The Best SEO Podcast: Defining the Future of Search with LLM Visibility™

From Podcasting To AI: Building Real Audiences That Convert With Chris Krimitsos

• MatthewBertram.com

Share episode

Matthew Bertram and Chris Krimitsos dive into how creators and brands can grow faster together amid an AI content surge, with real case studies from Podfest and beyond. We map a practical playbook: entity SEO, the 7-11-4 rule, a clip-first workflow, and partnership models that beat CPMs.

• creator economy trends and the shift to video
• long form for trust, shorts for discovery
• entity SEO, consistent handles and domains
• the 7-11-4 rule for brand familiarity
• platform economics with YouTube as home base
• partnership deals beyond CPMs and MGs
• measuring hidden ROI and affiliate leakage
• NIL, rights and repurposing content
• brand control vs creator authenticity
• B2B adoption steps, timelines and tests

Guest Contact Information: 

Website: chriskrimitsos.com

Instagram: instagram.com/chriskrimitsos

Facebook: facebook.com/chriskrimitsos

X: x.com/chriskrimitsos

More from EWR and Matthew:

Leave us a review wherever you listen: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Podcast

Free SEO Consultation: www.ewrdigital.com/discovery-call

With over 5 million downloads, The Best SEO Podcast has been the go-to show for digital marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs wanting real-world strategies to grow online. 

Now, host Matthew Bertram — creator of LLM Visibility™ and the LLM Visibility Stack™, and Lead Strategist at EWR Digital — takes the conversation beyond traditional SEO into the AI era of discoverability. 

Each week, Matthew dives into the tactics, frameworks, and insights that matter most in a world where search engines, large language models, and answer engines are reshaping how people find, trust, and choose businesses. From SEO and AI-driven marketing to executive-level growth strategy, you’ll hear expert interviews, deep-dive discussions, and actionable strategies to help you stay ahead of the curve. 

Find more episodes here: 

youtube.com/@BestSEOPodcast

bestseopodcast.com

bestseopodcast.buzzsprout.com

Follow us on:

Facebook: @bestseopodcast
Instagram: @thebestseopodcast
Tiktok: @bestseopodcast
LinkedIn: @bestseopodcast

Connect With Matthew Bertram: 

Website: www.matthewbertram.com

Instagram: @matt_bertram_live

LinkedIn: @mattbertramlive

Powered by: ewrdigital.com

Support the show

SPEAKER_00:

This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing. Your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition. Ready to unlock your business full potential. Let's get started.

SPEAKER_03:

Howdy, welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing, which we are going to brand the best field podcast, which we've been running for 12 years. There's an identity crisis that I'm going through that Chris, we can talk about. Chris has also been involved. This is Chris Crematos. He's the founder of Podfest. He's a longtime friend. I can't believe I hadn't had him on before. Uh, for those of you watching, I'm wearing a Podfest shirt. Uh, he's also um, let me let me say, you've won the Gaynus Book of World Records for the most number of podcasts in a certain period of time. What else, Chris? You're doing all kinds of stuff. I would love to just kind of hear what you're doing. But Chris, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01:

So, Matt, yeah, just a backstory. Run Podfest, it's a very large community of creators that got started about 12 years ago. And during COVID, we went virtual, and that's when we got awarded the largest virtual event for podcast attendees via Guinness World Records. And then we did it again the next year and broke our record. Uh, and then we retired it because it's just a lot of work on the accounting side for uh Guinness World Records. And in the process, Podfest expanded. We we just did one last year. We went to Bogota, Colombia, and then it was our second ever Podfest Asia out of Manila. So we've been going to Asia now for two years. So I would consider myself an evangelist for creators, specifically people that consider themselves podcasters. And I started when podcasting was majority of it was audio. Now I would say the majority of it is video and it's everywhere. So um that's kind of my purview. And I've seen a lot of case studies because I see I've seen thousands of people come across my desk. So when someone gives you their experience, they have it from their perspective. My perspective is literally thousands of creators. So I see what is possible on so many different levels. Um, when I from time to time when I do consulting, I have a unique vantage point because I kind of know certain things that other people wouldn't think works, or you know, vice versa.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, you know, YouTube, Google even stated YouTube is the shift that it's making towards that. And I I recently just did a podcast with uh originality.ai's founder uh about well, the content proliferation that's happening with LLMs. Um, I think the shift to video and and YouTube is there there are going to be those um and and there is today uh influencers that are all AI, but predominantly the the the spam of creation of content is is not in videos and is not in audio podcast as of right now. So also the LLMs from a visibility standpoint need a lot of human interaction to train uh their data sets. So the synthetic data uh doesn't come in. So podcasting or long form content is incredibly important. And and and like you, we started this 12 years ago when before podcasting was cool. It was actually like just like a training to the team on how to do it. It wasn't really even public facing. Um and it was just a great way to uh catalogue what's going on and and and one to many to communicate messaging.

SPEAKER_01:

Um yeah, all I could tell you is with AI, it's gonna get dicey because I don't think people understand the amount of content that AI could create on its own.

SPEAKER_03:

So like well, the the LM notebooks are pretty interesting, right? You can drop an article, they talk to each other, you know, you you open up the parameters and voices on that. It it's gonna be it's gonna be real wild.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So what I my advice to anyone is grab your grab your audience now and carry them into the future, because as we move forward, it's gonna get very difficult, unless the algorithms weigh human creators heavier than AI creators. But that's kind of the race we're in at this point.

