Bryan McAnulty:

Can you build trust, grow authority, and create a steady stream of content for your business in just one hour a week? Ben Pines has spent the last 20 years helping SaaS companies turn strong ideas into marketing that people actually trust.

Ben Pines:

I think this person, however successful they are, they're not thinking about trust, because trust builds with not what you say, but what you do.

Bryan McAnulty:

As the first marketer at Elementor, he helped grow the company from launch to millions of users and nearly $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Today, he works directly with founders to uncover their unique point of view and turn one weekly conversation into consistent, high-quality LinkedIn content.

At a time when AI can generate endless posts in seconds, Ben believes the founders who stand out will be the ones who sound human, share real opinions, and communicate their ideas that competitors cannot copy.

Ben Pines:

It's not direct conversation, but behind the scenes, the trust is broken.

Bryan McAnulty:

So, how do you build a trusted founder brand without becoming a full-time content creator? Welcome to The Creator's Adventure, where we interview creators from around the world, hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey everyone, I'm Bryan McAnulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let's get into it.

Ben, welcome to the show.

Ben Pines:

Hi Bryan. Thanks for having me.

Bryan McAnulty:

My first question for you today is, if every business has access to the same powerful AI tools that can build almost anything, what would make your company stand out among others?

Ben Pines:

That's the question, right? Funny thing, today I went to an influencer's website, and I visited their blog. I saw they published dozens of articles every day. Every day, a new article comes in.

I think this person, however successful they are, they're not thinking about trust, because trust builds with not what you say, but what you do. If I'm their audience and I go to their website and click on the articles, I'm like, okay, here's one article, another one today. Isn't this person supposed to be busy? Did this person just hit click on any AI platform that everyone has access to and publish a bunch of articles on there?

It's not direct conversation, but behind the scenes, the trust is broken. It's so obvious this person is trying a workaround. He's not writing it. He's not putting in the time, but he wants his audience to find this article, this garbage.

That's how you uncover trust. Trust is not something that's very direct. Sometimes very good people, very good marketers or CEOs, get lured because of the format, because of the attraction, into doing this garbage, basically.

Bryan McAnulty:

Yeah, that's really interesting. I think trust is so important. You could go a step further and say it's one thing with written content, but then it's at a whole other level where you get into the situation of people making AI videos of themselves.

Then it's like, you expect me to watch a video of you talking to me, but it's not even you talking to me. The trust is broken. There's been some talk about, are our agents going to be buying from other agents? Are agents going to be buying from your company?

I don't know how much of that is going to become a reality in the future, but even if it does a bit, behind all that there's the intention of a human. Humans want something. For the most part, I think people listening to this are probably not targeting agents buying from your company. You're doing business with humans, so trust is very important.

Ben Pines:

I think it's very easy to say, I don't care about these matters like trust. I have a business. I just want to get more business, more money, more clients. But nowadays, because technology is so powerful, you have to think about it.

I'm not saying don't use AI. I'm saying you have to start considering issues of trust: how do I build this relationship, and how do I utilize this AI technology, any technology, to be more efficient? It takes a lot of thinking about, okay, how can I use this? How can I be more efficient and actually serve my audience better? So many people get this wrong.

Bryan McAnulty:

I'm hopeful that our listeners, for the most part, are the kind of creative entrepreneurs who are not going out there and posting all this AI slop everywhere. But they are interested in, how can I use these tools the right way?

What would you say is the place where you could have AI assist with making you more productive in creating written content, but not worry about breaking the trust of people who potentially come across it?

Ben Pines:

Actually, I'm a marketer who has a duality. I'm offering a service, and I also have a product. In both of them, I try not to use AI in the wrong way.

For my service business, I basically help founders with their LinkedIn marketing. I sit with them every week for one hour. We think of the strategy. We think of the content. Later, after the one-hour meeting that is human, that's one-on-one, then I use the tools.

It could be video tools to make the videos faster, or writing tools to take what we've talked about and turn it into better writing. But in any case, I'm having the human involved throughout the process.

