#141 Your Social Posts Are Not Duplicate Content, and Your Website Needs Them

Jonny Ross

-: 00:33

Your social posts are not duplicate content and your website needs them. That is what we're going to be discussing today in the 90 Day Website Mastery podcast. Hello! It's episode 60.

Jonny Ross

-: 00:34

Pascal, welcome.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 00:51

Well, thank you very much. Yes, 60, 6-0. Permission to feel emotional about it, because, you know, we've been kind of setting this up a few years ago now. As a result, if you remember, everybody, you know, we had the webinars, then we had, you know, some kind of, you know, earlier interventions online.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 01:08

Then the book came along, and we are fast approaching the second anniversary of Web Proud, the book that you now have co-authored. And we've been working on a little something behind the scenes. So for our viewers and listeners only, we have a preview for you because we have a new website coming along.

Jonny Ross

-: 01:25

which is very exciting indeed. And yeah, that's been a brilliant project that we've been working on. So it's the 60th episode. You could be joining us live right now on LinkedIn or on YouTube, or perhaps you're listening to the replay or watching the replay.

Jonny Ross

-: 01:39

Whether we're in your ear or whether you're watching, we are delighted that you are with us and it's brilliant that you keep joining us. And please do tell your friends and leave us a review if you think today's episode is any good. We've got four segments as always. We've got the You Ask, We Answer.

Jonny Ross

-: 02:07

We've got website stories where we find an article or a podcast or something that was seen online and we explore it for you. And of course, we have the website engine room where we share an app or a piece of kit that we think is going to make your life easier as a website manager. And we always finish with a website call to action, giving you one small thing adjustment that you could be making on your website right now. so that you can start feeling more proud of your website and join us on the web proud movement.

Jonny Ross

-: 02:11

Let's start with our first segment, you ask, we answer.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 02:36

Now this question actually was sent to me via email from one of our listeners. So, you know, thank you. Thank you people are listening and reacting. And it was an episode where you and I were mentioning as in a call to action, don't leave everything on the social media, you know, find ways to repurpose some of that content.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 03:19

for your website for more visibility and and to make sure people get to see it as well because as you well know a social media post today is gone forever tomorrow so word for word this is what you know this lady sent to us you mentioned in the recent episode that we should repurpose social media posts into website content but would that not create duplicated content and isn't that something that search engines frowned upon So I'm glad that she really got in touch because we'd say repurposing, we didn't say copy and paste, right, Tony Ross? But what's your reaction to someone that's perhaps concerned about duplication of content? And I would say almost an outdated views about the fact that, you know, you can't have the same thing in more than one platform.

Jonny Ross

-: 03:34

Yeah, I agree. This is the answer is in that word repurpose, isn't it? And so this is about not copying and pasting. And this is about, you know, you've got to remember that you don't own social media, you sort of rent social media.

Jonny Ross

-: 04:11

And we've and we've always said that this is about owning your own website, feeling proud of your website, being that the website is the sort of the source of truth And if your profile was to disappear, whether that be the platform changing or whether that be an algorithm, then you're owning it. So what we're suggesting is that social media is a great way to surface things, it's a great way to experiment, great way to learn, great way to listen, great way to sort of put quick ideas out. But the idea is that you then take that, and if something goes well on social, it's about repurposing it onto your website, and then bringing it into something deeper.

Jonny Ross

-: 04:46

So perhaps you might share three top tips on a social media post, but then if that comes onto your website, I'd be expecting it to be turned into more like sort of seven or eight ways on how to do something, which then sort of gives real life experience and potentially what you've done with your clients or customers, maybe some evidence, some background, why you've got those thoughts and how it all works together. So it gives you the ability to take something and deepen it. And there's nothing wrong with sort of embedding a social post within that content or linking out to it.

