How to Keep Algorithm Changes from Destroying Your Content Strategy, with Melih Oztalay

How can we keep our content strategy thriving when market turbulence is the new normal?

Tune in for this podcast interview with Tim Krywulak (host), Associate Dean of Design, Visual Arts, and Computer Studies at Georgian College, and industry veteran Melih Oztalay (guest), as they unveil proven tactics to embrace change, outpace competitors, and future-proof your content in an ever-shifting landscape.

👉 About Our Guest
Melih Oztalay is a seasoned digital marketing leader with over 35 years of experience, combining deep marketing and IT expertise to help brands stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape. As CEO of SmartFinds Marketing, based in Birmingham, Michigan, he guides clients through disruption using his signature 4-A’s framework: Anticipate, Accept, Adapt, and Adopt.

Known for practical, results-driven strategies, Melih has helped clients across diverse sectors—from automotive to healthcare—achieve impressive outcomes, including dramatic reductions in website bounce rates and audience growth. His work balances future-focused innovation with a collaborative, human-centered approach, earning his agency recognition as one of Michigan’s “50 Companies to Watch.” Click here to book a meeting with Melih

🔥 Why You Can’t Miss This Episode:
Melih dives deep into how content creators and marketers can not just survive but thrive amid uncertainty. Whether you’re a blogger, content strategist, or marketer, the tips shared here will help you align your strategy with shifting market dynamics — ensuring your content stays relevant, impactful, and profitable. 

In the conclusion, Tim also shares a new tool he's started using that can help you generate new backlinks to your own website while also scaling your online visibility on other sites. 

👉 About the Host
Tim Krywulak is the host and producer of My Tog Blog About Awesome Content Creation, where he shares expert insights and practical advice for content creators and entrepreneurs. With nearly two decades of experience in education, applied research, and project management, Tim brings a rich background in storytelling and strategic thinking to his work in digital content creation.

Thanks for listening! Do you have a comment or question about a topic or episode? I'd love to hear that. Feel free to contact me via Instagram or the Contact Us page, and check out our merch for content creators.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Tim: Building an online brand has never been easier and more complicated than it is right now. On the one hand, AI tools have made it easier than ever to ideate and create content at scale and to plan out entire digital marketing strategies. On the other hand, these tools are available to many other creators, making it more and more difficult to stand out amidst all the competition that's out there.

[00:00:20] Not only that changes in technology, platform algorithms, and consumer behaviors are happening faster than ever, partly as a result of AI and the new competitive environment it's creating online.

[00:00:31] What's a creator or brand to do in this situation? Well, how about getting advice from someone who has been in the digital marketing industry since the early days of the internet and has been through all the changes that have happened since then to now?

[00:00:43] That's the opportunity with my guest today, Melih Oztalay. He's the founder of Smart Finds Marketing, a Detroit paced full service AI digital marketing agency with a 25 person team whose clients have included major brands such as Wendy's, Penske Big Boy, BASF, and others. He's also a published author with articles in Search Engine Journal and Practical e-Commerce, and has more than 35 years of experience creating digital marketing strategies for firms of CEOs across many different sectors.

[00:01:13] And in today's episode, Miele outlines his four A framework for how businesses or content creators can adapt in the face of massive transformations within digital marketing, of which he's been through many over the past three decades.

[00:01:25] We also talk about how a marketing strategy can be used as a shortcut to massively enhance an organization or individual's credibility in a highly competitive marketplace. And in the conclusion of today's episode, I'm gonna give you one more strategy that you can use to build on that. So stick around for that and let's get into it.

[00:01:43] 

[00:01:47] Tim: Hi Melih, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:49] Melih: Nice to meet you, Tim, and glad to be on your show. 

[00:01:52] Tim: Yeah, I just wanted to start out with the question of why most businesses struggle with digital marketing and what you see that they're doing wrong out there.

[00:02:01] Melih: I think the biggest problem is the idea that they don't accept the changes that are taking place in the marketplace. I think's the biggest issue I've seen it, you know, roughly 40 years that I've had this company as this marketing agency outta Detroit. Anytime something changes, right? It's a Google algorithm. That's usually the biggest one that's happened so far.

[00:02:22] Now we're moving into a completely different space where it's AI that's impacting the change, nevermind the fact you've got basic thing, you know, I shouldn't say basic, maybe that's the wrong word, but even things like LinkedIn now, which has become such a huge element in the B2B marketing space, it's been changing its algorithm. We're going through another change in LinkedIn now. And they're trying to move the content that people are posting, you know, I, I hate to say this, this way, but moving it from something meaningful to something less meaningful, you know.

[00:03:00] Tim: With Instagram, you know, reach is down there and LinkedIn, same thing. It's a very rapidly changing kind of environment out there. And I think a lot of times people feel blindsided by these changes, because they're doing something and it's working and then all of a sudden it's not. So that kind of leads into what you talk about with your Four A's approach, which is adapting to these trends, and why is it crucial, and how do we do it? 

[00:03:25] Melih: Sure. Okay, the 4As that I came up with are based on my experiences and my knowledge over decades, specifically after the Google Hummingbird algorithm in, August, 2013. That really hit hard. 

[00:03:40] Tim: What, what was that I, I'm not familiar with it? 

[00:03:42] Melih: Well, Google changed. And, and I wrote an, industry article after that. I think it's on Search Engine Journal too, is I wrote an article to the extent of SEO is dead.