SPEAKER_03:

So that leads into something that I've talked about a little bit, but I'm dealing with this issue. If you, anybody watching, if you see my name is Matthew, Matt in parentheses, Bertram. Okay. Um, right now I've been creating content for so long uh across the internet. Google and the knowledge graph views me as two different people because I've had different roles, uh, different titles. Um, there's also a couple other Matthews out there. I also couldn't get my name as my handle. So if you can go get your name as your handle, go do that. Go buy your domain. I have MatthewBertram.com. For sure, yeah. Right. I got MatthewBertram.com, but I have gone by Matt. So uh real real issues. Um, and then there's also some highly influential people in different uh industries online as well. So it's getting all mixed up. And so, you know, defining who you are as a real person, as an entity on different channels, unifying that, um, taking the content. And one of the frameworks we talk about, Chris, a lot of is a framework. I think it was 2004, a paper that Google put out called the 7114 rule. That that was not what the paper's called, but basically that's essentially like the summary of it is create seven hours of content. They need to see your brand four times or sorry, 11 times on four different channels. So 7114. So seven hours of content, uh, see your brand logo, whatever, 11 times uh on four different channels. And that framework um helps people understand who you are and and build kind of that that brand lift or that brand association. And I've been telling businesses and evangelizing podcasting for so long because it's the best way to one-to-many marketing, as well as um creating that seven hours of content. If they binge, listen to your podcast, look at your website, talk to you, you're at an advantage because you have more content consumption by a decision maker than somebody else that doesn't. And through a podcast or a video podcast, video first podcast, you're gonna connect with people on a different level. I mean, I know you get this all the time, but but people that hear you, right, they don't even they don't know you, but when they meet you in person, it's like they know you, and then you're at a disadvantage because you don't maybe know them, right? Like I have you had experiences like that?

SPEAKER_01:

I have, and and I do have a piece of advice when creating content. Um, I always say think of your your long form content in terms of short form. And what I mean by that is how many clips, like when when you're doing a long time ago, I made a documentary for uh podcasting called the Messengers of Podcast documentary, and we got distribution, then I took it off and I put it up on YouTube for free. But I remember when I'd interview anyone, if anyone's ever made a documentary, you're thinking of how many sound bites did I get out of that interview? Because you need that to make a movie, uh, to make it all bridge. When you're doing a long form interview, you need to think to yourself, how many you know, five-minute clips did I get that are clippable for people to digest? Because the long form might not go viral, but one of the clips might get three million views, and then the long form you know gets a hundred thousand views thanks to that uh you know, uh funnel building from three million to that now. They want to see the long form. So just when you're creating content, you got to think of it. And the the person that does it the best right now is Shannon Sharp, uh Club Shayshae. He, when he's interviewing someone, he has notes that his team has uh prepared for him, and he's always asking questions that they know that they could make a really badass thumbnail. So, like if he's interviewing, I don't know, a wrestler, he's always gonna ask him, what was it like working with Vince? They already know that they have a thumbnail with Vince McMahon. People are gonna click on that. What was it like working with Stephanie McMahon? They just go down the line of all the big names or whatever they could find. And his questions, so then he has to do a dance and weave it into an interview process, but he's literally going for clips in a three-hour uh show, he might get 12-15 clips. Those clips now are generating tons of revenue and tons of uh views because that's what people the super fans will watch the long form, but the casual fans will watch the clips and might watch the long form.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I I see the the clips being so important to get people's interest to to bring them back. What I see not happening very well is people are putting out clips on a clip uh channel, and then they're not linking to the full interview because a lot of times people watch the clip, or at least I do, and I want to watch the full interview, and I can't find it, right? Then there's no identifying way to know who that is. Like there's a lot of kind of technical stuff, and then I mean, what are your thoughts around that? Have you seen that?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, I would link it, but uh, you know, nowadays with with everything changing so quick, I wonder if there's a strategy why they don't link it. But I personally link to the long form because my objective is to get as many hardcore followers that absorb my content as I can if I were to advise a content creator. But there's so many different monetization strategies now. You always want to ask why the person is doing what they're doing because maybe they're doing something you haven't thought of yet. But um, I was just advising, I went to a show for uh Aviculture, that's the people that love birds, and I met two influencers there. And you know what I found interesting, um, Matt, they had millions of views. Um, the difference was one of them started on YouTube, the other one started on everything else. And even though the other one that's on every other platform with almost 100 million views, the guy on YouTube is making almost as much with 100,000 views. So, like you have to really be careful of your platforms because YouTube is a creator platform that pays. Podcasting is also a creator platform that you get paid through Spotify, span, different networks. You could be on you could be a giant on TikTok and Instagram and barely make a couple grand a month. So it's like you really got to know where the the levers of of income come in so you could be profitable and and keep making great content. If you're a full-time content creator, that is.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I and I I feel like YouTube is is the home base, like that's that's the home page of if if you're creating content online.