Jonny Ross

-: 05:36

Duplicate content is quite a myth really. The bottom line is that actually duplicate content is quite normal and fine, and it's more about being explicit to the machines that you own both pieces, and it's then up to the machines which one they surface. But the problem actually on the flip side of this, Pascal, on the flip side is that if you don't bring some of this content onto your website, then actually in this day and age of us having to train AI about us and so that if someone's searching for our products or services or a business like ours, if we're sort of, we've got this sort of face on social media where we talk about particular topics, but our website doesn't really talk about those things and is a bit more out of date and sort of is, our

Jonny Ross

-: 05:49

thinking's a bit older, then the biggest problem you've got there is that the evidence we're presenting to the machines doesn't tally up. So there's lots of reasons to be taking your social media content and repurposing.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 06:24

Thank you very much for that recap. And, you know, if you think about it, and if you think about a news item and all the different news websites reporting the same news, you know, if the logical duplicated content was true, then there would be only one source of news, you know. So just kind of bear that in mind, everybody. But also, whilst I can have some sympathy with the concept of duplication, Perhaps if you are indeed a high street brand if you are one of the larger banks and airline whatever, i may be that that concern which is a one percent of your SEO kind of engine

Pascal Fintoni

-: 06:36

but at our level all of us you know the small medium sized enterprises i don't think we should be concerned about my concern is more lack of visibility. Do the test, everyone. Google yourselves. Google your products.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 06:56

And you will see you rarely, rarely get a social media post being cited by anything, whether that's Google, whether that's ChatGPT, whether that's Google AI mode. They may crawl them, but they don't use them at all. And the reason for that is twofold. On one hand, some of the social media posts, they can't quite actually connect with an author.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 07:10

So they can't quite tell who has written this? Is it Johnny, really, or is it not? But also, by nature, they are very, very brief. And actually, what all those search engines, whether they are AI-powered or not, need is depth of information.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 07:15

They need detail. They need paragraphs. They needed subheaders. They need headers.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 07:45

They do all sorts of things. But they've been designed to scan since the mid-'90s. Interestingly, I just realized that this month we are celebrating Almost thirty years of google i mean it's just madness you know so but thirty years ago google was designed to scan through. Segments and sections of articles not social media post but also like you said is the risk of you know you having publishing a social media post and actually what you've done here.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 08:19

is almost no test market for reactions with that be of interest to them is that something i want to explore further, let me get a bunch of likes and comments and shares you've done all the market research you need to go to know what this interest let me go deeper. Oh let me go into more details perhaps you've done the shed a news item so we say and you've written for five words to sell that's interesting to get some reaction. This is all you need as evidence to go for a deep dive article where you can summarize the news item you can offer your comments and reactions.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 08:38

and then offer some actions, some advice, what you can do. And when we say repurpose, maybe you shared a video on social media, and it's repurposed with more copy. Perhaps it was copy, and you repurposed it into an infographic or a podcast version. So that's what I mean by repurposing.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 08:50

You edit up, as I sometimes call it during our workshops, if you recall, Johnny, or you change the format. But it is on your website to kind of support your visibility and your marketing engine.

Jonny Ross

-: 09:16

Yeah. And it's the, you know, even just things like adding, when you've added it to your website, adding an FAQ section to that particular article, the benefit that that brings as well. And it gives you the ability to be able to test something out on social media, use that as a test bed. And if you're getting engagement and it sort of lands well, then that's the perfect opportunity to turn that into deeper, richer content on the website.

Jonny Ross

-: 09:25

a great question from one of your clients. I like it. Let's move to our next segment, website stories.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 09:57

Now, for this segment of the show, Jenny, I've chosen an article for you and I to react to. It is from a platform called Social Media Today. Now, I know this is a Website Mastery podcast, but I think there are lessons from social media yet again that we can kind of use to extrapolate what we might do in terms of our own website experience for our visitors. So this article was written by Andrew Hutchinson, is the content and social media manager from socialmediatoday.com.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 10:14

And the title goes as follows. Instagram growth continues to outpace Facebook in the EU. It's actually quite rare to have data from UK and EU, so I thought it was quite keen to go about this. And really, what I want to do is point people to the article.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 10:49

It's actually not very long at all. And actually, for you, all of you internally, with your website design agency or with your commercial team, is to really think about what are the lessons for us in terms of our website management in terms of clearly an increase in genuine visually led content marketing because the reason why instagram is obviously favored and is now growing in terms of time spent on the platform but also numbers of account facebook is obviously the appeal for visuals. A couple of things as well you need to understand.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 11:13