[00:03:52] Okay. That was the concept of, of the article. And what I meant by that, and I wrote it in the article, is that SEO is no longer a task that you just check off or walk away and be done. Right? SEO turns into an ongoing marketing process. Mm-hmm. Also for, and a lot of people don't understand the concept of a marketing process.

[00:04:15] So with that in mind, I'm saying that a marketing process says there's no endpoint. You're SEOing. Daily, weekly, monthly. You don't just to hire, you don't get to hire a $5 an hour person and think that you're just gonna be done with it. It doesn't happen. It's like you are gonna hire somebody, you're gonna find a budget that you're comfortable with, and that person's gonna be involved in all aspects of what is considered SEO. It's about Google Analytics. It's about Google Search Console. It's gonna be about everything that you learn at your GT Metrics report. It's gonna be about your rankings in the old days and now it's no longer rankings. It's about references, right? And now we're trying to be referencing AI search results. And so my point is that the Google algorithm change, the Hummingbird Al algorithm change, was a huge change and it impacted a lot of things. And so businesses are had a hard time, a lot of businesses lost ranking. 

[00:05:16] And so that was kind of the beginnings of that concept of the forays, and I had to figure out, well, how do I put this in their perspective to our clients and to our prospects for that matter. For our prospects, I have to put this in a perspective. Say, listen, I can put a 12-month plan together for you, but in six months I'm changing it, and don't shoot the messenger because I don't have no control over this.

[00:05:38] And so with that in mind, let me put some perspective in this conversation. Number one is the first day is anticipate change. Now, you would think that's simple, right? It's like, okay, I know change is happening. That's not the case. Anticipate change means I'm putting a budget aside for when change happens. That I can reinvest into my marketing strategy. And that's the biggest problem I run into and the industry runs into with businesses.

[00:06:08] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:08] Melih: They have a $10,000 a month budget. Right. Okay, fine. You run that and you go and you and go. And now Google has an algorithm change. Meta has an algorithm change. LinkedIn has an algorithm change, and that algorithm change does two things.

[00:06:24] Number one, what you have invested. Anywhere from 10 to 30% is gone. Thank you very much. I'm just, you have no control over that. And the other thing that it does is the fact that you need some bump in your existing budget. So if you're spending 10 grand a month, you might need to bump that up to two, I mean, to 12 grand a month by two.

[00:06:45] Right? And so. This is what businesses pushed back against. 

[00:06:51] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:51] Melih: They're not, they don't care about the change. They care about the fact that it's a loss in investment. It's a fact that they have to invest more. So when I say anticipate change, that's what I'm referring to. Put budget aside upfront and just call it cost of doing business.

[00:07:10] Tim: Right. 

[00:07:11] Melih: That's the world we live in. You can sit there and fret, fuss, and fume all day long and just don't make a difference. Right. 

[00:07:16] Tim: I see this with, personal brands too, where there's not in, in that case, often it's time, time to adjust to the change, but there's no budget. They're maxed out, right, with their bandwidth.

[00:07:27] So change happens. They've got no time to investigate it and adapt. So I can, I can really appreciate what you're saying there. 

[00:07:35] Melih: So let's go on to the second A because that one's equally interesting. So the second A is accepting change. And now this is an interesting one because what I find in this A is that it has nothing to do with budget. That's not the issue. Not. Not in this case. Right. And the reason I say that is because we've already confirmed the first day right months earlier, and therefore, there is a budget.

[00:07:57] But when we get to actually having to do something about the changes, we run into a different problem. And the problem is emotion businesses and individuals in that business. Just fret fuss and fme, and they throw their arms up in the air and say, I'm not gonna play this game. As a matter of fact, I remember some time ago I had a client actually say, we're getting off the Google trend.

[00:08:18] And this is before ai, 

[00:08:20] Tim: when they're the only train. 

[00:08:22] Melih: I'm like, there's only one train to be on. You can't, you can't not be on that train.

[00:08:26] I'm trying to explain to them, listen, you can play in the mud all day long. You can get off the train all day long. I got news for you, your competition's on the train that didn't get off 

[00:08:37] Tim: Right. 

[00:08:37] Melih: Right, and that changes everything. The perspective changes, the fret fussing and fuming stops. And like a little kid, a 2-year-old kid having a temper tantrum. And so like, you know, it's like, okay, listen, just so we're clear, if you get off the train right now and decide.

[00:08:56] Let's say three months later, five months later, when you see that your leads are down, your sales are down, right, and you decide to get back on that train just to get caught up to your competition, it's gonna cost you 10 x what you're currently paying, right?

[00:09:10] Because I, we need more everything to, to backfill. Lag, right? Assuming we get caught up to your competition, and mind you, when I say caught up, I'm saying you're looking at all these different metrics that we have available to us on the internet, right? I've got domain authority, I've got backlinks, I've got, I don't know, take your content.

[00:09:31] I've got, you know, search results, blah, blah, blah. I mean, list goes on and on. We have so much. Information about competition and our own website and comparison analysis, et cetera, et cetera. So my point is, just to get caught up, it's gonna cost you 10 x what you're currently paying. And now let's say you want to be competitive and pass your competition.

[00:09:53] Well, I got news. You got another bump in your budget. Okay. And so as we go through this conversation of accepting change, listen, I, I end up putting on my psychologist hat that's not a. I'm not putting on a marketing cup here at all. I'm trying to get the client to work through. This emotional issue that they have by trying to say, yes, let's move on now.

