Wait... People Still Read Blogs?! (AEO is the New SEO)

Welcome to the B2B Sales and Marketing Hotline. Dialing up the latest tactics and hottest trends, we're here to help you take your B2B game from stagnant to stellar. I'm Emily. And I'm Marianne.

And together, we're ready to answer your burning B2B sales and marketing questions. Each episode, we'll tackle a need-to-know topic in the ever-evolving world of B2B sales and marketing. We'll break it down with actionable takeaways you can implement right away. And because you don't get results without real talk, we're wrapping up every show with a quick Q&A segment.

So fire away with your burning questions. Whether you're a seasoned sales leader or a marketing veteran, the B2B sales and marketing hotline is your one-stop shop to take your B2B efforts to the next level. Hi, Emily. Hello.

I am so glad to be doing another episode of the podcast today. As am I. Here we are. So we're talking about blogging, if it matters, and if people still read blogs.

I think we're titling this one, Wait, People Still Read Blogs? Is that the title? I think that should be the title, if not the title. Okay.

Well, I hope that's what you listeners will know before us, right? This will be titled by the time you read it, but we're just excited to talk about it because three years ago, this conversation would have been polar opposite of what it will be today. And it's confusing right now. People feel confused.

Are we supposed to still be leaning into write blogs as a business, particularly in the B2B world? Do people still read blogs. The digital landscape has changed, but the role of blogs is not obsolete. It has just evolved, not disappeared.

So we'll talk about what that means today and how it's evolved. Yes. Yes. I love that.

The evolution of blogging. And I think just to kind of kick off the conversation too, blogging, we're really blogging for AI. We're like fueling the AI machine with the facts and the information that it needs to know about our business, right? So it's like an entirely different reason for blogging.

We're really feeding the LLMs so that the LLMs, and if you don't know what that is, that's in layman's terms, ChatGPT, Gemini. It's the learning models that are feeding information to people who are just typing in to ask questions. Right. And people have blogged for different reasons.

I mean, originally we were all blogging. So humans would come to your website and read and be educated from you and then trust you and start their sales process with you, right? Start their buying journey with you. And then, I mean, we never at Leagy2 took this approach like super heavily.

We always wrote for humans first, but there were a lot of people that wrote for SEO first, right? Pumping their blogs with keywords so SEO would find them. Um, we always took the, the lane that if we write for humans first and then follow SEO, um, best practices, we will get ranked and that worked. Um, but now really neither of those are the, are the path to take, right?

Humans are not going to websites just to be educated there. There's too many other places for them to go and be educated quickly. So they're not going to go and spend a ton of time filtering through things. Um, writing for humans versus not the right way.

writing for SEO first, also not the right way because SEO is not where people are going to, to find their, um, answers anymore. So really path number three, new evolved path is to write for the LLMs. So that way you're still, um, in the thinking of popping up for SEO, you're still popping up for the AI, but, um, it's, it's a very different path. You don't, it's not pumping it with keywords.

It's a different methodology to write for the LLMs. Yeah. I actually, I was telling a client the other day this example, but this is a real life example that I'll share. I was opening up a high yield savings account for my family.

And normally, like in years past, I would go to Google and I would type in to Google, you know, high yield savings accounts. What's the best high yield savings account? And let Google give me a bunch of results, right? And I'm probably going to see the ads at the top, the people like Capital One or whoever else that pay a lot of money to be at the top of that.

I might even click on them because they're paying and I'm seeing it first. And then I would see those who blog and those who have hit good keywords and whatever, whatever, whatever down the line. Instead, no joke, this is my experience. This is what I did.

I went to ChatGPT and ChatGPT knows me. It knows me. It knows my family. It knows the recipes I like to cook for dinner at night.

And so I typed into chat GPT. I said, I'm opening up a high yield savings account. I'd like X, Y, and Z. And I gave some clear criteria, low, you know, high interest rates no penalty no annual fees stuff like that And chat GPT gave me one answer and I no joke trusted it so much that I clicked on it and I opened up a Hylton account and I put my money in I like why would I do anything else There no reason to do anything else It gave me the answer.

It knows me and I trust it. And the fact of the matter is that ChatGPT only knows information about that specific company. And I've actually never heard of it before. It's called Raisin.

That's the name of the company. Oh, wow. Never heard of it. But it knows enough about Raisin that it told me the interest rate, the location of it, the headquarter, no fees, blah, blah, blah.

And the reason it knows all that information is because Raisin puts that information on their website. You know, being elusive online, ChatGPT doesn't know the answer. So, I mean, really, that's what we're blogging for. Think of that exact example.

You're blogging to give the LLM the answer so that when someone goes on ChatGPT and says, I'm a business, I'm looking for X, Y, Z, I need this specific criteria, that ChachiBT or whatever LLM is going to give them you as the answer, but give them the correct information. Right. Which is huge because it could give the incorrect information. I mean, if it's not on your website.