For the product that I'm heading, it's the same. We have a GEO product doing content optimization, but it's actually making the content better. It's looking at the page and seeing, okay, how can I show more trust on this page? If it's a product page, how can I add testimonials? How can I answer more questions that buyers might be interested in?

Bryan McAnulty:

Real quick, Bryan here. You know me as the host for this podcast, but what you might not know is I'm also the founder of Heights Platform. It's an all-in-one platform that over 10,000 creators have used to build their online courses, communities, and digital product businesses. We recently added some awesome updates to Heights AI to help you turn your idea into a viable business. Heights AI can build entire product offers, review your content, and even coach you on how to grow. You can try it for free for 30 days. Links in the description. Now, back to the podcast.

I want to go into more detail about when you help somebody on LinkedIn, what's actually happening there, and also about your product, Be Seen by AI. But before we go into the detail on both of those things, I want to go further into what is right and what is wrong, maybe with some concrete examples for everybody watching or listening.

I'll share some of the ways I'm approaching this, and I'm curious if you agree or if you would do things differently. When I'm going to have some kind of content created, and I want AI to help me do that faster, I think about what types of content are actually useful for AI or going to help me show up in search results.

I think basically anything that's in the AI's training data, there's no point in regurgitating that and writing a blog about it. Especially if you're just asking AI, hey, write me a blog about whatever topic I'm in business for, because there's nothing unique about that, right? It has to be unique and connected to you, what you think about it, your experiences, your message.

But then there's also the type of content where somebody's doing research online and wants to learn about your business and how it compares to others. There are pieces where there's a lot of tedious factual research that has to be done. I think that can be done by AI, and AI can help piece those things together.

The way I approach it is, we recently had AI help us put together alternative pages to compare our product to different competitors. I asked the AI to research our competitors. I asked the AI to research us. But besides taking whatever it happened to find about us, I wanted to make sure it could communicate our thoughts and standpoint on all of this clearly.

I asked it to come up with a bunch of questions to interview me. I went through and answered all those questions so it could use that as a reference for understanding what's important to me, my beliefs, and why I would do something or choose something here. That way, what's being communicated is what's coming from me, and it's helping extend that. But I'm not writing every single page in full myself.

Ben Pines:

Having your voice really helps. Even if the AI writes down the first draft, and then you edit it and make it your own, that helps.

But the mistake I'm seeing with the founders I'm helping is the approach of, okay, I want to start writing. Let's start. What do I know? I have some information in my brain. Let's spray and pray. Let's get this out on the page. I find this is not effective.

The preliminary thinking you're having beforehand is very important. Questions like, what is my business? You need to find a balance between, okay, I have a marketing agency, and what is my expertise? What can I share that the audience will actually find useful? This has to be consistent, right?

Let's say I'm an analytics expert. I can share some things I'm working on with clients, some knowledge I have. Then, what are the business goals I'm after? There's the bigger audience, people interested in analytics, some of whom might not convert to become my clients.

Then I say, okay, who is my ICP? Who is going to be my client? Maybe those are a segment. Maybe those are just the newbie analysts in companies. For them, I'll have posts that try to convert, to see if they're interested in hiring me or something like that.

You're building this map, connecting what you're going to write about and think about to what you're actually going to get yourself and what you're going to give to others. That balance works. The people making it, I think the key thing is they succeeded in finding trust because they found that balance. They know what they're giving.

Maybe someone is very on top of the news. They know all the patterns going on in analytics. When something new comes up, they can share it, and their audience gets this information from them because they trust them.

Getting this balance is the thing you're trying to do. Once you get that balance, that trust, that initial system, which does take some tinkering and thinking, then it's so much easier to leverage it and scale it, maybe use AI, maybe think of upping production.

Bryan McAnulty:

That's super helpful, because this first part actually doesn't have to involve AI at all, right? What you're describing is when a founder or entrepreneur takes this spray-and-pray approach of, what's the first thing that comes to mind about what I happen to know about this topic, and then just guesses if that's what their audience cares about. That's the wrong way of doing it.