[00:10:20] Assuming I can get through that, then I'm trying to get them to understand we're gonna go through the change. Because a lot of 'em decide, okay, we'll do this, but how about we go around, take some shortcuts, go around the bike. 

[00:10:33] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:10:34] Melih: Okay, so assuming I can get them out of fussing and fuming, the next step is to get them to understand that we're gonna go through this, put that additional budget.

[00:10:45] Remember I said 10 to 12,000, right? I'm not talking about 10 to 20. I'm not saying that they're at that point where they gotta do 10 x. I'm saying is that we got them fussing and fuming and we're still within the 30 days of needing to make this change. And okay, you know what? We'll add the 2000. But then I have to get them to understand we're gonna go through that change and it's going to be term, you know, there's gonna be turmoil.

[00:11:09] It's not gonna be easy, so just give me one or two months to work through that. And then, you know, we got all these metrics to show what's going on, so it's not like it's we're, you know, in the blind here. So that's the second. A, I mean this whole idea of accepting change, so assuming we accept change, the next two a's are really easy actually.

[00:11:27] Tim: Yeah. And again, like I can kind of see a parallel with personal brand content creators. A lot of people that were photography creators, like in my niche. Reels came out and they're like, I don't wanna do reels. I'm not a video creator. And then the ones that did it, the ones that did go through that, they got so much further ahead.

[00:11:45] And then some other people tried catching up. But I could see like what you're saying, like by then those other people who went ahead right away, they had so much more time to become video creators. 

[00:11:56] Melih: Exactly. 

[00:11:56] Tim: And they've, they've gotten a lot further. And, and acknowledging that they went through a lot of pain, probably at the beginning when they're like, oh, now I have to create videos.

[00:12:05] How am I gonna do that? Like, now I've gotta think about my content in a whole different way. 

[00:12:10] Melih: You know, it might be helpful for me to put into perspective if you know the, the idea of the four A's is not in my humble opinion, something for the Millennial generation or for the Gen X.

[00:12:22] I'm talking about the four A's being for my generation, the baby boom. Okay. That's, that's the group I'm trying to the moment and just, I think it's important to put this in a perspective from this standpoint. The baby boomers and my generation, what they considered marketing was advertising. It wasn't marketing to the extent of this process, this cycle that we have today, that encompasses so many different aspects, 

[00:12:46] Tim: right?

[00:12:46] Melih: Of how do we get the brand out there, our pr, our social media. Our multi-channel marketing, our Omni or, or some people call 'em omni-channel marketing. That's not what, that's not what you used to be. Print, radio, tv, this was it. Right? Well mail. Okay. So, right, that those are your four marketing channels, so to speak.

[00:13:08] More like advertising channels. And this is an environment where you could expect 1% response no matter what you did. At all times. There was consistency. There was no technology involved and there was stability. There was this idea that I know what I'm gonna get. Okay? As as starting 2004, not only did we go a hundred percent digital at that year. Google went public from that point forward, forget it. You're in a whole new world. Okay. 

[00:13:39] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:13:39] Melih: And to this day, okay, listen, I'm 62 and I have a lot of people in my age range that are still in business, that are still in the position of authority and responsibility. Whether they're working with the company or whether, whether they own the company, it doesn't make a change. These are the guys that are still in that mindset. Saying I should be able to spend X and get Y. Okay. And that world doesn't exist in the same way as it used to. 

[00:14:08] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:09] Melih: I think we, that, that's the general issue that we run into when it comes to budget, when it comes to planning, when it comes to, trying to understand what is it that you're investing to?

[00:14:21] Versus what's an expense. And I always have to tell clients that you're, you find a budget to invest in your brand and your company and never change that. 

[00:14:30] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:31] Melih: And throughout the course of the year, based on a planned effort, throw in an advertising campaign for 90 to 120 days, then back that out. But while that's going on, you still have this other channel that's still continuing.

[00:14:47] If you're, let's just say you're spending five grand a month with company A. 

[00:14:50] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:50] Melih: You don't like what they do, you're gonna move to company B. Well, fine. Guess what? Your five grand doesn't change. It doesn't. My point is the budget doesn't change.

[00:14:59] You can change companies all day long, but the work that's required to keep you competitive in the marketplace. That's not gonna change. That's the issue that we run into. And this is the emotion mm-hmm. That we're trying to, trying to work through. 

[00:15:14] Tim: So, so you get people through that, where, where, where do you go from there?

[00:15:18] Melih: So the next A is kind of easy and that's the. Adapting to the changes. And what that really means is depending upon the company, depending on the size, it's gonna take anywhere from one week to 30 days to figure out what do you change in your strategy, your plan, your activities, your tasks, and how you measure things, right?

[00:15:38] You're changing and moving around budgets maybe, whatever that might look like. You're, coming up with a new plan, essential. That's the idea of adapting to change. It's not too bad, you know, the guys who actually make the decision and have the responsibility to say, to get past the second step of accepting change, they're usually not involved in the third step of adapting to change.

[00:16:02] The last one's the easiest, and again, the guys in number two are not involved in number four. And that's adopting to the changes, which is implementing what you now planned and moving forward.

[00:16:14] And then when I say moving forward, I'm suggesting that it's probably about a three to six month period of moving forward. Then something's gonna change again. And that's the world we live in. 

