Social Search Reimagined, The Metaverse Revived, and an SEO Revolution with Katy Howell, Jen Campbell, Jag Sharma and Felina Tan - E95
The Metaverse is back, and its saviour is… McDonalds?
AI, SEO and the Metaverse: you’d be forgiven for thinking this is an episode from 2022, but we are a LONG way ahead of the game from 3 years back.
SEO is now AI-first, so if you want to be discovered in a world where machines curate our lives, we’ll need the expertise of our special guest this week, Katy Howell.
Join us to pick apart our new search habits, how AI influences them, and the questions we need to ask of ourselves with any new AI tech - all on this week’s Disconnected!
This episode of Disconnected covers:
The metaverse’s tentative resurgence, and the questionable McDonald’s collaboration
Social search becoming primary sources for information and product discovery, especially among younger users
AI fundamentally changing how content is curated, discovered, and recommended
SEO for AI, and the new age of digital content hygiene
The critical questions that boardrooms need to ask about AI’s role in businesses
Episode Highlights:
“The graphics for the Metaverse are still terrible. 3 years down the line, not much has changed - has Meta given up on developing the Metaverse?” - 7:40 - Jen Campbell
“Who’s curating what? Visibility now depends on being quotable by machines, not just clickable by humans.” - 23:45 - Katy Howell
“I think it's obvious that social and AI are reshaping discovery. But adoption lags because of measurement challenges. Can it be measured, especially short term measures, month to month measures and KPIs?” - 35:10 - Jag Sharma
“If your brand or your agency doesn't have answers to those five simple questions, I think you know, it'd be wise to perhaps regroup and define them, probably starting from today.” - 45:10 - Felina Tan
“For many of the clients that I speak to, I'd say AI is either a slightly secret thing that they do on the side, or it's deployed for the very basic of tasks, but it isn't being purposefully deployed in order to save the business money or make the business money or actually enhance what marketers are doing.” - 54:40 - Katy Howell
Links & references:
Jen Campbell:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-m-campbell/
Felina Tan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/felinagabrielletan/
Jag Sharma:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jagsharma
https://www.instagram.com/jagsharma/
Katy Howell