Authenticity, AI, and Audience Connection with Stephanie Woodin from Raptive

Bjork Ostrom: What if your content could earn more and do more for your business audience and your future? You might know Raptive as the ad management platform behind thousands of the world’s top creators, including Pinch of Yum. But today, Raptive is so much more than ads. They’re a true business partner for creators helping you grow your traffic, increase your revenue, and protect your content in an AI driven world. Unlike one size fits all platforms, Raptive customizes strategies for each creator, whether you’re growing a niche food blog or running a multi-site business, they offer expert support in SEO email and monetization strategy. And they’re leading the charge on AI advocacy to protect the future of creator owned content. And the best part, Raptive supports creators at every stage from Rise, their entry level program for growing sites to their top tier luminary level, their offering scale with you so you can get the right support when you need it the most. Apply now at Raptive.com to get a personalized growth strategy and join a creator community that’s shaping the future of the open web. Thanks again to Raptive for sponsoring this episode.

Emily Walker: Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to the Food Blogger PO podcast. This week on the podcast, we are kicking off our series Can’t Be Automated, a interactive series on scaling, standing out, and staying Human with Stephanie Wooden from Raptive. Stephanie is the Raptive senior director of publicity and is also the host of rap’s, brand new podcast Control Alt Ask. And she’s joining Bjork this week to chat more about the fast-changing world of the creator economy. She has spent years working with top creators at Raptive, and now as the host of Control Alt Ask is taking calls from creators to talk about everything from burnout and branding to revenue strategies, ai, SEO and more. In this episode, Bjork and Stephanie unpack what it takes to thrive as a content creator in a crowded space, how AI is reshaping the industry and practical ways to grow and connect with your audience. They spend a lot of time talking about the importance of authenticity, building relationships with your audience, and why being the face behind your blog or business matters more now than ever. We really hope you’ll enjoy this episode. We’ll be back with another episode in this series next week, and we hope you’ll tune in. Without further ado, I’ll just let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Stephanie, welcome to the podcast.

Stephanie Woodin: Bjork, thank you so much for having me.

Bjork Ostrom: You are now a podcaster, so this is your new norm. How does it feel?

Stephanie Woodin: I mean, I’m still getting used to the headphones. This is what my producer told me to wear, but

Bjork Ostrom: Love it.

Stephanie Woodin: It feels very official with the mic and the headphones, but it’s been fun. It’s been really fun and I feel like I’m just talking to you, learning a lot. I’m in a 1 0 1 today. My college course has begun

Bjork Ostrom: Crash course in podcasting,

So my daughter, Sylvie and I, she’s seven now. She just had her birthday. Yeah, yeah, she’s been really excited about frogs. I’ve mentioned that a few times on our podcast before, and we’ve joked about this idea there’s going to be some confusion within search engines around is this a food podcast? Is this a frog podcast? We actually started a frog podcast called amphibia Fans, which we’re just sharing, it’s not public, it’s just a little internal podcast that we’re sharing with family and friends. But all that to say, we have, I did the first one with her and we had mics, but it’s like she was all over the place moving, so she was on the couch and then I was always trying to remind her, you got to stay in front of the mic, so we got the headphones with the little mic on it so she can move around and she can bring

Stephanie Woodin: Around,

Bjork Ostrom: She can jump around, she can do her frog jumps and we’ll still be able to record. So maybe I need to transition those over and wear those for this podcast. They do look cool. It looks official.

Stephanie Woodin: That is a very official and very specific headphone set, but I realized after even just taping a couple of our podcast episodes that I tend to move around to,

Bjork Ostrom: Which

Stephanie Woodin: Is a little weird, so I need to keep myself in check.

Bjork Ostrom: You can’t do a walking desk, or if you do, you can use those headphones. So this is the start of a series that we’re doing with iv, this idea of can’t be automated, this series on scaling, standing out and staying human. So we’re going to talk about some of those things today, how we can think about that as creators. You and other folks at Raptor are in the unique position where you are having hundreds of thousands of conversations with creators of all different sizes, multiple millions of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars and everything in between. So you have a really good pulse on not only what’s working, but also some of the questions, concerns,

Curiosities that creators have. We’re going to tease the podcast that you’re doing around some of those things, but the other thing that’s really important that you have is an understanding of the other side, which is the advertisers, like people who are coming to the table and wanting to partner with creators in order to run ads or potentially do sponsor content with them. So there’s a wealth of knowledge and information that you have because not only do you have hundreds and thousands of those conversations, but on each side of the table. And one of the things that’s really cool is you are putting all of those things together and releasing a podcast around those. So tell us a little bit about your background and tell us a little bit about your new project, which is this podcast.