[00:16:24] Tim: Looking at it now, like it is a continuous, 

[00:16:27] Melih: thing. It's continuous. 

[00:16:28] Tim: You're not gonna 

[00:16:28] Melih: Yeah,

[00:16:28] Tim: i'm just not gonna get to a place where, like you said, in the. If I could call it the old days, like there was that stability in in marketing channels and, and results to some extent. That's just all over. 

[00:16:39] Melih: It's a matter of putting all this into perspective and I think that the thing that, we run into is the idea of working through the world that we live in because all this technology, it was one that was a different world, but now we're living in a world where technology is constantly changing society. 

[00:17:00] Tim: Right? 

[00:17:01] Melih: and you know, one of the books that I recommend a lot of people to read, it was recommended to me way like decades ago, by somebody, what I would call a mentor, and it's called Crossing the Chasm. And, don't quote me on this. I think it's George Friedman that, wrote that book. It's been updated multiple times over the decades, but the concept stays the same now when the book was written, and even in concept even today. It is my opinion that the way the book is written, it's designed around early adopters, mainstream adopters, to changes and late adopters, 

[00:17:38] Tim: right?

[00:17:38] Melih: And I would say that late and the issue with late adopters, okay, that's really what we're talking about here. And the issue with late adopters. Is a lot of them are looking for, well prove to me that this works and then I'll join. All right, so let's go back 20 years. Conceptually speaking, I could say to them, okay, wait, hang on.

[00:17:59] Look. Okay, here's my report. All right, fine. You know what? I just proved to you that you can get on the train, so to speak. 

[00:18:06] Tim: Yeah, 

[00:18:06] Melih: Let's say that timeframe is 12 months. Okay, just I'm getting say, roughly speaking right in the old days, 20 years ago, whatever, it's 12 months or something to say that, you know, this works.

[00:18:17] This is the channel I wanna be in. I get news for you that 12 months is like six months now, right? Roughly speaking by the time something proves itself. These late adopters are finally deciding to get on that train or be part of it. 

[00:18:32] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:18:32] Melih: Something new came into the market and they're late.

[00:18:35] Tim: Well, I could see how this creates a huge issue because like, a lot of the times, especially people who have been successful in business in the past. Say, well, it's because we follow the evidence, 

[00:18:45] Melih: right? 

[00:18:46] Tim: So you, now you're telling me, you know, trust me, you know, don't follow, there's not enough data or I feel there's not enough data.

[00:18:53] Melih: Exactly. 

[00:18:54] Tim: I can only afford to make so many wrong calls before we're out of cash. 

[00:18:58] Melih: Yep. And I realize that's, you know, that's the world these guys live in. Yeah. This is the world that we're trying to navigate. But by the same token, you don't have control.

[00:19:09] Tim: Right? 

[00:19:10] Melih: Right. And I'm just throwing out an idea here, right? If this is not a game that you can play and you're finding it harder and harder. And for whatever the reasons are, your sales are down, revenue, whatever, all the different odds and ends that we're talking about, well, maybe you need to consolidate with somebody else.

[00:19:30] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:19:30] Melih: Partner up. Find one or two other companies, form a new company. Pull your resources and figure out how to be competitive in the new world. 

[00:19:38] Tim: Right. 

[00:19:39] Melih: Business says that this is the world, this is the direction you should go. 

[00:19:43] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:19:43] Melih: You as somebody that has the fiduciary responsibility of your company, 

[00:19:49] Tim: right?

[00:19:49] Melih: Because that's the, I mean, honestly, that's the world that we're moving towards right now because there's so many companies out there and everybody said, listen, I'm gonna put up a shingle and I do X, Y, and Z. Well, that's great and you might find it easy to have done that. But in the world that we live in, it's not sustainable.

[00:20:07] Tim: Right. 

[00:20:08] Melih: Maybe you need to take a look at that option where you, partner up with other one or two other companies. I'm not suggesting 10. 

[00:20:16] Tim: You know, diffuse the risk. 

[00:20:18] Melih: Diffuse the risk. Exactly. Right, exactly. Write up 

[00:20:22] Tim: the changes and yeah. 

[00:20:23] Melih: This is where one plus one equals three. It's not, you know, versus one.

[00:20:28] Tim: So how do you know when it's time like to do that? Like if you're looking at, we're looking at shifts in a, in a marketplace, how do we distinguish between when something's a fad or whether it's like it's real, whether the change is real? We're talking about sometimes in the absence of evidence, right?

[00:20:44] Yeah. Because it seems like things are trending in a certain direction. But we've all seen those, you know, technologies or business trends where somebody said it was gonna be a big thing, but then it wasn't. 

[00:20:54] Melih: I agree. And we've, we've seen a lot of those. There's no question about it. 

[00:20:57] Tim: Right. 

[00:20:57] Melih: And we're gonna see, I mean, exponentially more now with all this investment going into AI, not just in terms of AI startups.

[00:21:07] Yeah. But we're also seeing it in terms of in AI infrastructure, the amount of investments. But my point being that, and I'm just. Again, ballparking here. Let's say you were going back to 2005, 2010, whatever that looks like the amount of investments was X and you know, there was some level of, consistency in terms of expectations of business and growth and et cetera.

[00:21:31] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:21:31] Melih: That's not the case. Now. The amount of investment that's going into AI startups is exponential. Mm-hmm. So now you have, you really don't know what you're gonna. Get yourself into. 