The decline in interest in Facebook seems to have been linked as well with them playing far too much with the algorithm. People don't get to see what they want to see, primarily local news. So we should take a hint as well for our website. If there is clearly a desire to have access to local news, you're going to have always championed this kind of local news roundup or industry news roundup as a content marketing technique.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 11:51

but also because again to be messing with the algorithm you see a lot less about the information from your network and this constant can i push for. Not be individuals and brands are connected with you so there's a bit of fatigue with facebook but it's designed to be within the meta ecosystem and therefore instagram is it. So for me really, I suppose the lesson or the hint, and that's not new really, is to think about what you're doing visually with your website. You and I perhaps spend a lot of time talking about copy-based information, but the visual stimuli, images on your website, are so very important.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 12:33

It is a multimedia experience, because you can have moving images, as we do, and you can have also audio only. And so the way which sometime i do this in a workshop on content marketing is a split in the visual strategy into three elements so the first one is evidence based visual so any form of photography and visual that can illustrate the point that you're making. The other one is explanation-based visuals. So if you want to explain a number of steps, which could be how to use your product or service, or how to pay before you go into the shopping basket, then those visuals can be very, very important.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 12:57

And then the third one, which is very, very important, is what sometimes I call evocative or atmospheric visuals. So essentially, it's just there to really bring people into your universe, but there's not a core message. And sometimes we can have fun with the style, the imagery, and that kind of things. But ultimately, I think there is an exercise for all of us to reflect on the visually led experience of our website.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 13:27

And all I'm doing here is giving people a three part framework. Think of it as a Venn diagram, evidence-based visuals, explanation-based visuals, and evocative or atmospheric visuals. And I just have the discussions and my recommendation to close on that is get used to scrapbooking. If you're still buying printed magazines, if you find something that looks great, you like the visual, just stare at the page and put it into a folder, or you can do digital scrapbooking.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 13:34

I still do to this day where I copy and paste visuals into a PowerPoint and then it becomes the working document for the website.

Jonny Ross

-: 14:21

I think a tip that works for me is having it at the back of your mind all the time. So when you're out and about with clients at an event, in a work environment, even just catching the train, whatever it might be, it's about what catches your eye and could you capture that on camera? And moving towards trying to get two, three, four second little videos as well, so that you can then take all of that and then create something quite simple. so that you're owning your own sort of media bank.

Jonny Ross

-: 14:56

And whatever it is that you're into, this is the opportunity to bring personality, to bring hobbies, all the interests that you have outside of work. Here's the opportunity to try and link it visually as well. So I think there's lots of different ways of coming up with visuals, but the more real something is, the better as well. Yes, it can feel awkward, you know, taking a picture at a meeting or with a client or in a client's offices or whatever else.

Jonny Ross

-: 15:16

But actually, some of that can be really interesting. And the bottom line is, as humans, we're more interested in the behind the scenes. than we are looking at some image that's just been AI'd and just made and is far too polished. We want the real stuff.

Jonny Ross

-: 15:41

So that would be my tip. Constantly think that visual is important. And yes, your proof is that how Instagram is overtaking Facebook hugely, which is nothing new, but it's Things that it's, it's the, the fact is that businesses need to realize this, uh, and, uh, you know, not just think about it outside of work, but actually as a business, what's your Instagram strategy.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 15:54

No, absolutely. And you know, it's almost, so I'm reminding myself of the workshop that I do. And there's like a pyramid, if you will, like a triangle with three tiers. So you've got the tier one on the top of the pyramid, which is professional photography.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 16:23

And of course you should consider doing that and don't think that you can match the talent of a photographer. So then you've got the tier in the middle, which is what I mentioned, which is grab your phone and, and plan it and do it yourself in terms of the evidence-based and explanation-based. And then, you're right, there's the third tier, which is probably actually what happens in social media, which is capturing a moment. Because those moments will be part of the memories that you're creating on the website.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 16:35

The best example I can think of, like you said, this very kind of let them in. Do you remember when Moz used to do the Whiteboard Fridays videos? Yeah. And they were just superb.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 16:52

So every Friday we won, the team at Moz, SEO experts, would literally doodle on the whiteboard, and sometimes very badly. I mean, it wasn't like neat handwriting. It was just genuine, this is what we're thinking about. And then they would run through their notes on the whiteboard.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 17:12

But the whiteboard became, of course, a JPEG, a PNG. I was also doing the rounds of SEO search results and so on. But it was just literally, you had a moment every Friday where you were in the office with the team, they doodled on the whiteboard, they would take you through the whiteboard, and it became just the thing. And it went on for years and years and years.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 17:27

And deep down, I'm probably still missing it, because you made an appointment. But it was just to find that eventually you got used to, that's their way of doing things, those kind of handwritten sketches on the whiteboard, which is so, you said, so authentic, to use that term. Yeah.