Stephanie Woodin: Yeah, it’s an interesting kind of intersection of a lot of things I’ve worked on in my career, kind of culminating in this podcast. So just brief background, I worked for many years in la. My husband and I lived out in LA and I worked in Hollywood and I worked for television studios. So I worked for FX Fox, and then Netflix was my last TV industry job before I came into the creator universe. And within those jobs I was always on the PR and marketing side. And it’s interesting, there’s a lot of parallels. You’d be surprised with how a publicist or a marketer works with brands like TV studios or streaming networks and producers and actors launching a new film or TV show, and then creators who own their own brands and are building personas on the open web or on social media. There’s actually a lot of interesting pieces of the playbook to use a sports analogy, we were just talking about sports analogies, but there’s a playbook that you can pull from whether you’re in the TV industry or working with creators on branding and setting yourself apart and telling those stories about your brand,

Whether it’s to advertisers or the press or new audiences. So I did that for many years and then I came into the Rafta sphere three years ago and started working with creators. This industry has always fascinated me, and I was on the other side of it when I worked in Hollywood because we would actually reach out to creators to help us tell the stories of some of the projects. We were launching a TV show about moms. We would reach out to mom influencers.

Bjork Ostrom: And so it’s like you have a product and the product is a TV show, and you want to market that and you market that by reaching. It’s like, where are you going to get attention for this? You could do traditional advertisements on, maybe there’s a TV commercial that’s adjacent to the one you’re doing. You could do an ad on that

Stephanie Woodin: Exactly. You

Bjork Ostrom: Could do billboards in LA or New York. They’re going to get a lot of exposure. Or as we’re seeing more and more you can work with the creator and maybe that creator has a huge mom audience. It’s maybe some of the best dollars that you can spend because on a freeway, you’re going to get all these random people on a TV show, you can maybe kind of focus it in, but it’s like the demographics of a creator’s following, and so you can get that in front of them. So you did have some experience with that?

Stephanie Woodin: Yeah, it was really interesting and it was kind of at the tail end of what I was. Obviously the creator economy has exploded in terms of when I first started working in tv, we didn’t even call them creators or even influencers was kind of a new word.

And so realizing the power of that big brands like in Netflix, now of course it’s second nature, but back then was just starting to understand really the power of creators and the audience they reach. So it really was intriguing to me like, wow, this set of the economy and this space that they occupy is so powerful, so influential, and how can I be a part of that because I’m following all these people. I’m going to their websites for Thanksgiving recipes, what’s going on here? This is really interesting. So that kind of led me to this gig at raf.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And so when you say this gig, obviously there is the podcast. The podcast is as we are recording this, people can, as of today, there’s a little intro, little bit of background. So when this will be published, you can just search control alt ask, or could you just search Raptive and it would come up in any of the podcast players?

Stephanie Woodin: I think so.

Bjork Ostrom: My guess is yes,

Stephanie Woodin: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Tell us a little bit about the podcast specifically. What is the focus going to be for that? And like I said before, I immediately clicked subscribe and follow, not only because we’re fans of what you’re doing, but also because you have this unique insight. Anytime that we can talk to somebody or listen to somebody who has hundreds of or thousands of touch points with multiple people who have the same problem, they’re able to summarize it and surface solutions in a unique way. So the positioning is awesome for people like us. When I say us, I mean Lindsay and I as we create a food site and try and get attention to it because you are having a lot of those conversations with people who are trying to do a similar thing. So talk to us a little bit about the podcast specifically, what will that look like? How will that work? And then we’ll talk a little bit more about what your role looks like within that.