You have to think before all of that. It's not about, what is the piece of content I come up with today? It's first, what is this map of the world, of the kinds of things I'm trying to share and the kinds of things different people in my potential audience are looking for? Then that informs what you create. It's not a guessing game anymore of what actually has to get created.

Ben Pines:

Yeah, and the details matter so much. Sometimes it's a really clear relationship. Let's say I'm an SEO expert, and I'm teaching and talking about SEO. That's easy because it's a one-to-one connection.

But let's say I have a really boring solution. I have a screenshot maker. I know everything about screenshots because I've built a product. I can't come to LinkedIn every day and publish something about screenshots. Nobody would care.

But if you go to Claude or ChatGPT and say, what can I write about screenshots? They'll give you a hundred million answers, topics that no one would care about, because they're not human. They still don't understand how to differentiate what should be the right strategy.

Bryan McAnulty:

I love this example, actually, because we just built a screenshot maker internally in our team. The tool we were using before decided to not only raise its prices—I just pictured we would use that tool forever—but they randomly charged us in the middle of our annual billing cycle because of the price increase.

We already paid for the year. We're paid until February or March, I think, but then they charged us more in the middle of that, with 11 days' notice. That notice said, your plan is going to be called this now. It said nothing about the price increase. Unfortunately, they made a mistake, and now we built our own.

But if we want to offer that to other people, what kind of content should we create? I completely agree. I can't sit there and go on LinkedIn and tell everybody, here's all the nuance you have to learn about screenshots.

Ben Pines:

CEOs are sure that marketing is such an easy thing that you can flip a button and it works, but it actually takes thinking, processes like positioning and differentiation. People like April Dunford talk about these things you have to think about.

For example, I recently wrote an article about the CEO of Tally, which is a form builder, which is kind of a boring product. Let's face it.

Bryan McAnulty:

Great tool, yeah.

Ben Pines:

Great tool.

Bryan McAnulty:

But if you just looked at it, it's like, yeah, it's a form builder. What am I going to say about this, right?

Ben Pines:

She doesn't write about forms. She writes mainly two things. One, what she's achieved, her accolades. They reached 10,000 users, 100,000 users. She posts achievements. It's a building-in-public kind of content.

The other is sharing her knowledge of being an entrepreneur. One is showing that people should follow her, that she's sharing this journey with them and her expertise. The other is more educational: how I'm thinking about marketing, how I'm thinking about building my team.

I think that's a good approach for that use case of, I have a product, and it's not that interesting. You need to find that sweet spot of, I found an audience, and that audience is related to my product. Then I can find the balance where I'm posting, I'm sharing, I'm getting exposure for my brand, and it's a win-win.

Bryan McAnulty:

I want to go into more detail now about what you do with founders on LinkedIn. You help founders build trust on LinkedIn in just an hour per week. What exactly happens during that hour?

Ben Pines:

That very much differs per founder, but basically we want to achieve two things. One is to think of a system of marketing. There are so many companies forming now, between one and 10 people, building amazing products. Time is a very important thing to think about.

One thing we try to nail is, if I'm the CEO and I'm also supposed to do marketing, how can everything fit in? How can I not get overwhelmed at work, and maintain consistency?

This has to do with thinking of the format. Every week, at least one thing I'm putting out. Then throughout the week, if something comes up, I can push something that's more spontaneous. I call it the base and burst. There's the base: every week I have something. But there's the burst: some news happened, I reply to it quickly.

This is something we need to figure out: what's the marketing system for them? Let's say we have one piece of content every week that goes out as an article, a newsletter, and maybe on LinkedIn. Then you repeat this again and again. That's how you get compounding results.

Bryan McAnulty:

This base is a content format, or something you plan to repeat so you don't have to come up with a completely brand-new idea of, what am I going to make today?

Ben Pines:

Yes. The other thing is figuring out, given this is our system, these are the formats we decided on, we decided on one post that's more top of funnel, more to draw the audience. It could be basic, informational, teaching things related to my expertise.