Jonny Ross

-: 17:41

Yeah, no, visual, you've got to be top of mind all the time. It has to be thinking about visual. A great website story. I like the analysis on that.

Jonny Ross

-: 17:45

Thank you, Pascal. Shall we move to the website, Engine Room?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 18:02

Now in this part of the show, Jonny and I choose one app, one software solution, a piece of kit that can make life easier as a website manager or content creator. So Jonny, what is your selection?

Jonny Ross

-: 18:38

So this one is frustrating me if I'm honest. My background is SEO, search engine optimization, which has very easily become into AI visibility and where in the olden days you'd be wanting to track ranks, so you'd take your search terms, your keywords, you'd want to know where you are in Google. that's very much become trying to track your position in AI. So prompt research, but also prompt positions and understanding how well you're doing in chat GPT, how well you're doing in perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, the whole lot.

Jonny Ross

-: 19:14

And the frustration that I started with is that I am, if I'm honest, struggling to find the right tool. I'm playing with a lot of them and they've all got benefits, but what I'm finding is that you are having to triangulate data because All of these results are so personalized that it's really difficult to really get to the bottom of where you truly are, let's call it ranking or appearing being cited citations inside AI. So I've taken a long time before I get to the tool that I'm going to mention, which is Otterly.ai.

Jonny Ross

-: 19:54

And I guess the caveat that I've included is that this isn't the golden bullet that's going to give you everything. It's part of your armory as a website manager to be able to have a triangulation on what another decent tool is suggesting where you are. So there's a reasonably cheap version that they start with and I'd suggest having a play. So it's a way to be able to do prompt research, it's a way to look at AI search analytics and to ultimately optimize to be found more in AI because the bottom line is people are using AI.

Jonny Ross

-: 20:26

I don't know if you saw an article I just put out about John Lewis I think one of their ex-leadership team was saying that only 0.3% of our search is coming through AI, and they've now been able to prove that 2.5% is actually coming through AI. And they've just produced a short series podcast with Louis Faroult. It's like a visual video podcast. And the whole sort of background of that is to power their presence in AI.

Jonny Ross

-: 20:45

And so you've got very large businesses putting a lot of money into shaping what machines think about them. And so that sort of ties into why you need to start figuring out how you're going to track it. And Otterly.ai is my tip for this week to have a look into.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 21:20

Thank you very much and i think your point is right you know this will be an early adopters mindset whereby is far from perfect but it's the beginning of being upscaling yourself. As a data analyst or data gathering and listen in indeed this is the logic that led me to the selection today because. I'm becoming more and more, I suppose, concerned about the sense of overwhelm for marketers, whether that's your full-time occupation or something you do in addition to all the plates spinning when you look up to your website, because you're going to have multiple sources of data, as you mentioned. And we need two types of data.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 21:58

We need almost information about what are people looking for and interested in right now that could inspire my content marketing activities. And conversely, I need to understand what on earth is happening on my website that can help me kind of make wise decisions about where to focus. And with that in mind, I was reminded of something that has been around for a very long time, called SiteKit, Site, S-I-T-E, and Kit, SiteKit, which is a Google product. And the other thing behind the selection, Johnny, is to allow someone to maybe have a simpler, a calmer interface to understand what is happening primarily on their WordPress website.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 22:51

And what Sitegate does, it kind of brings together the data from Search Console, from Google Analytics 4, and maybe a few others as well. directly into your wordpress dashboard so that the ad of calming everything by saying what i have to do is go on wordpress i can begin in my content marketing effort by looking quickly what's been happening recently and i can inform and motivate me to do to do the things because you know i'm just getting a bit worried that you know now we have so many things to measure that two things could happen and it's harder to capture it it's harder to explain it to you as you know to your borders how to explain to your client and so on so we have to find ways to rationalize all of that but ultimately when in there always go back to behavior we need to understand the behavior of your customers before during and after the website visit.

Jonny Ross

-: 23:04

Yeah, it's a brilliant little product that I like it a lot and I'd forgotten talking about it. So nice. Very good. Let's move to our website call to action.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 23:20

This is about the one adjustment, the one change you should be making right now on your website to make it work harder for you. And if you're proud again, Johnny, what is your call to action?