Stephanie Woodin: Yeah, so first, thanks for letting me talk about a podcast. It’s kind of surreal to even have that, but we are so excited because I think as you said, we’ve been talking to creators obviously for decade plus at Raptive, working with them, seeing the bigger picture of the pain points and where the industry is changing so rapidly and how it’s affecting everyone’s businesses. So we felt like there was kind of a little bit of a hole in the sector of a place where creators could land to get that actionable up-to-date advice that really is focused on them and their side of the economy. So we were actually in Hollywood Speed trade publications are what I liken this too, which is the Hollywood Reporter is for actors and producers. This is really our version of that in podcast forum for creators. So it’s a place that they can access really focused information, and I’m kind of just like the big sister is kind of how I show up. And I’m the conduit to these experts that we bring in every week to answer specific creator questions each. But then it always leads us to the bigger problems that every creator can relate to and the bigger opportunities as well. I don’t want to make it all doom and gloom. It’s actually positive. There’s a lot of good and positive outlooks from these experts, but there’s also addressing these concerns and issues that creators are facing. So it’s a great mix.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, my guess is you could pretty easily look at a week of tickets, emails, questions that the support team gets, and you could say, okay, this is taking a quick pulse check from the general creator, populist, this is the thing that people want to hear about. Whether it be an opportunity to your point or a fear, Hey, can you talk to the role of ai? What does that look like? How do AI overviews impact search results? What is the future of Search The’s the most totally episode

Stephanie Woodin: Fun, totally AI overview.

Bjork Ostrom: The reason that I share that is because we both collectively know it’s top of mind for creators, many of whom have a lot of search traffic, and that search traffic is in question and therefore the revenue they’re getting is in question. So naturally people want to know, number one, what do I do about it? And number two, how do I be smart about making decisions of getting traffic from other places? And that’s where the opportunity piece comes in.

Stephanie Woodin: Yes,

Bjork Ostrom: Every time you have one of these potential issues, there’s fear, there’s a problem. There’s this, Lindsay and I grew up in the same small hometown, and there was this business owner who I met with 20 years ago, and I just was asking him for advice. He was nice enough to meet with me, and he would always, instead of a problem, he would say an opportunity. And it’s like, okay, that’s kind of a cool reframe. And so to your point, it’s not all doom and gloom. There are things we need to be aware of. There are changes that will happen, but with that, there will always be an opportunity that comes with it. So is your role within Raptive strictly the podcast or talk a little bit about broadly what you’re doing within Raptive?

Stephanie Woodin: Yeah, so I work on technically the marketing and communications team, but my function has always been to help tell the story of creators within that tive brand framework. So talking about interesting stories that creators have on how they launch their business or a niche that they’re really owning or an audience that they’re really having a lot of success reaching, telling those interesting stories about creators to the press, to the media, to potential partners, to kind of show, like I mentioned before, the power of creators, while also telling the tive brand story of how amazing and influential our network is as a whole at scale. And so I do a lot of talking about the latest news and how Rapt is addressing that, whether it’s the Google of it all and what Raft is doing to advocate for creators. So working on campaigns around that or telling a great story about a cookbook that let’s say Natasha’s Kitchen is launching. So it really kind of is consumer meets industry and really being a storyteller out in that marketplace.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. One of the things that you are able to do with your job is then you are able to see creators who are having certain levels of success. We all define success differently, but let’s assume success in this context is one of these items that we’ve pinpointed as important. Scaling, maybe scaling a team, scaling page views, standing out, which I think maybe kind of goes hand in hand with scaling. In order to scale, you have to have the resources to do that In the world that we are operating in, the way that you get those resources is by standing out. It’s attention, it’s getting recognition. So what are some of the things that you’ve seen as common traits from people who are able to stand out as creators?