Then I have another content piece that's more middle or bottom of the funnel. It's more about what I'm doing in my business, what achievements I've had, which events I'm going to, building my reputation.

During the session, I'm also figuring out what we can write that fits each of those rubrics. You have your topic pillars: I want to talk about AI, marketing, and content. Then I want one post to be more educational, one more promotional, sharing what I've achieved, one maybe more personal. You have this matrix, and you can start building your backlog of content.

You can ask, if I have a backlog, why do I need a meeting every week? It's true that a lot of my colleagues, people with the same kind of service, meet once a month and prepare content for the whole month.

But I've found that this isn't just pushing posts. There's something about meeting every week that's really beneficial to the process of building your brand, because every week you're not alone. There's a counterpart, someone looking and saying, okay, what happened this week? What's the progress? Progress happens week by week.

Maybe at the beginning, we just posted small wins because it's after launch. But after we've gained some traction, trust, and audience, maybe we start going into podcasts and becoming a podcast guest.

Really, it's a never-ending process. It's not just, okay, I'm starting marketing, pushing everything, and this is what I'm going to do. No, you're going to become more known. The more known you become, you can scale your efforts. Maybe do a keynote speaking opportunity.

Bryan McAnulty:

Yeah. First, having the opportunity to put some attention in and get this feedback loop going of what happened last week, where's something we could improve, versus waiting longer to do that or not even having a second opinion.

Then, as you start to do that and something improves, what new opportunities is that potentially unlocking? What can you do now?

Ben Pines:

Exactly.

Bryan McAnulty:

Why do you personally prefer LinkedIn as a place to post this kind of content?

Ben Pines:

That's a good question. Something about the fact that it's a relationship-based platform. There are a lot of problems on LinkedIn. It's the most AI-slop-filled platform. I think there's new research that came out with this.

There are downsides to LinkedIn, but some real conversations are still happening there, not just posting, but commenting, connection requests, DMs. There's stuff happening. If you just go there every once in a while, it might look like a reservoir of AI slop, but actually—

Bryan McAnulty:

I would argue on the optimistic side that while there is noticeable AI slop there, it is in part due to genuine people behind that who don't know better yet. They may be less technical, and they're trying to use AI, and they're doing it wrong. They could probably really benefit from your services.

While I'm sure there are people trying to game the system and all this kind of thing, there are a lot of real connections and things to be had there.

Ben Pines:

I still think there are other platforms I like. YouTube is a great platform, and Instagram is another great platform you can utilize. It's actually better in terms of discoverability and other factors.

But it's also a personal preference. For me, Twitter, X, is just too much. There's too much happening. Maybe for my sort of undiagnosed ADHD, it's not beneficial. I've never liked the platform.

Bryan McAnulty:

I think everybody can pick the platform that feels best for them. It's not true for every single instance. There are certain cases where, for your particular business, your customers are really going to be hanging out more on one platform than another.

But would you agree it probably makes sense for people to focus on one platform rather than trying everything?

Ben Pines:

I would say yes. I do think you need to think of the platform where you're going to publish. Let's say you're publishing on LinkedIn, but you're also building a newsletter list. This way, you're building your owned media, which is very important.

I have one client who posted on LinkedIn, and it got crickets. They posted the same post on Facebook, and it got a lot of responses. They sent a version of that to their newsletter, and it also got a lot of responses.

I don't think you need to commit to any one platform, but it makes sense to think of how everything fits. I really like to think of systems. Okay, I'm posting every week on LinkedIn, but it also turns into my newsletter, and it's also on my blog so AI can grab it. This holistic approach works best, I think.

Bryan McAnulty:

You like having the focus of, here's the thing I'm writing for, spending more time on, but then if I can repurpose that to put it other places as well, if it's not hard to do that, might as well. Sometimes you might end up getting more attention on the other platforms, too.

Ben Pines:

Yeah, for sure.