SPEAKER_01:

YouTube is is it, yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

And and everything should roll up into that. How how do you view like um, you know, I guess there's different terms, but there's like snacks, but then there's like the 10-minute clips. Like, I feel like those are like where do those fit in into the in into the ecosystem? I'm curious, like if maybe like think in terms of also a business.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so if you're if you're doing a long form interview, so for me, long form, half hour more, you know, an hour, hour and a half. You you need to figure out how many short uh segments can you get. And that could be for me, a short segment from a long form would be five minutes, maybe eight minutes if it's going really good. Um, for the really short shorts, those are the minutes or less. Um, they can help your long form, but you gotta just what's weird about those is they could be so different and they could still grow your audience. I'll give you an example. I talked to a guy that's a famous short sale trader, he he short sales the market, and he would do shorts that were strategic and nothing happened. So then he's like, screw it, I'm just gonna eat steak. So he'd go to his restaurant and eat steak, and he'd record his steaks. And then he was like, Well, let me just title it differently. And he would title it short sale trader eat steak. And what would happen was strategically that grew. They're like, Oh, who is a short sale? And then it would intrigue them to watch the long form content. So sometimes it's weird stuff like that on the short form that now has a viral audience, and like, I like this guy, let me watch his advice on short selling the market, um, which is a financial term of you know, you're you're betting that the market's going down or whatever, or or stock is going down. But it doesn't matter what, and then I thought that was a weird uh thing, but then we had three other creators give us unique examples very similar to that. They're like, hey, my short form is a little different, but I make sure they know what I do, and then it'll tie back to the mothership, which is what you just talked about five-minute, 10-minute clips, or the long form.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, I I put together a book called No Light Trust. And I you have a book, uh uh Start Start Messy, right? Start ugly. Start uh start ugly. Uh great book. I would encourage everybody to go get it if you're on the fence. Uh, it was it was really helpful to say you gotta start and you gotta get going. And even if it's ugly, it's gonna get better, but you gotta start somewhere. It's just like going to the gym or that's not gonna be perfect.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, but but no like trust is like what you're talking about. People gotta know who you are. They gotta like have some kind of association or like you before they care about what you say, if anything. So that kind of falls in line is you know, hey, I like steak. This guy likes steak. I like like I one of my best posts on Facebook. I did this Facebook challenge posting every day. Um, and I got about 20,000 views, and I have like no falling on on Facebook specifically. You know what? One of the best pictures I did was that got views was I was making breakfast for uh like a bunch of people that were staying at our house this summer, and it was just a picture of plates of eggs. Like I just was like I took a picture of all these plates of eggs, and that picture I think did better than anything else I ever posted, right? And so when people are posting pictures of food, everybody can associate with that or like that and uh build that build that connection. So that's that's what you're trying to do. Because if someone can listen to your podcast, they get to know you, but but if they don't know you, how do they get associated with you? There's got to be a uh interest trigger.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it'd be like it'd be like CMO obsesses over his eggs or you know, marketing uh expert. I I'm always thinking titles. My wife is in the meditation space, and she was talking to some other channels, like about their YouTube specifically. So I'm talking about YouTube here, and she goes, How are you guys getting views? And they go, you know what's interesting? We did these shorts of behind the scenes, like it wasn't even a meditation of like creating a children's um thing, and one of them went viral, and that literally brought 10,000 subscribers to the channel. Because if that thing brings millions, like, oh, I wonder what that sounds like. Oh, I like it, and then it drives them in. So, what I found with short form, and and on her short form, she creates mini snippets of the meditation, it works, but it doesn't work great. And like you said, sometimes maybe it's a no-like and trust. So, what I'm learning is you gotta experiment and find what works for you because it's sometimes the off-beat stuff, like you said, it's a no-like trust, then it builds to the the the mother content, which is what it is the meditation itself.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, her her platform is is huge and has a ton of people on it, um, doing different kinds of meditations. Yeah, she's just gotta grab people and bring people in.

SPEAKER_01:

But but I yeah, like watching a clip of a meditation doesn't have the same uh yeah, but having her on a microphone with the children, here's my story, here's what I do. Yeah, but yeah, let me hear that. Let me hear that. What is that? Maybe she plays a sample, maybe just a second or two, and then it's like, yeah, make sure to click if you want to listen to it. It intrigues people. You know what we did uh recently? We just launched a uh birthday and celebration meditation channel. So literally, all it is is for people's birthdays, anniversary, celebrations, meditations. It's already doing really well.

SPEAKER_03:

I love that, I love that. I want to switch gears and look at this from a company standpoint, um, or um somebody that wants to leverage these creators. Maybe they're, you know, a business owner or they're in-house marketer, and they're like, hey, we have budget for experimental things, we want to sponsor some podcasts, or we want to create like a short series or partner with the influencer, but but they're not the influencer themselves. How have you seen uh those opportunities work to kind of uh build the path a little bit more for creators to find um revenue outside of just the monetization on the channels?

SPEAKER_01:

So here's my suggestion if you're if someone that's listening to this is a CMO of a big brand, they got budgets and they want to play in this space. The biggest problem is most of them play scared. And the challenge is when you play scared with creators, it doesn't work well. So you want to give you the creators that you like in the space, and you want to tell them that you have money that you're gonna invest with them as their partner. But I would lean on them and have them give you suggestions of how they think they could grow your brand and work with them and their vision. All too often, what I've seen is brands will dictate every little thing down to the commas and the periods. The creators do their best, but it doesn't really blow up a brand. Um I I would definitely so the way you would do it is you find if I'm a brand and I want to find, I'll give you an example. So the best way I could do is just talk about a case study that I actually know about. Um my buddy Gabe Beluisi, I helped produce his show in the early days. I still help advise, but really he does most of it now. He's the largest golf in the US, anyways, golf review channel for equipment. There's bigger ones in the UK, but he's like the top American, top two or three. Golf Review. There was a company called Play Better that sells their supply house that sells golf equipment, and they their their claim to fame is free shipping, right? So when Gabe was still, I think he had just hit 10,000 subs, they said, Hey, we don't know how this works. Can we create something and test it out? And they were very honest to with the creator, and then they gave Gabe a lot of latitude. Well, all I could tell you is Gabe has brought in millions and dollars, one creator, millions of dollars of sales into this supply house where they went from a half a dozen employees to they're they're huge now, they're very big. But it was that partnership that worked well, and then they figured out a way to um that partnership's going on three, four years now. So, like that long-term partnership could literally move seven, sometimes eight figures just with one small creator. As they grow, you grow with them. Um, so I would recommend talking to the brands, finding the creators you like, and understanding it doesn't have to be the biggest creator. It could be a crew, I I like creators on the rise because their fan bases are excited to grow with them and they're excited to try new things. So um, and that is a term creator on the rise within like metrics and stuff. Um, they do metric that people that are really uh bouncing off the the metrics.