So how, I guess Raisin's doing it, but I guess how they structure sure their content makes sense, right? It has to be helpful. It has to be topic rich. It has to be broken down in a digestible format.

That's what the LLM is scanning for. Yes. Yes. And we're even seeing, you know, a best practice that we're noticing with our clients that we're already implementing is going ahead and putting at the top of the blog posts, some key facts, like just the facts of the blog post in very short, very simple terms.

Before you get into the bubbly blog post that's very personable and exciting to read, just have those key highlights at the very top so that when ChatGPT or any LLM is going through your website and understanding your business and connecting dots, that you're giving that information very explicitly with like no color added. You're like laying it out there. Right. So, so that changes how we're writing blogs moving forward, but the blogs that you have been writing for years for your inbound marketing methodology and planning, um, and strategy, they don't have to be completely obsolete.

Can you go back and update and optimize them? Absolutely. Um, but we're still recommending to use them as a sales enablement engine. You know, have your salespeople use them, Use them as we've always taught them to use them, right?

In their sales process, as follow-up, forethought leadership on social media. There's lots of ways that you can still be using that old content and connecting with people. Yeah. Because if you think about it, it's really like two paths to find you, right?

There's like the people who don't know you at all. You're just a business among many businesses, and they're just doing some research on Chat CPT and they're going to come by and find you. But then there's also the other path, which is people who already follow you on LinkedIn, who already are connected to you, that maybe you've presented opportunities in the past and you have a relationship with them. You know, those are people that they're already, they're not going on chat CPT and asking chat CPT questions that will find you.

That's right. They already know you. And so using that as sales enablement, using that as an email, a VBR to not just say, hey, I'm just checking in on my proposal, but sending them that blog post. The same thing we've said for years.

That hasn't changed. That is very steadfast and still works. And you can repurpose old blog content with purpose for a campaign or doing the analytics on your old blog post to see what's performed the best in the past. Take that and turn it into 2025 marketing for recreating a new campaign and structuring it differently.

Yep. Yep. Totally. Yeah.

I mean, blogs, you could, you know, use them in nurture sequences after someone downloads something off your website or takes an action, send them blogs, pepper them with information. You can even go back in time and restructure some of your blog. We've always recommended re-updating and re-optimizing. Yeah.

I mean, when you're looking at re-optimizing, maybe you add a quick little, you know, key takeaway blurb at the top that has some key takeaways. Maybe you, you change some of the information to be a bit more explicit and less, I mean, that's a big thing too, that we're seeing is in years past, our recommendation for blogging would have absolutely been to be a thought leader, to not push your product, to be very just genuine in your thinking and education so that people, like Marianne said, trust you.

You build this level of trust with people and then they see you as the expert and therefore buy your product. But what we're finding with ChatGPT and with other LLMs is they don't understand that. They're not connecting the dots between your education and you actually selling that product. So it's more important than ever to actually explicitly say and here how this specific thing that I sharing relates directly to our product and our service and how we do business And so that you teaching the LLM And so even just taking some of the blog posts that you've created and spent a lot of time on in the past and just doing a little bit of zhuzhing, you know, put a little bit of, put those extra dot connections in there so that you aren't, you know, recreating the exact same blog posts, but you're optimizing them.

Absolutely. And just not stuffing blog posts with keywords and stuffing titles with keywords. I honestly think going through and just updating titles from blog posts could do a world of good because the content is probably even might not be structured the right way. It's probably still good.

It's just a lot of the titles seem at this point old fashioned, right? We're in 2025. blog titles look different. Yes.

Yeah. We want to be, and I mean, another thing just in general with blogging is, you know, instead of thinking about like keyword stuffing and how we used to, you know, go to, you know, see all of the ranks and the keywords and who's seeing what and the intent value and all of that, have a conversation with ChatGPT about your business. Like literally go to chat GPT and say, I want to know what people are searching for when they're thinking about X, Y, and Z, and just have a conversation and just see what it says.

I mean, it's going to give you all the answers that you need to then think about what is bringing people to buy your services. Like you're, you're getting a glimpse of the beginnings of that. You can also then write blog posts that will speak to those pain points. And a big thing that we're finding too is you're writing blog posts that are very specific to a singular pain point.

So not having... And then giving that singular pain point bulleted, clear formatting, skimmable, original insights that people can take as takeaways. Think about it as how AI talks to you is how they want you to talk to them. So the way that AI answers, oh, this is what I know about your business and gives bullet points.

That is what they want you to tell them too about your business on your website. So anything that can be a snippet or a quote or something that they could grab to tell someone else quickly is great. So thinking about that AI readability when you're writing. Yeah.