Bryan McAnulty:

Can you tell us about your new product, Be Seen by AI? What is that? How does it work?

Ben Pines:

We figured there's a problem with this whole industry of GEO, where it's not clear how you're going to measure it. A lot of the platforms offer what's called prompt tracking, which is asking AI thousands or millions of times questions, then getting a feel for where you rank in those LLMs. This is what companies are investing a lot of money into.

We built a product that works differently. Instead of looking out and using this low-confidence measure, we're scanning your own site and looking at it the way an AI would.

First, noticing all the technical issues that might prevent AI from viewing your site. Maybe you have crawler blocks, or it's built in a way that it can't scan it. But then also looking at the entire content of the page and seeing how you can increase the trustworthiness of that content.

Let's say you have a marketing agency. Maybe that page lacks case studies, actual numbers, or details about your service. We built this algorithm that does this scan and breaks down the things you need to do to improve your visibility for LLMs.

Bryan McAnulty:

Any recommendations for people watching or listening as far as one thing they can do to potentially improve the credibility of their pages to LLMs?

Ben Pines:

I've talked to a lot of SEO people and business owners, and some are still thinking about SEO. They still haven't gone into AI and GEO. I get it, because the methods and methodologies still haven't been established.

A lot of those tools I mentioned, those prompt trackers, work by scanning a bunch of prompts. Let's say you're a marketing agency, so they'll give all the prompts in your industry. Then they'll start suggesting a lot of articles you add to your website. It's very tempting. Yeah, I click a button, let's add an article.

It's so problematic. That's what happens. You go to this site, and it looks like a reservoir of blog posts, and this shouldn't be. What I recommend is, don't dilute your website. It's bad. I've heard from clients that they did that, and one day they got knocked off ChatGPT, and suddenly their traffic went down.

Instead, I suggest going on a route of optimizing the actual pages you have and really thinking about which pages you're adding. Maybe you have a one-pager for your business. Just scan that page, optimize it, and add all the metrics that would make it more visible.

Then maybe add more pages that are relevant, like your services or case studies. Build it gradually, but build it in a way that's scaling. That's where my product comes in. You can have that scan, and we offer a free first scan. You have that scan, then you know what you need to add.

It's funny, because what's good for the LLMs, they're looking for metrics that are good for the audience. It really gets into the minutiae of details. For your industry, what do you have to have to be considered a trustworthy source for that material and get cited?

Bryan McAnulty:

I agree. Taking this more deliberate approach is really beneficial. We talked briefly before this interview, but I didn't really know about this tool you'd built. This sounds better to me than watching a bunch of random prompts to guess how that's going to work.

Also, because random prompts, like you said, are a low-accuracy signal. The way somebody's going to ask or communicate with these LLMs, and the memories the LLMs have about you, and how they're actually going to search for something may be very different from the generic prompts you think you're searching for or testing with this software.

If you can take your existing content and make sure it's done well and credible, that can actually be better. I've talked with quite a few people over the last couple months about GEO, what they're seeing and doing. It's interesting that people keep coming back to making sure you're credible to the AI.

A couple things I heard from others I thought were interesting. I'm curious what you think about this. One person told me they have all these credentials, awards, and things they didn't really even care about. They thought mentioning all of them might sound stuck-up.

But since ChatGPT, they've made sure those things are present in their bio to say, hey, I did receive this, this, and this. The idea is, if ChatGPT comes across them and realizes, okay, this person does have credibility behind them. ChatGPT may even overestimate the value of these awards compared with what they really were, but they are real, true things the person received.

Somebody else described that if everybody can make these blog posts, especially if other GEO tools have a button saying you should have this post on your site, and you press it and it adds it, I agree that sounds like the wrong way to go in making something actually valuable to LLMs, and in turn, humans.

But what they mentioned is, if anybody can make the blog post, then when ChatGPT comes across your site—I'm glad they mentioned this, because this is a great way for us to promote our software—if you're the one who has the online course about that topic, and you communicate that in your blog post and say, we wrote about this, but we teach a course about this, and we've helped thousands of people with this.