SPEAKER_03:

I I think it'd be good to speak to um a lot of times, just uh when people are dipping into uh podcast partnerships or advertising, they're just looking at CPMs. Okay, they're just looking at CPMs, but like the the horse network or the the equestrian network, like the like can you share some of those stories? Because if you have a really engaged audience, um, the and the and the value of what you're selling depending on the ticket price, uh, you don't have to have as many CPMs to to be partner with that. That's what we do at OGGN. You know, it's very targeted towards oil and gas. And so it's not a pure CPM game when people want to sponsor shows in that arena.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so if you're a brand with budgets, I would not you could do CPMs, that's fine, but if you could create like a true partner, so what happens with YouTubers? I'll just share with you what happens, and then I'll tell you the horse radio uh example. What happens with YouTubers is they might have a video that has 50,000 and the next video has 2,000. The moment you tie them to a CPM, they're all stressed out that they're not gonna meet their goals. If you could tie it to a monthly program and say, hey, we want to be your partner, let's just do a 90-day test and you you give them free range. Say, we don't want let's round up the numbers, you give them the benefit of the doubt, and then you as a brand do a test, see how you like it. If you like them, then figure out uh what they call minimum guarantee, like, hey, we're gonna invest two grand a month for the next year. But we need you to mention us in you know one video every three times, but that that repetition by that end of the year, you're gonna see some movement with the golf example. What that supply house did was they said, listen, we're gonna give you access to uh these these cool gadgets before they go out so you could review them. Just throw us a mention that we have this equipment at our supply house. And it really exploded the numbers for horse radio network. We have a friend, you and I, named Glenn the Geek. He started the horse radio network, and there was a guy that created a vibrating uh pitchfork for horse manure, and he went to Home Depot and they're like, dude,$200 for a shovel. He was an inventor, so he didn't know. He went to Home Depot, like, ain't no one buying a$200 vibrating shovel. So then he went to Lowe's. He's like, oh, Lowe's is higher end, they'll they're gonna love this. They're like, nah, we're not this is way over our skew. So then the guy almost gave up, but he's like, tractor supply, that's I finally found my home. And tractor supply is like, what are you nuts? 200 bucks for a vibrating pitchfork? Somehow, someone said to him, You gotta call Glenn before you give up on your invention. And Glenn immediately said to the guy, listen, I'll tell you what, let's let's do a test. Like Glenn figured out how to make it like a no-brainer. Give me some minimum money, I'm gonna make sure it's successful. And Glenn talked about the vibrating pitchfork on Fridays. He knew that his people cleaned out their horse stalls on Fridays. That was like the day they were shoveling manure. And while they're it was called Stable Scoop. That the show is actually called Stable Scoop. They scoop out the stables, and while they're talking, Glenn's like, man, I just tried this new vibrating pitch uh pitch pitchfork, whatever. It's great. My back feels great. They couldn't keep this freaking thing, uh the inventor couldn't keep it in stock. People were buying it, and it became a long-term partnership with this creator network. I think they were together for years, and this guy, his invention found a market and found a distribution channel through the online things. But there's a lot of things like that, and B2B is very easy because there's not a lot of B2B creators. So if you could find the key B2B influencers in your space, you could blow up very quickly because no one is savvy enough to go call them. So I want to be very I want to share some tips, Matt. That's very important. You have to treat the creator with respect. The problem is if you're working at a big company, you think you're, you know, uh, you know, we manage billions of dollars, the creator could care less. Let me be very clear. What the creator cares about is their content and their audience, which is what you want them to care about. The more respect and white glove service you could use, you could give to that creator, the more that relationship will uh have really big benefits for you and your business. Uh, because if the creator shuts you off and doesn't like you, you're never doing business with that creator. And um, there's not like tons of them, there's only a few in every industry. So you want to be very good to all of them because they all talk as well, they compare notes. So you don't want to get a bad rap that you're uh hard to deal with because then other creators will talk and it'll be very difficult to uh to create these partnerships.

SPEAKER_03:

So so I want to bring it back to something that's um really uh disrupting the SEO industry is uh LLMs or Chat GBT, stuff like that. And we talked a little bit about the entity SEO and and how important that that individual is and and as a trusted source. Um when when you're just doing stuff, so Google used to be the game, okay. Chris, Google used to be the the the biggest game in town. 50% of that traffic has now left Google. It's everywhere, it's just all over the place. And so now it's a focus on transactional content when someone comes to your website, but it's not where people get information for. And these LLMs are going everywhere, and people's search behaviors change, they're everywhere. They're looking at well, how many shares, how many likes, how many follows your business has. And there's tools and metrics out there that that show you. And I see so many businesses zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. One of the best ways to to get somebody to talk and and share your stuff on social media is to get some influencers behind you. Uh, one of my buddies who I'm going to bring on started TurtleBox. They he kind of had an opposite, like, I'm not running any ads, I'm not doing any SEO. And he started at the other end of the spectrum and he focused on sponsorships and partnerships and and influencers. And the search volume for his brand, which is important, how many people are searching for your brand because it's about your brand today, is like I can't, I don't even want to speak to the numbers, but it was off the charts. Okay. More than than than paid ads could drive you, like what he could pay for. And he built it all through creators and influencers. He just got Ducks Unlimited to to sponsor them, right? The official uh radio of Ducks Unlimited and like all this kind of stuff. And he he leaned into that creator aspect of it. I think that um digital marketing as a broad term and and and SEO, like you need to build a uh uh a unified strategy on multiple platforms with multiple creators, with multiple voices. Because also you and I have had a number of conversations that, you know, if we talk about um, you know, affiliate partnerships or or something like that, you can have a small audience over here, you can have a giant audience over here, and the smaller audience is more engaged uh than the bigger audience, right? Like Kim Kardashian could tweet your stuff. That doesn't mean they're gonna buy it, right? Like that doesn't mean people are gonna buy it anymore. And so it's about these micro creators and trying out a couple different creators, a couple different combinations. Um, and then there's even like this name, image, and likeness that's starting to happen uh in the sports arena. And so influencers and creators and and content, I don't feel have got um the the airtime that they deserve uh and and the share of the dollars. But I I really think that's starting to change now, Chris, because people are finding their information on social media before they even pick something up, you know, um, uh like a news article. They find it on social media before. And then there's like a fact-checking kind of issue of uh people talking about stuff to get clicks. What what do you see? If there's any of that that you want to speak to, but like the peripher proliferation of of AI and fake content, interested to hear kind of your your predictions or or trends of what you're seeing.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, I'm sure I'm sure you've seen some predictions, but one thing we know is more content is gonna get created. Like, let's just say, I don't know what the numbers are exactly, but like let's say a hundred thousand pieces of content get created every hour. It's more, but let's just say that's the number. A year from now, it's gonna be like a billion. Like, not I'm not exaggerating, it's gonna be like that kind of exaggerated number because the AI could create a thousand angles, uh, a million angles on the same piece. So then when I let's say there's some kind of press conference at the White House, they're gonna give a million takes. So then each of us, if we want to talk about getting led down a rabbit hole, we're gonna see exactly what we want. Now, the leaders of these companies have said that they're gonna weigh the human uh creators at a higher level than the AI, because what happens is if the AI competes with us, it wins every day of the week because it can over-deliver content at a rate we can't we just can't create. So um they're gonna weigh the the the so what I would say to anyone is either you're sponsoring and working with brand creators now or starting to, let's say you're a bigger company, you gotta you like uh what's the the manscape? Those guys were like geniuses. They they were they started like five, six years ago. They came across my desk, and I remember they had like a little country bumpkin like out of Arkansas doing their marketing, and the guy was a nice guy and everything. But like I could tell you, I know how they started because the guy called me, he's like, Yeah, we're doing a hundred thousand a month now, and it's always great. And I call it it was really nice. He would call the influencers, hey, we would like to, and then they got so big, they're like, Listen, do you want to be the CMO? And he's like, I I want to stay in my little you know, town here in the south. I don't want to move to your headquarters, wherever. But what they did then is they automated their influencer program, and what they would do is they would call every influencer, like they didn't care who you were, they were just like, Hey Matt, we see that you have a UFC show. We're gonna give you some free stuff and$25 gift cards. Can you mention us? And you'd be like, sure, no one else is giving me any money. I just started, and they would just they would ride each creator, like I'm talking about in math. It was amazing what they did. So you you either need to start that kind of program if you're a big brand now, as small or as niche as you want to do, that's fine. But for the person, think about being a creator for their brand, for their business, um, you got to get started now because you want to bring that audience into the future. And in the future, it's gonna get exponentially hard because there's gonna be so much noise, and the AI bots are gonna be so human. I mean, how many guys are getting catfished now watching AI pictures on Instagram of women in bikinis that don't exist? So, like uh it's gonna get really crazy. If we think it's good now, forget about it, what it's gonna be like a year from now. So you got to just invest in in uh and and what does that mean for the creators, the real ones? Their value is gonna go up. So, right now you're gonna get them at a discount. They're gonna be more valuable in the future because it's gonna be harder to find great creators with audiences. So the what whatever price you pay today is gonna be a steep discount of what you're gonna pay tomorrow. Because what you just said, the uh the image likeness. We had a lawyer actually at Vitvest talking about it. He kept mentioning that acronym, and I'm like, why do you keep mentioning it? He's like, Well, I represent all the college players now and they could monetize. And he goes, It's the number one thing we have to do is manage their image likeness and whatever was ILM or something.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh yeah, name image and likeness is basically, you know, you uh when you get it create N I L, N I L, right? That's what we're yeah, when when you get it like when you get somebody to make a clip, it's about repurposing that clip using it in different ways. Like it's not like I I see like if something runs on the news, like a company will take it and then just rerun it on Facebook to make sure everybody everybody sees it, right? Um I I am curious, I lost my train of thought to be honest. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

Tell me like this, and you were talking about what brands could do. AI is gonna exponentially make content that, you know, yeah, tough to keep up with.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, it I think a lot of these big brands are losing their motes. Okay, like a lot of these big brands that used to uh, you know, utilize their logo, the new the newer uh generation that's buying, or even the people that are helping people make decisions that are searching the internet are are finding these sources, not not just on Google. Um, and and they want to know how that brand's perceived. They're doing a lot of research. Um, and like you need you need an army of people out there talking about who you are in your space. And I I think that you know people have relied on PPC ads for for far too long because of the metrics. So like it is there we we we touched on it a little bit, but like if a if a company is coming in, like how long should they wait like direct response for to know if it's working? And oh, my question actually was around live shopping. Um I feel like live shopping is gonna be like so big because you know, like it's real, like like we're gonna have a a crisis of is this real? Is this information like I I did this fat this fact checker, originality.ai, I I just interviewed the creator. It's so much proliferation of written content. We're talking about video content, which has you know, it it's it's behind it, but it's coming. Like we're not gonna know what's real based on personalization and automation and and then how they personalize it to each of us. And um, it's just gonna be very, very difficult to to figure out what's going on. So I feel like like if you're live with the person on a call, uh you'll you'll like it's real and you'll know that's there.