And think about it in almost like a question and answer type style. Like you're giving AI the question and then you're answering it. So even having like Q&A or an FAQ style blog post, like you're explicitly giving both the question and the answer to Arm AI to be able to answer the question later. I mean, you do a little bit of research just on your own company, like action, take this and run with it.

Go to ChatGPT and just ask it, say, what are the pros and cons of working with lead G2. Put in your company's name and see what it says. Because what we're finding is that a lot of times, both the pros and the cons are actually not true. We can't have that for our clients.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that ChatGPT just doesn't know because we haven't told it. And so, you know, if let's say you work with companies nationally, maybe ChatGPT only recognizes your HQ as your place of business.

And so it says a con of working with you is that you only service people in Arizona or whatever. You could then teach ChatGPT or the LLMs to correct that by writing a blog post about how you work nationally with companies and that you don't just focus in one service area. You have X, Y, and Z. And you can use the information that ChatGPT is giving you as your own pros and cons to write content that's going to correct that.

Right. So in summary, I feel like we've given a lot of tactical ways to do this, but the big takeaway here from this conversation is that we need to be writing blogs with AI search in mind, not SEO. And I hate to say not humans, because the reality is humans talk and think and use AI and are operating differently online too. So it is still human.

It's just not 2020 human where we were going and reading full long eBooks on people's blogs. Right. So just keep that in mind. And if you have more questions about this, or you want to optimize your old blogs or write new ones in a way that helps AI search, find you, reach out to us.

We have changed our blogging strategy for all of our clients. And we, our content manager is thriving right now with all of this change. So definitely reach out to us and we can walk you through that on a more one-to-one basis with your B2B business. Yes.

Yes. If you are blogging the same way that you blogged even last year, you need to change. And there is going to be more evolving. I feel certain about it.

And working with an agency like lead G2 you privy to this information as it comes out because this is what we do all day long We learning this all day long We doing research We going to conferences We understanding this stuff This is our business This is what we do So as this is evolving and we learning more and more things, we're making these changes in real time for our clients. So. Okay. So we move to Q&A?

Let's do it. Rick shared with us two questions for us to answer from you all. So thank you for submitting. Let's see.

The first one says, webinars used to be reliable lead generators for us, but attendance is dropping. Are webinars worth it anymore in your opinion? Or are there any tips or tricks to make webinars better in 2025? It's a great question.

I think there's so many. I just want to say it depends. It depends. It depends.

I think just like any other form of video content, I think that the main, and I felt this way about webinars forever. It's less about the people that show up and more about the ongoing ability to use it as thought leadership, lead gen, but also the ability to then like splice that up and put it on social media. You're basically just doing a webinar to have content. Like that's what it is.

I would say- I know. Honestly, I feel the exact same way. So the question being, are webinars worth it anymore? The answer is yes.

And for the same reasons, like it hasn't, the reasons haven't changed as much as what we just talked about, blogging, right? It's always been about people registering for it. So you capture their contact information so you can continue to market them and sell to them and less about their live attendance. Yeah.

Yeah. And I would say too, I think it's all about the promotion of it, right? Like making a webinar that is relevant and important and then marketing it well, you know, putting that webinar in front of people, making the webinar the right amount of time. I was about to say brevity.

Don't try to book an hour webinar. Right. Like a 20, 25 minute quick webinar that is very well relevant to them. I think, again, it depends.

It depends. It depends. And again, we do it for our clients. I mean, I think generally the answer is yes, they are still worth it.

Yeah. I do them right. We both agree. It is absolutely worth it.

Webinars should absolutely be part of your strategy. And I think it just is all about the execution of it. Okay. Next question.

My team needs to start optimizing our content for AI. However, I'm having trouble breaking down the differences between SEO and AEO in a tangible way. How can I explain this in a clear way and what metrics should we be focusing on to gauge our AEO effectiveness? Wow.

I hope by the time we've gotten to this question, it is clear. AEO is writing content that speaks to LLMs. It is writing content that AI understands and that AI is going to use to then give correct information to your prospects. Whereas SEO is giving Google and search, you know, the search engines, little keyword bytes that would signal out, this is relevant.

This is relevant as people are typing into search engines to find things. SEO search engine optimization has been around for a long time and it has, we have seen it evolve and grow. LLMs are the large language models that are AI and those are, we are at the beginning and they are only going to grow. You have to optimize now.

If you avoid this for a year, you will be kicking yourself. So, but there are tools that can help you. So HubSpot's already on it. They knew this was coming and they are ready to help us.

So they have created, um, a greater, uh, within your portal, you can access that and see how you're doing. And honestly start there because that's going to give you the best practical tips and see what's going on and how can I explain this in a clear way. The greater really breaks it down in a clear way for you or college or you can totally hands off. We got you.

No worries. also an option. I love it. Okay, guys, thank you for listening.

Please connect with us, submit your questions. We love to answer your questions and connect with you. We'll put more information in the show notes and we look forward to seeing you next season. Yes.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.

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