Stephanie Woodin: Yeah, it’s a great big question because I think that is the biggest pain point, not the biggest, but a big one I hear from creators who have been around for a while, but who are also maybe just starting out is it’s a crowded landscape on both the open web, but I’m now dealing with other platforms and the attention spans are small, and so this feels like a word that’s thrown around a lot, but I can’t emphasize it enough, which is authenticity and then thereby relatability. I think

If a creator is coming from a place that is true to themselves and their brand and has always been, they will thereby be relatable to the audience that they’re trying to reach because right now traffic is down, AI overviews are happening, there’s a lot of AI on other platforms like Pinterest. It’s kind of a messy landscape. So if you can stay authentic and really bring that humanness to everything you’re doing, your audience who already loves you is going to stay and people will find you and continue to come back. Because I think the biggest thing is people are smart now. Consumers are smart. You can kind of see what’s going on when someone’s just posting because they have to versus wanting to really connect. And then I think the other big thing is, and it goes hand in hand, trustworthiness and your quality of content. Again, I think consumers are smart. They realize that there is AI out there. Sometimes it’s hard to spot, but when a creator is posting quality content where they are caring about what they put on, they are consistent. Every platform, whether it’s social, their site, their email subscription lists, everything feels cohesive and they’re bringing their A game in imagery in how they’re talking, everything feels very on brand, and that is going to then up their community engagement and their audience sticking around. So I think it’s all part of an umbrella that really goes back to identifying your brand personality and sticking with it. But it really is true because that’s how you get eyeballs to stay and want to continue to follow you across every touch point because we know right now, search can’t just be the only way. You have to also engage in email newsletters, you have to be on social, there’s multiple touch points. And that’s actually something Paul Banister talks about in our first episode, we were talking about AI and what can creators do. He’s like, you have to really show up across every platform in an authentic quality way. That’s one thing that creators can focus on.

Bjork Ostrom: One of the things that I think about, what does that actually look like?

I think it’s helpful to have some concrete examples, and one of the ones that I can think of is Lindsay and I recently went to the Minnesota State Fair, so anybody who would ever come to Minnesota, my recommendation for you would be to come the two weeks before Labor Day because that’s when the Minnesota State Fair is going to be happening. And it’s like quintessential summer Minnesota experience. And we had just gotten, it was like ice cream cones or something. So it’s like this classic Minnesota, it was like 76 degrees. It was me and Lindsay. We had a babysitter just this awesome moment,

Perfect. We were leaving and it was a beautiful night. There’s a concert going in the background, and we were walking and just talking about something. And then this person that I was walking next to looked at me and she’s like, wait, are you, this was to Lindsay. She looked past me. Are you pinch of yum? And so we’re like, oh my gosh. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens occasionally where people will recognize Lindsay, but what they said, and I think this is what people could be aware of, even when you’re having conversations with people who maybe you’re just in the early stages and it’s your family and friends who are following you. But what was interesting for me in that moment is being aware of what did those people, these women, it was like a group of friends and three of them knew Pinch of Yam and knew Lindsay. What did they say in that moment when talking to her and what they said was a version of all of the things that you just said, and I don’t remember exactly, but the sentiment was like, I so appreciate fact that you are, as you’re creating, as you’re publishing content, doing so in a way where I know it’s like you and your family and your kids and you’re trying to figure it out. And I know that’s true as well because I see it. It’s doing it. It’s not an act, it’s not trying to do that in order to position. It’s just not intentionally trying to be so polished, so as to be unrelatable. And I think it’s,

Stephanie Woodin: It’s also organic. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: And I think there’s all different versions of that. You could be somebody who’s super polished and really tight and you keep a perfect schedule and you have a great step-by-step process that your family and your kids follow every day. That also is authentic because it’s who you are. I think what you’re saying and what I think is true is you’re not trying to be something different than who you are.

Stephanie Woodin: And

Bjork Ostrom: It also reminds me of Gary Vaynerchuk, who a lot of people know, some people like some people don’t like. I appreciate some of the things that he creates and his perspective on content, which is that he talks about this idea of document don’t create. And I think there’s something to be said around this idea of documenting that aligns with authenticity, where we are getting really good at not only finding a problem and solution, okay, because a huge part of it we have to figure out what are people interested in? How can I help? But then along the way, documenting the process, not just trying to create this perfectly polished thing that goes out. There’s a lot there to it, but I’d be curious how much that aligns with what you’re saying.