SPEAKER_01:

Matt to answer your two questions. One is if you want to do a test, I would do a 90-day test with the creator. Six months would be the longest to see if there's some you know legs in that test and try different things. But I would say start ugly, don't worry about perfection. If you're a bigger brand, I would just have parameters of what they cannot do with your brand. Obviously, you want to protect your brand, but you got to get started and try different things. As far as um, you mentioned direct selling, there's uh was it offer up or whatnot. There's a bunch of these things now that are much more powerful than QBC because it's the influencers hawking, like they're in a room like yours, like you're in, you have your shelf behind you, and then they're just selling. Like my buddy Gabe, the golf guy, because he does all this golf equipment stuff, he has tons of stuff in this place. So they they sp when they started, they sponsored him. Dude, he was selling, he was moving stuff. I never I went on there, this was like a year ago. I called him up. I'm like, dude, I'm blown away. I I can't believe what I'm seeing. And then he helped that audience go into another room of another golf guy, and that guy was like, Oh man, thanks so much for helping me. Because now you share audiences and you so it's like it's like a decentralized QVC. It's insane. And then for the females, we had an influencer that she's on Instagram, and women now, the way they're shopping is they follow an influencer. If they wear the dress from TJ Maxx, they could click on the dress and it literally direct sends it once they put their size in, it sends them the dress to their home based on an influencer. They saw shopping at Marshall's TJ Maxx, you name it, Walmart. And I was like, what the heck is this? And then I forgot the website that organizes all of this, but it's uh it's all happening. The largest brands that are being launched now are from creators. You know, you got Logan Paul's got his uh prime, yeah, you got Mr. Beast with Beastables. Here's the thing that I uh anyone that follows marketing. Mr. Beast launched his chocolate candy bars. Did you ever have the first run of it, Matt? Did you try it?

SPEAKER_03:

I did, I did. My kids, my kids wanted it, and I'm like, you think who could go up against Hershey's? And and Mr. Beast is dominating.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, here's the interesting thing, though. The first run of his chocolate bars were terrible, they were disgusting. Um, they were bitter, yeah, because he tried to make them healthy. Like he's like, Oh, they're healthier and better than all the other stuff. So he literally had to relaunch his chocolate brand. Now they're really good. They taste okay.

SPEAKER_03:

I didn't try the the the healthy ones, I tried the ones that tasted just like chocolate.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, what I'm telling you is I don't know any other billion-dollar product that the consumer would be like, I trust this person enough to try it again. You know, I know how brutal could like a consumer product like chocolate on a shelf, competing with Mars, who's been around for like a hundred years. And he he had the goodwill that he could say, Hey, we reformulated it, try it again, and that the retailers would put it out again, which was incredible. So um, I'm that's unheard of. Like that doesn't happen. Usually, if something fails, they don't give you another shot. Everybody knows if you've watched Shock Tank, everybody knows how uh you know precious that retail space is in these stores. So we are in the age of the creator, and if you're able to get your brand aligned with the right creator, you take a ride um for some massive growth and and you know, name brand awareness. It's it's ginormous.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, to to kind of getting close to to wrapping up, I really a lot of people that listen um do marketing or uh or work for B2B brands, that some some B2C brands, I know I work with a lot of B2B brands. Um how should they frame this up to like get started? Like we talked about, but like what does the program look like if they need to start creating content as a brand, right? Like as a big company, like how do they get themselves online and people talking about them? Like, should they seed it with creators? Should they exclusively partner with creators? Should they start their own podcast, their own channel? Should they get on a network? Like, what is like the uh landscape look like if you're a B2B business to say, I know I need to be in this space, but I don't know how to do it. That's what I heard a lot of times with Instagram, TikTok, whatever.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'm a big proponent of starting ugly. So one, you got to get that noise, and uh I know you represent a big brand, and I know that you're very nervous about your brand being out in social media and out of your full control, but um, you can't you can't get left uh behind because it's gonna hurt your brand tremendously, especially uh we're we're past the social media age. Now we're in the age of AI. So if you're really thinking about like social media, that's that's a problem. So that's that's one. So you got to get in the game. The second thing is if you don't have someone on your team that could create really good, let's say, like a YouTube channel. I'm gonna speak to that specifically, because with the YouTube channel, you could take shorts and you could feed them all over from Instagram to to TikTok. So YouTube would be your home. If you don't have that person, you could make a great relationship with a creator you like their style, and you could pay them to create your own channel. They might be the face of your channel, they already have branding. So I'll give you an example in the uh Las Vegas world, there's a guy named Vegas Matt that gambles with his son, they have over a million subscribers. Uh, was it FanDuel? FanDuel has them doing their own channel, FanDuel channel, and they gamble on FanDuel. Um, but it's Vegas Matt and his son. So they know for a fact that that channel will get at least 100,000 subs. So after they're done with their main channel, they go into like a uh like a lobby room or hotel room where they fan fan duel is virtual and they have a whole virtual gambling session. So you just got to figure out if you could hire the the creator, depending on how big your budgets are, you the bigger your budgets are, the bigger the creator you can get. But if you have small budgets, find a small creator that you like their content. They have 10,000 subs, uh, subs meaning subscribers or more, and say, hey man, uh we'd like to pay you whatever it is,$2,500 a month,$5,000 a month, 10,000 a month, whatever that budget is, to create content for us. And then you negotiate how many pieces, uh, what you know, have them propose what they think the content should be. Because a lot of those people, they know how to make thumbnails, they know how to make what we call catchy titles to get clicks, and then you give them access to make the best videos they can promoting your brand. That's where I would start. Or you could, like what we talked about earlier, sponsor the challenge, just let them drop in your name, uh, a mention on one or two of the shows.