[00:21:42] Tim: Right. 

[00:21:42] Melih: And 

[00:21:42] Tim: you've already seen examples where, you know, an AI company will say like, nobody else can do this.

[00:21:48] A week later you see three other people are doing it

[00:21:50] Melih: and they're using the same backend. Right. So, right. And so you gotta, you have some interesting things. So let me give you an example. So 2007, right? We got Twitter, we got Facebook, we got MySpace. Clients were asking me, what should we do? I did not recommend Twitter.

[00:22:07] I did recommend the other two, but I didn't recommend Twitter. And the reason I didn't recommend Twitter was for two reasons. One is Twitter, was the gooey interface. To what I used to know as Internet Relay Chat, IRC was a pain in the ass. It's like you're trying to track conversations, and it's like going nowhere.

[00:22:29] Somebody just said something, I just scrolled up my screen. So it's gone. Yeah, it's gone. So Twitter was, in my humble opinion of gooey version of that, but it was a little bit more organized. Okay. 

[00:22:41] Tim: Right, right. 

[00:22:42] Melih: That was a good news. But it didn't change one thing, and I saw that in IRC, and I have saw that in Twitter as well.

[00:22:48] It's labor-intensive. So the question is if you're mid-range company. Right. Not even small business, I'm just saying mid-range company. Do you have the budget to dedicate somebody to sit there and tweet all day long? 'cause that's what's necessary. That's what you need to do. You have to tweet all day long.

[00:23:08] You're reposting all day long. You're commenting, you're liking, you're presenting your profile to the, to that community. And the only way you're gonna do it is a lot of work. Now, I believe me, every other time, Dick and Harry, through whatever automation that they could to figure out how to, not to get past that labor intensive process.

[00:23:31] But to be perfectly honest with you, it didn't really work. The only people that succeeded were really the ones that put the, the real human effort behind it. So the question is, if you're a mid-range company, do you have the budget to assign one person to do for that one marketing channel? 

[00:23:48] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:23:48] Melih: One, we have all these other marketing channels, 

[00:23:51] Tim: right 

[00:23:51] Melih: at a fraction of the cost.

[00:23:53] And I say loosely, but less than. A one person on one channel, and I did not recommend Twitter. And so when you're asking me when, when, do you know what to try and what not to try? Well, in today's world, in that, in that world, I, I could easily identify the yes and the no. Mm-hmm. In today's world, we can't identify the yes or no because we don't have enough time to figure out what's working, what's not working.

[00:24:17] Just I, I don't know. Again, simple example. My team, I, we have a team of 25 creative tech marketing writers. Everybody's in Detroit. You know, we rely on the team to try different things and figure out what's what, and everybody has their own experiences on the web within the team. And so we tried. One platform.

[00:24:39] It's beautiful ai, right? It creates PowerPoint presentations. 

[00:24:43] Tim: Hmm. 

[00:24:44] Melih: We tried it 

[00:24:44] Tim: mm-hmm. 

[00:24:44] Melih: We weren't impressed. 

[00:24:46] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:24:47] Melih: Okay. Was it a high cost? No. 

[00:24:49] Tim: Right. 

[00:24:49] Melih: I guess that's what I'm getting at. 

[00:24:51] Tim: I was just thinking that.

[00:24:52] Melih: The risk of trying something is so small, it's a hundred bucks. 

[00:24:57] Tim: if the technology now for Twitter existed back then 

[00:25:00] Melih: Yeah. 

[00:25:00] Tim: Cost a 

[00:25:01] Melih: lot. Exactly. 

[00:25:02] Tim: We tried it out. 

[00:25:03] Melih: Exactly. 

[00:25:03] Tim: So that's a good way of looking at it. Like you can kind of accumulate your own evidence, your own, mini experiments.

[00:25:10] Melih: Yes. We spent more time in labor than we did on the actual cost of the platform, right? 

[00:25:16] Tim: Yes, absolutely. 

[00:25:17] Melih: I think that was the bigger loss. 

[00:25:19] Tim: Every time you change tools, I've experienced that myself. 

[00:25:23] Melih: Now, mind you, we, we, we just, we came to a decision. We're no longer doing that.

[00:25:28] Okay, fine. Guess what? We're gonna try something else now. And there's a few other platforms we're gonna try. Yeah. But that's the world we live in now. 

[00:25:34] Tim: That's right. 

[00:25:35] Melih: It's not, you have to say, this is the cost of doing business. I'm gonna spend x. Therefore, with that requires a certain amount of labor time, which tends to be more than the x.

[00:25:45] And you're gonna try it, and if it doesn't work for you, you move on. 

[00:25:49] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:25:49] Melih: And when I say move on, there are so many options out there. 

[00:25:53] Tim: Absolutely. 

[00:25:54] Melih: So what, what are some ways to weed out or reduce that? Let's, let's call it in this case, labor time risk. Right. Honestly, we're not talking a major, cost risk in any of these platforms Nowadays, they're all like, whatever, a hundred bucks, 200 bucks maximum or whatever, in order to reduce your labor risk.

[00:26:13] My suggestion is go out on the web and I, I don't know, I'm just. Like in this case, we were looking for presentation platforms that would help us figure things out. And obviously there's Canva, right? That's kind of top of the list, so to speak. But what else is there on the market we wanted to learn? And so one way of going about this is you go on the web and look at the reviews.