Stephanie Woodin: Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah,

Stephanie Woodin: A hundred percent. And what really got me about your story at the fair was the idea of audience, and I haven’t really talked about that, but it all goes with this, which is thinking about who you’re actually talking to and who is that woman at the state fair? Does she have kids like me? If it was like you and Lindsay thinking about your brand, is she a busy working parent? Does she just want easy recipes thinking about there’s real people logging in, so how do you then connect with them as a real person yourself? And it’s like if you could just define that audience in one kind of prototype, who is this person and just speak to them with everything you do, I think that is more of a recipe for success because you’re going to be thinking about them while you’re creating the content, but it’s going to feel like a conversation with your friend, which always goes back to being relatable and is not just either phoning it in or going a little bit outside of what people come to expect. So I think that just struck me as she is your key audience and how do you then maintain that relationship? It really is about the relationship with the audience, and that’s what I’ve learned a lot with working with creators who do really well or who are just starting out. It’s like they just want that relationship and it’s getting harder and harder to come by when people can’t discover you as easily.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think we’ve talked about this a couple of times on the podcast before, but the reason that we talk about this authenticity, how to be human, part of it is that it’s an age old practice of creating something in the world that people feel connected to. How do you create something that when people consume it, whether it be a book, a podcast, an article online, you’re like, wow, I connect with this person and I get this person. I want to follow what this person is doing. But I also think there’s a part of it that’s relatively new in terms of its relevancy because there was a season of content creation on the internet where you didn’t have to be human. You could create content and scale content and have a successful business. And it could be nameless, faceless articles around crab catching in Florida. How do you set a trap and what’s the best practice for setting a trap when you are in trying to catch crabs? I don’t know anything about it, but eight years ago, if I discovered a site and it had good information on it and I didn’t really know who the author was or it didn’t feel connected with them, there’s a good chance that could be a successful business

That would get lots of traffic and you could make money from it. That type of content is becoming harder and harder to create in a sustainable way. And so I think it helps to give some context as to why we talk about this idea of authenticity and being human. Because if we are going to get attention by creating content and from that attention, we’re going to monetize it with either ads or brand partnerships or our own products, one of the ways that we have to do that that’s different than 10 years ago is by connection showing up, having that authenticity, being human. Anything else that you would add to that?

Stephanie Woodin: I think it’s a really great point because what I’m seeing now and what a lot of creators ask is how can I stand out when there’s a bunch? Obviously there’s going to be a lot of food sites and everyone has their own lane that they’re in, and that’s what works really well. But when I thinking about external audiences finding new audiences or finding press partners or press coverage, and it’s like, yes, 10 years ago maybe that wasn’t as much of a concern, but now consumers and press and media partners and brand partners are savvy and they want personality behind the brand. And so they’re seeking, again, that connection where it will only lift up what their project and their initiative and their brand by having a personality who has that

Connectivity and that relationship with their audience. So it’s different now. The landscape has changed. And so I think a lot of creators are asking, how can I stand out? And part of it is being true to your brand and your audience and finding the nuggets of your story that are different, but still your story, right? It’s like you don’t need to fabricate something just for the sake of maybe finding a new reader or for press to love you. It’s pulling out what you already know and just highlighting it in new and different ways. That to me is going to be more of a road to success with getting attention from a potential partner because it’s going to then align with who their audience is. If you’re a mom who looks for bargain fines, all of a sudden you’re not going to just be showing that you bought a Birkin bag. You want to continue to show bargain fines so that maybe a Walmart or an Aldi or a value oriented partner can find you. That to me is where this really comes into play. And so it’s been an interesting maybe change in that partners want to see a fix.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Can you talk about to the degree that you’re aware, so it’s a complicated landscape when it comes to advertisers running ads on sites. It’s easier to understand within the context of sponsored content or a brand partnership in that way where in our case we’ll get people who will reach out and they’ll say, Hey, we are a milk company. We are a pasta company. There’s somebody on their team probably who follows, or maybe they have a database of creators and they look and they’re like, they spend 15 minutes looking at the content and they’re like, Hey, this might be aligned. And we think that they will reach out through a contact form. So that’s easier to understand within the context of social media and within the context of a brand reaching out. Also, maybe you are pitching to brands, so there’s that category. How does that work within the context of display ads? So for an advertising company, you are transacting with companies that want to get ads in front of people in the same way they want attention from an audience. And this might be a Nepal banister category of what does that actually look like? But are you saying there are Walmarts who are looking at websites and saying, we feel aligned with these websites and we want to run ads on those, or were you talking about it more within the context of brand partnerships and social?