SPEAKER_03:

And how long should you let it run before before you measure like the brand lift that you're getting?

SPEAKER_01:

Like I mean, I would do 90-day test that you like working with the creator and then extend it for six months. And then at six months, you should have some answers if the needle is getting moved. Um, two things. My buddy Gabe, who promotes he has the Let's Play Through golf channel, he promotes Play Better, which is not his company, it's a supply house. There's a lot of people that don't use Gabe's affiliate code, but they go outside the affiliate code and buy from Play Better. Well, Play Better knows when they're answering the calls and they're calling and they're like, How'd you find this? Oh, Gabe, Gabe, Gabe, Gabe. Gabe's accounting for many, many times more than the sales that we can't we could account for through the affiliate links. So um, you need to pay attention to who's calling you, how they found out about you, and you need to have your team attuned to that because you might get a 5x, but you're not realizing it, and then you've caught off that test and you're like, hey, things dipped. What happened? It was that influencer driving sales, you just didn't see it because you didn't, it wasn't necessarily 100% track. They would then search on their own when they were at their desk and they'd they'd find you after they're watching that show, let's say.

SPEAKER_03:

I think that that's a great point. Okay, last question for you. I wanted to get your opinion on this because I think that a lot of brands don't want to work with creators because they're they're stuck on their brand guidelines, how their logo looks, what it says. Uh uh on the on OGGN, you know, it's got to run through legal, like if there's anything that that that there's any ambiguity at all, we got to cut that part out. There's like heavy editing. And I feel like it kills the experience. So I feel like today, in the era we're in, people are familiar with the brand, and that brand logo or or whatever it is can come up organically homegrown in a lot of different ways. And that's beneficial in my eyes to the brand. And so I wanted to get your opinion on companies that are very concerned on, like you talked about at the beginning, to bring it back full circle. They need to be in control of everything that's happening. I think those organic breakthroughs are where the the biggest opportunity is.

SPEAKER_01:

So, Matt, I agree with you. And here's what I'll say to you: if you're a CMO that's worried about your brand, hire someone like Matt as a consultant to help uh be the translator. And I'll say, because I've seen this firsthand. My wife and another friend, they're big creators, they got hired by an ad agency to do ads for Chase Bank. They literally had my wife correct the ad 10 different times because the shade of blue was off. And I'm gonna tell you right now, they use the shade of blue that the ad agency gave them. So, what happens is it's not even the brand, it's the ad agency so afraid of losing chase that they start knee-jerking everything, and then the creators worn out, and the brand's like, how come it's not working for us? So sometimes the brands are so big they don't even know this is going on. So if you're a CMO, I would do like um like a little uh what do they call that? Like a little ragtag team to take care of the influencer program yourself, keep an eye on it with the teammate or consultant like you, Matt, that kind of knows the space, and allow the creators room to breathe. And you could fix things. What you're looking for right now is signs of life that things moving the needle. And then you and I mentioned something before. Um you need to pay attention because when an influencer is talking about you, you might be looking through click-through rates. But here's the problem you're not um you're not counting the branding you're getting, because they're talking many times to millions of people or hundreds of thousands, and your brand is getting free play in those people's minds over and over and over again. Maybe they don't buy right away, but if you're if you know all of a sudden you got like, you know, I don't know, small percentage starts to buy, what about the million or two million that now are listening to your brand that might not be ready for your product today, but six months from now? So you also have to account the double, you're also getting a double impact because these big brands pay for branding at all kinds of stuff, they're throwing money out. Um, but now with the influencer, you're not only getting direct response, you're also getting branding that you're paying for alongside that. So you got to count a value to that outside of the click-through rate. And if you're not doing, if you don't evaluate it right, you keep doing these starts and stops, not realizing why it's not working. It was working all along, but you starting and stopping is killing all your momentum every time you do it. No, I I love that.