[00:26:35] What are other people saying? Those reviews are gonna help you reduce your labor time costs in these cases, right? At least point you in the right direction. Based on whatever people are saying, let's try this out. And there's nothing wrong with that because you've already accepted the fact that these cost of doing business.

[00:26:51] Tim: Yeah. And we kind of get to know the review sites we can trust. And also even on those sites, you start to see like what's a real review? Okay. That was obviously a review written by ai. 

[00:27:03] Melih: Yeah. 

[00:27:04] Tim: Or just know if it's too lopsided and then you can't get, external verification outside that.

[00:27:10] You can tell like, okay, they paid for a thousand reviews. 

[00:27:14] Melih: Exactly. Hopefully you guys got, it's all 

[00:27:15] Tim: those data points, 

[00:27:16] Melih: Hopefully you have a savvy enough team to figure this, you know? They'll kind of weed through this. You don't wanna be, you know, conned by a lot of these other tools and websites and reviews that are out there.

[00:27:27] But I, in concept, I'm saying, look, there, this is, you know, the world we live in. Is this is a business expense that you're gonna expect and accept. You have a certain amount of labor time to work through testing. There's nothing wrong with testing. You're gonna figure out what's working and what's not working, and eventually you're gonna find what you're, what best meets your needs and based on that move.

[00:27:50] Tim: So we're, we're talking about ai. What, what are businesses, how, how do you think they should approach marketing in the age of ai? 

[00:27:58] Melih: We work with a lot of B2B companies, and so there is an issue that we have come across with the pandemic and it's a fact that every Tom, Dick, and Harry.

[00:28:08] Started working from home and realizing, you know what, I don't have to work for another company. I'm gonna do this on my own. They put up a shingle and they do X, Y, and z and the reason I'm bringing this up is the amount of noise. On the web, and I'm not talking about competitive noise, I'm just talking about noise in general.

[00:28:26] Sure. The amount of noise has grown exponentially since the pandemic.

[00:28:31] We work with B2B companies, and so my suggestion with B2B companies is one way to figure out how do you market in today's world is to use the news media, the news channels, meaning you have to put out a press release, you gotta do press with two press releases per month.

[00:28:48] We came up with our own press release marketing strategy and process it. And the reason I came up with it is 'cause I was not happy with the results of what I was seeing. And so, and yes, I, I will admit this, look, if you're paying spending less than $500 per press release, it's not gonna work. Okay.

[00:29:09] Tim: Right. 

[00:29:10] Melih: It's not gonna work because the major news networks. A BCC, B-S-N-B-C, Fox, CNN, the financial networks, et cetera. They're basically looking for companies that have been revalidated. 

[00:29:24] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:29:24] Melih: In other words, you need to have proven that you are a real business. Here's your website, here's my physical address.

[00:29:30] This is my website, this is my phone number, this is my fax number, this is my contact person, and that person's email address, et cetera, et cetera. And that's the direction that. The news media has moved in and I am applauding them for doing that. Mm-hmm. Because the last thing we need is somebody spending 30 bucks ending on some A, B, C, or AP website.

[00:29:50] So it is a, you know, pay-to-play game. I agree. Right. But honestly, the cost is still very low. You're spending anywhere from, let's say, I'm just throwing out some numbers here, $750 to $1,500 to play in the big game. Okay. That's not much. For one press release and you're spending what, 1500 bucks to 3000 a month.

[00:30:10] And what it does for you is mind-boggling, amazing because it gets you into the major news channels. Your exposure goes exponential. And guess what? The one thing everybody does, they read news instead of chasing everybody down through social media and email marketing, all zero things, I got news for, put them, put yourself on the news networks, right?

[00:30:32] It works. 

[00:30:32] Tim: It becomes a significant piece of credibility, right? 

[00:30:36] Melih: Absolutely. It's visibility and credibility. It's both right and it's combined. And this is one press release that has a shelf and I'm, look, I'll be realistic. It has a shelf life of one week for visibility. It has a shelf life of years for credibility.

[00:30:51] 'cause that press release doesn't go anywhere. I know from our own experiences, one press release generally, results in about a thousand backlinks. So you can expect that. Thousand websites that are gonna continue to carry that press release. That is impressive considering the labor time involved, which is al, I don't wanna say zero, but very low cost to put a press release out there.

[00:31:12] Tim: You just think about how fast, $1,500 can disappear in Google Adwords . 

[00:31:17] Melih: Yeah. And we've been through that multiple times. And I think the other thing that to keep in mind is, like, in the process that we created, we also send the emails directly to the editors. 

[00:31:29] Tim: Right.

[00:31:30] Melih: Publications relative to our client's industry. Mm-hmm. Now think, you know, if I go back 40 years, what we used to do is take that press release, we stuck it in a fax machine. And then we hit a button, which we pre-populated with all the newspapers around the, the local area, and we hit the button and eight hours later it sent out fax machines to all the editors in the local newspapers.

[00:31:51] Right. But now we're able to do the same concept, but by email directly to that editor. And I think that makes it even much more effective. But like I said, you can't just do one. You need buy two a month or you gotta keep doing it. Your brand needs to be seen by the news networks regularly so that they get used to it. Oh, guess what? So and so just put another press release out. Wonder what that's all about. You know, I usually run into clients that say, well, we don't have nothing news for, don't worry about it. I'll figure out what's new. 

[00:32:21] Tim: Do you think this could work for personal brands as well as corporations or companies?