Stephanie Woodin: I’m thinking more like brand partnerships where maybe Walmart or someone has something where they’re reaching out to creators because they have an initiative that they feel would speak to these creators, audiences, whether it’s a clothing seasonal hall or something like that. I truthfully do not have as much context in how that works with display ads, but it’s interesting because we have an episode we just taped with Mary Ray Lombardo who is our EVP of partnerships and advertising at Raptive, and she goes into the 101 of programmatic versus the other kinds of advertising direct sales partnerships. It’s a really good one for creators to listen to because I learned a lot not being fully in that world. And it kind of helps break down the idea of what advertisers are looking for different things.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think sometimes when you get into it, especially early stages, you think, Hey, all of these are maybe deals that are being done and somebody is buying these. And traditionally that’s what it was a long time ago, it would be more traditional handshake deals, kind of like you have a newspaper or a magazine, you go and you do this transaction and they say, we want an ad here, and they pay for it. But then as technology advances, you get to be able to make decisions in a different way based on browser behavior and based on location, and that’s the more programmatic piece that you talked about. But then there is the direct sales piece, which is an advertising company. In this case, Raptive goes to a brand and says, Hey, we have some of the best food creators on the internet. Would you chicken company, ketchup company, travel company, whatever it might be interested in running ads on this collection of sites because of the curation. There’s a premium that comes with that versus you just kind of shotgun it across the web and you don’t know is it quality? Is it ai? That’s a huge piece,

Stephanie Woodin: Huge piece. And Mary Ray talks about that, and I equate it to rising tide lifts all boats.

It is such an amazing thing to be in a network where it is curated and it’s being served to advertisers in that way because they know it’s quality, they know what they’re getting at scale, and the creators benefit because they are put into a relationship and they’re in good company amongst the most premium sites and offerings that advertisers can get. So it’s mutually beneficial, that kind of new way of doing it. And I think there are positives of how Mary Ray and her team look at using AI to really shape how they look at audiences and how they look at the different ways that advertisers are looking at audiences and then how that can translate to the creators that are offered up. So I think there’s a lot of positives to AI in that way and what they’re doing in this on a scalable level.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. That’s great. So what I hear you saying, just to put it into like a Bjork GPT summary, summarize,

Stephanie Woodin: I love it. Bjork pc, not that we don’t have enough Bjork, we’ve got so many names. We’ll throw the York in there.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, right. But the basic idea is as a creator, it’s important for you to think about your positioning. We would maybe say your niche and to stay focused on that because what that allows you to do is have people, number one, we didn’t really talk about this, but I think it’s true, be able to self-select and say, is this me or is this not me? An example,

Stephanie Woodin: Very good point

Bjork Ostrom: For Lindsay and Pinch of Yum is she’s talking a lot about what does it look like to have two working parents and have kids and still figure out how do you put food on the table at the end of the night,

Easy to do meals that are still homemade, you’re not ordering out or picking up. People are able to self-select for that. And if it’s like a college student, they’re probably not going to be, they might be, but they’re probably not going to be our main followers. Our main followers are probably going to be parents. We know that it’s women primarily. We don’t know demographically if they have kids or not, but anecdotally from the conversations we’re having, that seems to be true. The second variable within that is or benefit is as you start to have this kind of focus that you have, there is naturally going to be some self-selection that happens for brands. They’re going to reach out to you, they’re going to have conversations they might be interested in working with you. We see that primarily within the context of social brand partnerships, but that also carries over to your website where if you are speaking to these people on social platforms, if you have the attention via email, you know what you are saying.

And then if display advertising is a part of your strategy, you are able to direct them to your website where there’s another place that you can monetize via display ads or affiliate or if you have your own product, cookbooks, things like that. And so all of it under this umbrella of brand and branding, what are the other elements that you would say live under that umbrella of brand along with authenticity, focus, and niche? What are the other things you kind of alluded a little bit to some of the stylistic considerations. You want things to appear visually similar across platforms. Is there anything else you’d add to that?

