21

Excellent, you know, I'm the same. I'm all over Google and the other platforms and sometimes Phil, because I've stumbled upon also a kind of very, very simple video editing platform from Microsoft. So it's there, you know, it is happening. And particularly if it's like you suggested, kind of supported by some kind of AI add-ons, then people should definitely explore it.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 17:37

Well, we've done it again. We've done it again, Johnny, because without talking to each other, we have a very, very similar suggestion for the website Engine Room. So I've been working with clients a lot on, to your point earlier, about repurposing content. So successful articles become e-books and so on and so forth.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 17:56

But within that, we're looking for ways to create striking front covers without e-books. I almost use the the kind of Steve Jobs mentality of, it's so good, they're going to ask you for a print version of this, you know? So I came across this lovely platform called Night Cafe Studio. It's a lovely name, isn't it?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 18:13

Night Cafe Studio. And the reason why I chose it for today is because, A, very different to Canva, very different to everything else out there, which is what you want, you know? when you create visuals. And by the way, those visuals could become the header photos of articles or more social media, but it's very creative and very artistic in nature.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 18:38

And so from a first impression and from a wow factor, if you want to be promoting through downloads or, you know, and create a striking front cover or some kind of chapter sections, I highly recommend that you play with Night Cafe Studio. Lots of ways in which you can specify the style, the format, the look and feel and the palette and so on. And it's just lovely. And the other thing you can do as well is you can gift your creation to the community.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 18:47

And the more people use them, the more points you gain to then access a more advanced version of Night Cafe Studio. I do like apps that

Jonny Ross

-: 19:05

give points. I am one of those people that fall for all of that. The first thing that's come to mind is reporting things on Waze and then seeing the points roll in. I love gamified apps.

Jonny Ross

-: 19:17

So for that reason alone, I might have to have a play. Thank you very much. Let's move on to our final segment, which is the website call to action.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 19:31

Now this is about the one change, the one adjustment you should be making right now to make your website work harder for you. So Johnny, what is your recommendation?

Jonny Ross

-: 19:55

Yeah, this is something that you can simply quickly do even today. Depending on your website, it could just be a few clicks and a sign up to a free tool. Install a heat map tool. So just to understand where users are scrolling, what they're clicking, what they're hovering over, and really understand the data's there.

Jonny Ross

-: 20:19

to start looking at how your users are using your website. It records little videos of where they're moving the mouse, how they're scrolling, things that they're looking at, where people are spending time, for you to then think about, actually, maybe if I move that content here or move this button here, it starts identifying places that potentially people are getting lost or having usability issues. So there's a few different tools.

Jonny Ross

-: 20:41

You could have a look at Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity, or you could even have a look at Crazy Egg. Hot jars, sorry, Microsoft Clarity is completely free as well. So that would be a really good one to look at. But yeah, the bottom line here is installing a heat map tool to really understand how your users are using your website and to start improving their experience.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 20:52

Thank you so much for that. Great reminder. And often what I do with my clients, you know, we have a clear idea of what we hope to learn more. So sometimes the heat map could be on a very specific part of the website or something.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 21:02

Would you know, that's strange. We thought people would do that more or is that strange? And this is not downloading as much as we thought. So you can kind of learn so much by having something very clear in mind.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 21:36

So I mentioned, obviously, when we started them, I did this AI for digital marketing workshop and be working a lot on the AI summaries. I've got this concept called the Google CV, and we play with that quite a bit. But it's occurred to me by having a room full of different businesses showing their AI summaries. It's clear to me now, Johnny, and to our viewers and listeners, that those AI summaries seem to favor a more eclectic range of sources of information than the, forgive me, old fashioned Google search results, only three years since AI, but there we are.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 22:14

It's obvious to me that it doesn't rely solely on the obvious branded websites and the obvious kind of authoritative websites. So my call to action really is to, for everybody that is in the business of doing news roundups or trends reviews or anything like this, even thought leadership with citations to simply refresh your sources of news, change and add to your sources of trends because we all have our habits and we have our go-to websites kind of somewhere on the spreadsheet and can really play to this idea of a more diverse and eclectic range of quotations and citations within the AI summaries. Have you seen that as well?

Jonny Ross

-: 22:32

I absolutely have. And you end up in your, uh, your, your own echo chamber, don't you? Uh, and so I think, uh, I think, you know, getting yourself out of that is so important because we sort of feed ourselves a narrative. Um, and, uh, and, and that actually isn't helpful at all.

Jonny Ross

-: 23:12

A lot of times, uh, in terms of just, you know, growth of a business and really you start believing that, that, that. things are as they are but actually there's a whole nother world that you've just totally uh you know not not aware of and i am seeing that in ai summary so it's a really good reminder of how we need to diversify on the type of content that we're feeding ourselves really really important uh love that and that is one call to action that you could again easily do today you know the topic or the theme of interest that you have, go and find a new source to read or listen to a new bit of information. Brilliant.

Jonny Ross

-: 23:30

What a great episode. And just a reminder on why you still need a website. I love that because that really supports our book, Web Proud, which is all about being proud of your website. had it launched on Amazon for just nearly, we're coming up to a year, which is very exciting.

Jonny Ross

-: 23:54

And so that's really good. But it's a reminder that the website is a place to be able to own your own brand and to be able to really tell your own narrative, your own story, and to ensure that you're giving that feeling that you want to give to your ideal clients or customers. That was great. AI podcasts.

Jonny Ross

-: 24:03

Yeah, totally up for that. I don't think people should be put off. And if anything, I liked your idea of using it to do roundups of content. I like that a lot.

Jonny Ross

-: 24:04

You're

Pascal Fintoni

-: 24:22

doing some of that, are you not? For myself, so it's almost like my own private podcast studio where I want to explore things, I want to study things, and I listen. But what I don't do, which is actually an interesting point, Tony, I don't share them on. I don't make them available to others, but perhaps I should.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 24:36

I mean, you and I are using Captivate.fm, a UK-based hosting company. And what wouldn't I create a channel with essentially like a, yeah, help yourself to the recent conversation Pascal had with AI. Yeah, thanks for that.

Jonny Ross

-: 24:50

Well, maybe that is your call to action for this week. Listen, thank you so much for joining us, whether you've been with us live, whether you're listening on the podcast, you're watching the replay. Thank you so much for being here. If you get a moment, please leave us a review on Apple podcast.

Jonny Ross

-: 25:04

It would mean a huge amount. Tell a friend if this has been helpful as well. And of course, speak to us on any of our platforms. And if you've got some questions or you want to submit anything or you want something on a future episode, please do reach out.

Jonny Ross

-: 25:12

That's been episode 48 of the 90 Day Website Mastery Podcast. That's all for now and we will look forward to seeing you on the next one.