SPEAKER_03:

I love that in the back catalog, right? It continues to play. So you're you're getting this accrual over time. So, Chris, we're uh about to wrap up. I wanted uh to have everybody uh know what you're working on, how to find you, how to follow you if they want to know more.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh last tip, and then I'll do that because you're the last tip. You got my brain working. You got my brain working.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I can tell you this podcast, I'm like so intensely listening to you. I forget what I'm gonna say next most of the time. Because I was gonna ask you, is there anything else we need to talk about before? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, one of my hobbies is I I I have an aviary and I breed birds, it's just a hobby of mine. And I I was very fortunate to help some of the largest influencers in that space recently. And my brain was like thinking, like, these guys have such brand credibility, and you might be like, Oh, yeah, that's funny, birds. Well, think about it. What do people have to do with their birds? They have to feed them. You know, that's like a billion-dollar industry, you know, the food, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So if I was a brand in the food space, and there's only like six of them, it's not like you know, all these, all these all these industries, everybody knows each other, and the one CMO goes to the next company the next day. So everybody's very friendly. And the the way it works, right? If I was a food rep, I would call this guy and say, Hey, we love you. We want to create a signature line with your name on it. Do you want to talk about being like a category killer? The the influencer doesn't know how to do it, but you already have distribution, you're taking basically the same stuff with the influencer's input, and you create a signature line that now all of a sudden his fans that may might be casually watching are buying. So, like that there are opportunities to Mr. Beast owns his chocolate, but there's smaller Mr. Beast that want to do that. And you might be the one that has the output that you could partner with them. But I would only do that after you have trust and credibility of work with the person for a year on other projects. But imagine if you private label with a really big influencer some of your stuff. I mean, it's just such a big opportunity. For me, um, I'm I'm like the chairman in Meridius at Podfast. We have a CEO named Nick Pablitis who's running the show. I I'm the community manager. You can find me at podfastexpo.com or just spell Chris Kremitsos. I'm on all those socials. Um, but I love what I do. I love helping creators. I'll be in, you know, I love the Texas tour. It's one of my favorite things to do. But um, what I would say to anyone thinking about this, start, it's really tough to get a hold of brands. So you might want to go to some creator conferences, whether it's Podfast or Vid Summit, that's a lot of the YouTubers, go and meet them and see what it's like, just as an exploratory with your team, to get a feel for what it's like dealing with creators and then ask, say, hey, I'm in this industry. Do you know anyone in this industry? And if they refer you in, um, or you talk to the agents, there's a handful of agencies that represent these people. The challenge is once you go the agent route, obviously they got to make their 10%. And there's a uh there's a gatekeeper. Uh, it's a benefit and sometimes not a benefit, but if you could find the influencers that you like, deal with them directly, that's always a huge plus.

SPEAKER_03:

I've sent one of our clients to Podfest and had an absolutely great time and great experience. Uh, so I definitely recommend it. Uh, go check it out. Chris, uh, you do Podfest um, like when is it usually in the year so people can just January 15th to 18th, 2026?

SPEAKER_01:

It'll be our 12th uh Pod PodFest. I'm gonna give you a shout-out because you helped us a while back. We needed some SEO help. And you, I was very suspect because I have just like a lot of us, we've been burned by a lot of people, and you're the real deal. So I always appreciate that about you, Matt. And I would say if anyone needs like uh someone to help in this space, you're the go-to guy. Because when it comes to the B2B side, there's not a lot of people understand the complexity, the red tape that everybody has to jump through. And I know that's something you've spent quite a while perfecting. And I know you and I are in t-shirts and stuff, but they don't realize like we've been doing business on the B2B side for a very long time, but we also have to relate to the creators, so we're we're we're bridging both gaps. And it's it's interesting that you and I could talk shop, but um this creator economy, you're right. People aren't using Google is sweating. Uh, people don't know, but all the tech guys just went to the White House and they said Sergei Brin is back to work because he's paranoid that Google's about to lose everything. And across the table from him is the guy, Sam Altman from ChatGPT, Zuckerberg with Meta. That's not to be don't sleep on him. He's got glasses. I got people doing filming first perspective, you know, with the meta glasses, and they're incredible. So, like the innovation that's happening right now, I'm telling you, next year is gonna be a every the foundation's getting laid this year. Next year, it's gonna move so fast. You're gonna be you just what I would say is just call Matt and let Matt handle it because I'm having trouble keeping up with it. And I always used to pride myself on like knowing what everybody doesn't know yet. And at this point, it's anyone's game. It's crazy how fast it's moving.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I appreciate that. Uh, we've been getting a lot more advisory engagements um where I'm coming in as a fractional CMO on different issues. And does it support and to to your point, there's a lot of unification, like you have multiple agencies or multiple team members that that are not working together. And then if you're managing a variety of different brands, it's kind of a mess. So I've come in with some publicly traded companies to kind of fix their process to pull it together, to build SOPs, to workflows, to pull in some of the new technology because it is moving so fast. Um, so yeah, you can you can check me out at matthsburchram.com, EWR Digital Course. Uh, but yeah, we're having uh we're we're hiring, we are hiring, we are scaling. Yeah. And so yeah, uh reach out to us if if you have work or uh if you're awesome at what you do. Uh we're we're getting deep uh experience and all these different verticals. If you want to grow your business with the largest, most powerful tool on the planet, the internet, uh call EWR for more revenue in your business. But we are incorporating L invisibility and we are incorporating Chat GBT and uh Grok, and we're building uh MPC servers for clients, and AI is built into the workflows. Becoming an AI first business is really where it's at. Um, it is taking off exponentially. You have to keep up with this. Uh, it's no longer about ads and Google anymore. Uh, that's why, and I had brought Kristen uh to advise, we were trying to look at a different name because it's it's spreading out. And and we'll talk more about that uh offline, but we are launching a LM visibility certification. LM visibility is really where I think it's going in the short term. I think AI discoverability is where it's going in the long term, and that's you know, all different components coming together. Um, thank you so much. If guys uh you like what we're doing, if you like uh uh people I'm bringing on like Chris, please leave me a review. Please uh share uh a little clip. We're starting to do clips on social media and YouTube. Like I ask for your engagement. I I want feedback. Uh please ask for a review. So thank you so much uh for sticking around to the till the end. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye bye for now.

Head Shot

Matt Bertram

Host