Stephanie Woodin: I would add, we talked a little bit about this, but I think, and it goes kind of with the aesthetic is credibility and authority. So something that I think coming from also a PR background that even putting brands and monetary partnerships to the side. Let’s say you want to stand out because you have a cookbook launching or you have a product launching that you’ve put your brand behind, your blood, sweat, tears and money behind in your launching, you want to present as an authority in that space. So that press and those third party partners who are covering that space look to you as like, oh, they’re an expert, they’re credible, they have a history and experience here that will lend me to want to dive deeper or cover them in their product. So I think credibility showing anywhere on your site, typically it’s the About Me page or your author pages under that brand umbrella of like, okay, I see the site visually, I see that this person has real recipes, they’re a human being.

But then the other piece of it is, can I trust this content and are they credible? What makes them an authority in this? So wherever you can show that, whether it’s, you don’t have to have gone to cooking school, but you can say, look, I have 10,005 star reviews across my site, or I won this blog award, or here’s some of what people are saying when they come to my site. Here’s some excerpts of reviews. That all lends to credibility and just reinforces that your brand is real trusted and that people are loyal to you and that can pay off in spades because if you have someone who’s booking for Good Morning America for a cookbook demo and they’re searching the internet or on social and they click on your site and they see those markers, they’re way more apt to dive in deeper or reach out to you to say, Hey, I’m looking for an expert on last minute fall weeknight meals. Would you like to come on? I see that you have a lot of authority in this space. That’s a big part of it.

Bjork Ostrom: So much of it comes back to these things that we naturally do as humans trustworthiness. How do we trust people

Whether in a relationship or hiring a lawn company or even more extreme examples like you have a nanny. What are the things that you can establish yourself? How can you establish trust? How can you establish authority? And I think an important thing to point out, so Google has these people that are actually, that are quality raters that will look at a site, and one of the most interesting things that you can do is look through Google’s guideline on quality for these quality raters and they talk about this ad nauseum. People hear about this idea of EEAT (expereint, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness). That’s not some weird SEO thing. What it is is just reflecting what we naturally do as humans. And so for us to think about how do we position ourselves, there’s not some super secretive strategy. I think what it comes down to is how do you naturally filter some of those things when you’re out in the world, and then how do you reflect that in the content that you’re creating or the website that you’re building? Exactly. And so the advice around it, this is my quick chat GPT summary. It’s not a Bjork GPT via the Rater’s guideline. Make it clear who wrote it, show external sources or expert opinions that back up your content, ensure the site itself has a good reputation, be transparent about page disclose disclosure, policies, and you can look through the quality radar guidelines or if somebody wanted to, you could just, this is one of my favorite things to do. Have you used the chat GPT Advanced Voice?

Stephanie Woodin: Oh my gosh. I just got stuck because I was playing around with the app and it said, do you want to try this? I haven’t tried it, but

Bjork Ostrom: It’s amazing. That’ll be everybody’s homework assignment coming out of this, but I’ve had a couple times where I’ve had a curiosity and I just make a mental note of it, and then if I’m just go for a walk or if I’m doing the dishes, I’ll power up the advanced voice. I think you maybe have limited availability if you’re on the free plan, and then there’s a lot more if you’re on the pro plan, but just to have a conversation around any of the stuff that we’re talking about. But in this case, if you want to understand the quality rater guidelines and don’t want to read through whatever 70 pages that it is, I have no idea how long it is, but I think it’s long. That would be a great use of the Advanced voice feature within ChatGPT. Very cool. Which is really great. So you alluded to a few of the conversations that you’re having on the podcast coming up. They sound incredible. I’m looking forward, I know Mary know Paul, but I want to know, give us a teaser on the handful of the first conversations that you’re having for people who might be interested in following along and listening through those.

Stephanie Woodin: So yes, we are talking to a really wide range of creators and experts. So I mentioned Paul Banister. He is one of our executives here at Raptive who truly is one of the smartest people when it comes to the digital media landscape, and he has been in the trenches working on these issues with Google and AI and cookies and what’s happening to the industry, and he really helps us unpack this idea of what AI is doing to search and AI overviews. So that’s going to be our first episode, which is I told ’em it’s our most existential episode because

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, just right into it. You’re getting right into it right off the bat.