[00:32:25] Melih: Absolutely. Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, especially in the world that we live in today. Yeah, no question. Because the, the other side of it is. Let's look at the AI world right now. We're into generative engine optimization. We're into GEO versus SEO and a EO that came before it. Albeit those two, you can't drop.

[00:32:42] You still have to do those. In the world that we live in, the more that your brand is out there, especially through these major news networks 

[00:32:50] Tim: mm-hmm. 

[00:32:50] Melih: The AI bots, pick those up. That's a good thing, 

[00:32:54] Tim: right? 

[00:32:54] Melih: Because now when somebody's searching for X, Y, and Z in an AI chat, chat bots, I mean, the GPTs are likely to recommend you as one of the solutions in their response.

[00:33:06] And so yeah, this is a good thing. Right. Which is why I was saying it's not just visibility. Earlier I was saying it's credibility too. Absolutely. 

[00:33:13] Tim: Absolutely. You know, I guess, like you say, you can come up with a lot of different things to do. The press releases on, like most businesses always have something going on, right.

[00:33:23] Melih: The list is mind-boggling. We passed those along to clients before. 

[00:33:28] Tim: Mm-hmm. 

[00:33:29] Melih: It was trying to get them to understand, that press releases. It doesn't have to be the fact that you have a new product or a new, you know, person's, person on the.

[00:33:40] The list can be, you know, more like somebody turns around and you wanna just boost your brand awareness, number one, right? Number two, the CEO has an opinion. That's a good one actually. You can use that as a press release, right? You have a case. You can use that as a press release, and if you don't have a press, press case study, let's figure out how to put one together.

[00:34:02] Tim: Right, 

[00:34:02] Melih: It's worth mentioning that. You know what, and I'm just throwing out an example here. Board of directors have decided to do blah, blah, blah. Well, that's. Helpful if you can get clients to give you testimonials, get five clients to give you testimonials and use that as a press release.

[00:34:17] And I'm trying to move, the reason, some of the reasons I'm giving are non-financial on new product.

[00:34:24] You can use that. Absolutely. You, you know, solved a, a, a crisis management. Right? Well do use that as your, as your, press release. My point is I'm just trying to kind of play around with ideas, in terms of rebranding or logo changes or, I don't know. Your business has an anniversary, a milestone, right?

[00:34:49] Tim: Really, not undifferentiated from content. 

[00:34:51] Melih: No, not at all. And this is why I'm saying that the, you know, the one that I really like is when the CEO has an opinion. 

[00:34:58] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:34:59] Melih: Oh yeah. They can just put. Pull something together. I will say they this though, when you're, if you're a B2B company, you don't wanna put a 400 WordPress release.

[00:35:08] Doesn't work. The press release system originally designed whatever, 70 years ago and take, take your, take your pick out long ago, was designed about public, publicly traded companies doing investor relations. That was the concept originally. Okay. Well the question now, now we are where we are. And every company, regardless of whether or not they're public or not, can submit a press release to the news networks.

[00:35:33] And with that in mind, I'm telling you that 400 words doesn't tell your story, 

[00:35:38] Tim: right? 

[00:35:38] Melih: You need about what's the goal? What? 50 ish? Six 50 ish. Okay. I'm not suggesting 900. 

[00:35:45] Tim: That's not too bad. That's not too crazy. 

[00:35:46] Melih: But it gives you a little bit more content to expand on and to present your story.

[00:35:53] I'm not suggesting 900 words. Yeah, I wouldn't do that for a, to a press release, but believe me, six 50 is, you'd be amazed the additional 250 words, there's a lot that goes. 

[00:36:03] Tim: Yeah. 'cause you wanna purse it carefully. Because it, it potentially, it's going out to such a broad

[00:36:09] Melih: think about it. A, B, C, C, B, SNBC. Yeah. Fox, CNN, the AP networks, the Reuters of the world. 

[00:36:17] Tim: Right, right. 

[00:36:18] Melih: They're going everywhere. 

[00:36:19] Tim: Slowly fact checked, all that stuff, right? 

[00:36:22] Melih: Yep. And as an example, I will say that you need to submit your press release to the news networks. By about a Friday with a release on a Tuesday.

[00:36:34] Tim: Okay, 

[00:36:34] Melih: no more, no later than a Wednesday and there, and they're, I can't tell you the number of statistics that are out there. Let's say that press releases that are submitted on a Tuesday or a Wednesday and Tuesday being better have a higher, response rate than that. Let's say that's distributed on a Thursday or Friday, as matter of fact, we, we don't even do.

[00:36:54] Press release is on a Thursday, Friday. Mm-hmm. And so I think the timing makes a difference. And you do have the pre-plan, which is why I am saying you can't do more than two. Realistically, the amount of time it takes takes you to put a press release together. Right. The, the attachments, PDF images or.

[00:37:11] Video, the links. Where are you gonna link to your website or your LinkedIn or wherever. You gotta plan all that out. You have your 650 words to plan out your title, your subtitle, right? All these different parts. And believe me, most businesses will take about a week before they can finally have something that say, yep, this is what I want send out.

[00:37:32] And so once you get through that process and then you say, okay, now I need to submit it to the news networks. Well guess what? Submit it on a Friday and have it ready. Because you have to go through the editorial process. That's right. And if for some reason there's a question and you have to respond, you gotta go back and forth, make edits, et cetera, you gotta give yourself some time.