Now, in ChatGPT's eyes, or whatever AI, you're seen as more credible. You didn't just write a blog post or have AI generate one for you. You're showing you're a credible source because you've spent the time and energy to build a training course around this thing.

Ben Pines:

I agree. These are all the new metrics that are going to be so important. You built a course. You wrote a book. These are things you can't invent.

The first thing you need to take care of is your owned media. Did you know that if you use tools like Lovable or Base44 to create your website, the default way it builds the website is not readable, ironically, to other LLMs?

Bryan McAnulty:

Yeah. It's built client-side.

Ben Pines:

First, take care of what you own, and make sure you have all the things you've done, like a press page, lecture page, or course page. These really matter.

Afterwards, the platforms I spoke about usually tell you, okay, these are the five websites you should appear on. Then you go and say, I have to appear on those five websites. That's completely bogus. That's not true. That's the wrong way to look at it.

I would say it's much more important to form connections and get mentioned somewhere, in the live websites talking about the industry. If you take the route of over-optimization, you look at the websites coming up in these platforms and say, I have to get mentioned on these websites.

The much smarter thing is to look at your own industry websites. It doesn't matter which ones they are, and try to get what's available to you. It's a much better use of your time. You know what I mean?

Bryan McAnulty:

Yeah. Also, because that's what's happening now, versus what was the popular cited source before. In my experience looking at those things, you'd probably have the issue of having to pay a lot of money to be mentioned on those sites as well.

Ben Pines:

That's one thing, and the other thing you mentioned is right. It's at least six months old. If it's newsworthy, something happening in the news, LLMs sometimes do pull that information, but in most cases they go for the thing they indexed six months ago.

Bryan McAnulty:

Yeah, so why work to be mentioned by something that's potentially in the past if you can work toward what's going to happen in the future anyway?

Ben Pines:

Yeah, for sure.

Bryan McAnulty:

Cool. I want to get into a quick lightning round now. I'm looking for a 10-second answer or a quick take on these next few. Is posting every day on LinkedIn overrated?

Ben Pines:

No, it depends who it is, but it can work. It's not necessary, but it can work.

Bryan McAnulty:

Okay. What would instantly make you distrust a founder's content?

Ben Pines:

Someone wrote about this. I call it the limerick structure. These are CEOs who post in a way that looks like a poem. Very short lines, and it's all very organized and structured. This is the worst thing.

I would say this, and obviously using all the phrases like, it's not this, it's that, or, let me be honest. But that structure, I can recognize it immediately, and it's the worst thing. Nobody reads like this.

Lines should be like you talk. Some could be a rather longer paragraph, then a short paragraph. For it to be interesting for someone to read, it needs varying structure.

Bryan McAnulty:

I agree. What matters more on LinkedIn: expertise, personality, or consistency?

Ben Pines:

To answer that, it's a matter of taste. I don't know if that makes sense. For me, it's expertise, because that's what I like. I know some amazing creators where, for them, it's personality.

Consistency is just table stakes. You have to be consistent. That's the first thing. That's another level. You decide. If it's personality, go that personality route. If it's expertise, I'm full-on expertise.

Bryan McAnulty:

Cool. I like that answer. Ben, on the show I like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. If you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about or just want to get people thinking about, what would that be?

Ben Pines:

If there's a triangle of your content helping you personally grow, helping your audience, and helping your business, how would you answer each of those? How does it help you? How does it help your audience? How does it help your business?

Bryan McAnulty:

That's great. Ben, this was a great interview. Thanks so much for coming on. Before we get going, where else can people find you online?

Ben Pines:

The best way is on LinkedIn, Ben Pines, and try out beseenby.ai.

Bryan McAnulty:

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Ben Pines:

Bye-bye.

Bryan McAnulty:

I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 creators at creatorclimb.com. If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, check out the Heights Platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our newsletter at thecreatorsadventure.com. Until then, keep learning, and I'll see you in the next episode.