Stephanie Woodin: I mean, we are just ripping the bandaid off and we have creators from Inspired Taste, Adam and Joanne Gallagher who have the question around AI overviews and really the idea of should I break up with Google? So it’s a big question to ask and we kind of go into the challenges, but also Paul has an optimistic like teaser, spoiler alert, there’s some optimism. So it’s not all doom and gloom. Another episode that we just finished, and I loved this, was around YouTube and what creators should be doing when it comes to short form versus long form content. And so we talked to Linda Peta, who is our YouTube strategist here at iv, and she worked at YouTube for I think called almost a decade.

Bjork Ostrom: Amazing.

Stephanie Woodin: She really unpacks what’s happening with the algorithm on YouTube and creators who might just be toe dipping or creators who really have a presence on YouTube but are wrestling with is long form still going to be my bread and butter, or should I really prioritize short form and what does that look like? That was a really fun, fun conversation. And then another one that I mentioned was our conversation about advertising 1 0 1 with Mary Ray Lombardo and the creator who called in. She really is very niche. She has a crochet site and we talk about what does that look like? Should creators go broader with their content, should they stay in their lane? Is it a mix of both? We get into all of that, so those are just the first three episodes. We have a lot more to come, so I’m really diving into this podcast world, Bjork and love it,

Bjork Ostrom: Being interviewed, doing interviews. Oh man, that’s been really fun. Glad to have another podcaster.

Stephanie Woodin: Yeah, and I will say this podcast is really for creators who don’t have the resources or the industry time really. It’s really time to sit and read article after article. This is a way, like you said, you’re on a walk, pop in your AirPods and go for a walk and listen to one of these conversations. I bet you’ll learn something. We’re really focused on actionable takeaways. It’s not just theories and abstract. It’s like, what can a creator do as they’re listening to this right now and on their site, so if it helps.

Bjork Ostrom: I had a conversation with somebody yesterday. He said he listens to audio content three x speed. He’s like, really? There’s so much stuff I want to listen to. There’s so much content I want to consume, and so he said he listens to three x, which I’ve never heard anybody, like I used to do YouTube videos, but they can’t do three x, so I stopped listening to YouTube, so you’re getting to that point where there’s enough good content on. I would say you can on the Raptive podcast, you don’t have to do three x speed.

Stephanie Woodin: Yeah, don’t do three X, I talk fast enough even with my Southern accent, but I would say one X sounds good. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: 1.2,

Stephanie Woodin: 1.2, 1.2. But yeah, that would make my brain literally fry, so

Bjork Ostrom: He also talks very fast, so

Stephanie Woodin: Well, there you go. That’s impressive.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. Stephanie, how about for you? Usually at the end we’d say folks can share where they’re producing content. Obviously you’re producing content on the podcast with Raptive. If people did want to connect with you, is there a way to do that or would it be just generally connecting with Raptive? Kind of a chance for you to shout out any of the kind of landing spots for people coming out of the podcast?

Stephanie Woodin: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. Follow us. We’re Ctrl+Alt+Ask, so you can follow us on any platform, and then you can email us directly at [email protected], and that is where if you have a question like you’re a creator with a question and you want an expert to answer it, send us an email there. That’s the best place I personally check that inbox. So cool. That’s the best place. Great.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, Stephanie, thanks so much for coming on. Excited that you’re launching this podcast and excited to follow along.

Stephanie Woodin: Yeah, Bjork, thanks so much for having me. It was fun.

Emily Walker: Hey there, this is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team, and thank you so much for listening to that episode. We really appreciate it. If you liked this episode or enjoy the show, we would really appreciate you leaving a review or rating wherever you listen to your podcast. Episodes, ratings and reviews help get the show in front of new listeners and help us grow our little show into something even bigger. We read each and every review, and it makes us so happy to hear when you’re enjoying the podcast or what you would like us to improve or change in upcoming episodes. All you have to do is find the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts, whether it’s on Apple or Spotify or another player, and enter a rating and review. While you’re there, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss a new episode. We really appreciate it so much, and it makes such a huge difference for our show. So thanks in advance, and that’s all we have for you today. So have a great week.