Jonny Ross

-: 23:46

So I'm not sure what you need to change on your website, but what I can tell you is one tip for you to find out what you need to change on your website. And it's very much related to what I've just been talking about, AI visibility. Go to one of your favorite tools, whether it be ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity, and say, what does, and then insert your business name, do and who is it for? So go to one of these tools and just ask it about your business.

Jonny Ross

-: 24:14

What does this business do and who's it for? And if the wrong answer or the answer comes out very thin, then your website is not giving enough to work with AI and to give it the right answers. And that is then what you then start need to be thinking about in terms of the content on your website. So the shape, what are you currently telling AI and what does AI actually then tell your potential customers and clients?

Jonny Ross

-: 24:25

So very simply go to one of your favorite tools, what does insert your business name, do, and who is it for? And if the answer's not good, you need to look at your content.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 24:38

No, it's just brilliant. It's so very, very simple. There's probably a case as well to compare the different platform to see their behavior. You remind me, so I did this version of that.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 25:01

It wasn't as precise as the question you're putting in. It was more, here's the brand or here's the individual. And we did screenshots of the Google AI mode, and then we put this into Gemini and say, you know, criticize this, you know, and then it gave us all manner of suggestions to improve the website content. That was very, very clever.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 25:43

So, my call to action is linked to the blog on a website. You may not call it the blog, but this idea of where on your website you're having that social interaction, the news article, the resources, your FAQs, everything that is outside of that promotional element of the website. And I think we need to go back and have a look at it again to essentially make it as appealing as possible. Can you look and feel for this year and beyond because ultimately as you know i've been saying for quite some time i think the overviews, i'm now feeling that the crowbar on the character effect we have to produce more information to be cited by the overviews and the

Pascal Fintoni

-: 26:01

vast majority will live in your blog. So it took me a while, but I've settled on this platform called Hostinger. So H-O-S-T-M-I-N-G-E-R, Hostinger. And I've taken the trouble to actually look at 55 different blog examples across a number of sectors.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 26:30

When you go on the link, you'll see different categories from B2B to B2Cs and different professions and offerings. And essentially, for me, it's back to this idea of scrapbooking, like we did earlier with the visuals. So can you kind of treat yourself and your audience to just a reset and a refresh of your blog section? Think of it as if you're running a store, that front window, that shop window, is refreshed and reset pretty much every month, if not more frequently.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 26:50

And I think you want to do that for yourself. So this is a trick for you, the author of that content, have an environment that you look forward to revisiting and adding to because visually it's very, very appealing. And if you enjoy running your blog, so will your visitors enjoy accessing that content.

Jonny Ross

-: 27:13

I'm looking at it right now, Pascal, and it's already giving me ideas. Yeah, there's like 55 blog examples there. And it really is, you know, as a website call to action, it's a great little thing just to get your mind going in terms of actually how could I, you know, redress this? How could I redo the shop window?

Jonny Ross

-: 27:32

You know, I worked in retail for many, many years, and we'd be changing the shop window every month. When did you last change the look and style and feel of your blog? And that doesn't just mean the images or the layout, it's everything about it. I think that's a brilliant call to action.

Jonny Ross

-: 27:57

We've covered a lot in this episode. I think there's been a lot on social media, but as you say, that ties so much into websites now, very much training, helping train AI all about our ecosystem and making sure that we're on brand and on topic across everywhere. And I think the key theme for me has been visual. So I think we've talked very heavily about the visual side and repurposing.

Jonny Ross

-: 28:09

So taking a piece of content and thinking about how can you expand on it? How can you be the expert on that piece of content? So you've talked about on social media, but have you talked about it on your website? Brilliant, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 28:19

Good 60th episode. Indeed. And people, look at the show notes. We're going to share with you a preview to the new website coming along very, very nicely.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 28:25

What's the, uh, should we, should we, should we give the link now? No, they have to look at the show notes.

Jonny Ross

-: 28:35

Absolutely brilliant. Listen, thank you for joining us. Thank you for watching. Whether you're on the replay or live, we absolutely love that you've been here.

Jonny Ross

-: 28:43

We really appreciate it. It really gives us the energy and the buzz to keep this going. And thank you so much indeed. We will look forward to seeing you soon.

Jonny Ross

-: 28:46

Pascal, thank you very much. We'll see you all soon. Take care.