[00:37:51] And therefore, Fridays is a good day. But to get it submitted and then make sure that it gets out to the public by what? Tuesday morning at 10:00 AM Easter. 

[00:38:00] Tim: That's it. And, uh, as people are just getting into their work week, right, and they're, 

[00:38:05] Melih: well, that's when the editors and the journalists and so on and so forth are finally sitting at their desk because prior to that, they're all in meetings and whatever else is for the day.

[00:38:14] And so, you know, you want to get their. Uh, right about when they're sitting down, so to speak, they're likely to take a look at that, which they, which is recent when they sit down versus that which was submitted three hours earlier. 

[00:38:28] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:38:29] Melih: So if you submit it at six, eight o'clock in the morning, that's great, but.

[00:38:32] Pressly submitted at 9:55 AM is likely to get more attention because they just sat down at the desk. That's 

[00:38:38] Tim: right. Let's see what's there. 

[00:38:40] Melih: Exactly. 

[00:38:41] Tim: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Really thank you for, spending some time. 

[00:38:45] Melih: It was great working with 

[00:38:46] Tim: How do you think we'll get. In touch with you or your company.

[00:38:49] Melih: Usually in my shows like this, number one is go to our website, Smartfindsmarketing.com Nice and simple, right? Yes. You can kind of get a sense of what we do, and there's very little that we don't do after 40 years. And number two is, I usually ask people to just reach out to me on LinkedIn.

[00:39:05] I guarantee you I'm the only male he asked. Still on LinkedIn, have a network of over 23,000. It keeps growing. Feel free to tag me on your posts, because if you tag me, I get an email, it becomes a to-do, I'll go to your post, I'll react and I'll put a solid comment with, with the appropriate hashtags and help you expand your reach not only to my network, but perhaps into a larger network.

[00:39:29] Tim: That's great. Well, thank you very much.

[00:39:31] Melih: My pleasure, Tim.

[00:39:32] Tim: So in today's episode, Melih provided a great framework for how we can think about change in the digital landscape. And the thing I came away with was the importance of expecting change, budgeting for it so that we can prepare for it and continually move through the process of analyzing and adapting to change.

[00:39:50] That's the reality of the current pace of technological change and the type of competitive market landscape that engenders. On the upside, continual disruption creates opportunities as well as threats. And if you can be the organization or content creator who foresees change, and can be quick to adapt to it, that can become a major competitive advantage.

[00:40:12] We've talked before about the value of being a first mover, and in a market where conditions are changing constantly, there are a lot of opportunities to be that first mover. Things aren't static, they're not set. There are openings where we can find those opportunities.

[00:40:27] Which brings us to the marketing strategy that Melih talked about, which is getting quoted in traditional media outlets that have a lot of credibility, which then in turn enhances your credibility as a brand or creator. And you can see how I often cite these examples when I talk about my own guests credibility on this show, especially when I have guests like Nicole Ramirez and Ralph Velasco, who have been cited in major publications or presented at major events. I want my audience to know about that.

[00:40:58] And I can especially see the value of this right now because there are so many different digital marketing experts and solutions of various types out there that don't rest on a lot of what we'll call earned credibility. We're in a world where anyone can create almost anything in the digital realm and set themselves up as some kind of expert. In a way, I think that's not so bad. Let's forget the gatekeepers and let the market decide, that sort of thing. But the problem this creates for brands goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the show, which is how do you stand out in a crowded market like that?

[00:41:30] Well, one way to do that is by getting credibility over your competitors, by getting cited in traditional media sources that have that credibility that they can lend towards your brand. That's the so-called halo effect, where the credibility of the media source who's quoting you, reflects well on you.

[00:41:46] As Melih explains, you can do this with a press release strategy, the cost of which may be on par with what you're going to spend on ads within that same period anyway. In fact, you probably should do the press release strategy before doing ads, establish credibility, then scale, and then at some point you can do both in parallel once you've got the budget for it.

[00:42:06] Now, if you don't have money, but you do have time, I've got an alternative for you earned organic mentions within traditional media in earlier episode from season two with Amanda Hand, we talked about help a reporter out. That's a site where journalists from traditional media or digital media sources are often looking for quotes from experts in different fields. You can sign off to receive alerts and reply to requests, and sometimes get quoted. It's a decent site for that, but sometimes it's hard to get quoted because you are competing with a lot of other potential sources. I mean, a lot of people have signed up for this list.

[00:42:39] Since then, I found this other source, it's called feature.com. It's a site where you can sign up to be a subject matter expert and you're gonna get queries from Help a Reporter Out 'cause they own that as well as queries from outside of that which come in through featured.com. You can set up an expert page for yourself, which you can then share with others, and with the free plan, which is the one I got, you can answer three questions per month, or you can upgrade to one of the paid plans. Light plan gives you 10 questions per month to answer, and honestly, if you're doing other things, that's quite a bit.

[00:43:12] Well, let's imagine you had eight to 10 answers going out on featured per month, ads for your products, organic social media, guesting on other people's podcasts, collaboration with other creators, and layer a press release strategy on top of that, now we're talking distribution at scale. There is a pathway towards it, and with today's AI tools and even a little bit of revenue from your products, you can make it happen.

[00:43:38] We just need to keep working on nailing the quality of our content, products and brand in order to get there. And to help with that, you can watch one of these next videos here. Thanks for listening or watching. I hope you have a great day and we'll see you in the next episode.