Tiny Bites: How Can Food Creators Succeed in a World with AI?

Hey there. This is Emily from the Food Blogger Pro team and you are listening to Tiny Bites from the Food Blogger Pro podcast. In this episode of Tiny Bites, Bjork is interviewing Jeff Coyle from Market Muse and they are chatting all about how food creators can succeed in a world with AI. We've had a few recent podcast episodes about AI, but there's always more to talk about because it's always changing. And Jeff and Bjork will be chatting about cooking, creating content and SEO in a world with AI. They discuss how you can create AI proof content or whatever that means at this point in time, and specific tips and tricks you should use when creating content and things. You just need to keep in mind to make content that can help you stand out amongst the crowd, both from other food creators and AI generated content. It's a really thought provoking and useful episode. I know food creators and really everyone will get a lot out of it. Again, head to the show notes@foodbloggerpro.com For more information, links and details about the episode. And until then, just enjoy this episode with Bjork and Jeff.

Jeff Coyle, welcome to the podcast.

Hi, how are you? What's going on?

Yeah, we're going to talk about all things AI today and you're the perfect person to talk about it because you are the co founder of Market Muse. You built essentially the thing that everybody was like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. Generative AI like Market Muse built a version of that before everybody knew about AI. I mean, is that generally correct?

Yeah, absolutely. So we built and launched a large language model technology long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. It was just at a time where it cost way too much to build it and way too much to manage it for a company that we were. And we realized that, you know, technology was going to have to catch up in order to do these things. You know, we had built pieces of this type of technology since our inception, you know, now a little bit under 10 years. So we were building natural language processing components, which basically means like you can analyze text and do stuff with it, which is the basis of a lot of this. Right. So being able to understand what it means to be an expert on a topic, being able to parse text properly. Right. And know whether it's the context it's in, the intent, it has, you know, all those steps come to, you know, usability and fruition with these types of experiences that we're seeing today. But yeah, we were, we, we've been about two, two years ahead of the market every time, which doesn't always mean things go extremely well.

Right, right, right.

You know, you're, you're on the bleeding edge and bleeding a whole lot.

But point with it is like you, you've been in this world a long time, you know trends, you know where things are going, you know, the search world on a really deep level. And that's why I'm excited to talk to you about kind of the relation of content search and AI. This is a space you're very familiar with, Market Muse, this incredible technology that you've built. I was thinking specifically about our friend who has site that they started to use, Market Muse, and they went from like 4 million pages to like 40 million pages.

Right.

Like this incredible story. But you've seen journeys like that, you've walked alongside people like that. And my guess is you've also been able to look inside of sites that have been impacted by changes that happen within the industry and then suddenly things aren't working well for them. And so you have this really unique insight into a lot of different content businesses and expertise around AI content and search. And one of the things that I think is really worrisome for people right now is AI, it's gonna generative content. Like this idea that you can go to Bard or ChatGPT and say, I'm looking for a chocolate chip recipe and then it manifests a recipe. And that would have been somebody who would have gone to your site in the past. So is that true? Are we doomed? Like, what does the future look like if you look into the crystal ball?

Well, certainly for food, the impact of food bloggers, the impact of brands in the food industry, restaurants, all those, everybody is impacted, Everybody will be impacted or has already been impacted. The the reason that it's not something that should be a like, oh gosh, this is going to cause us complete damage is because if you're providing tremendous value already and you are consistent with that value, you've worked on your brand, you've built trust, you illustrate expertise, you have a leg up on people that have it. So if you are in the world where you're, you know, you are trying to kind of cut corners or you haven't put a lot of energy into this, it's going to be more difficult because of the situation like you mentioned with the chocolate chip recipe. There's a lot of different ways that the chocolate chip recipe is going to be impacted. And I like, I've actually not that example, but used a generic example where, you know, it was, I Think it was chicken noodle soup. Right. It's just, it's, it's a thing, it's this abstract thing. It's the chocolate chip cookie. How do you make your chocolate chip cookie recipe special? The answer to that question isn't very different than it was a year ago, two years ago, five years ago.

What do you mean by that?

You always really had to hack you behind it.

Right.

There had to be some credibility, you had to be exhibiting expertise. You had to be illustrating that for one reason or another, your chocolate chip recipe, chocolate cookie recipe, had something special, was bringing something more to the world. I think it's a really great metaphor for what search engines are expecting, but it's a two sided debate here. Right. Because you're looking at all the people creating content in the world and then you're looking at, now search engines are creating, creating content and that's a, it's a different type of, there's a two, a second, you know, battle happening.

Yeah. It's not just you competing. Yeah. Like you're not just competing against another creator for a spot. You're now also competing against the search engine potentially. And what, what I hear you saying is the best way to do that is to not be generic, like to not be plain vanilla. You have expertise, you, you've established trust. And so when I think of in our space, and I don't know if you felt this generally across all different categories, but there was a little bit of a trend towards like just give people the recipe, like all that people wanted the recipe, like essentially kind of strip yourself out of it. Like give content that is informational, essentially like answers the facts. And I was always hesitant about that because it felt like what you're doing is you're reducing yourself to a piece of information that is competing against other pieces of information. And instead of introducing yourself and making yourself a really important component and that being the variable which is like, and one you can control in, in, in a much more significant way, which is like you as a human and your expertise, your credibility and even if not for expertise and credibility, your connection with a reader or somebody who follows you and trust that comes with that connection. So my question for you is how do you balance those two things? How do you give people the information but then also make your humanness found within the content in a way, especially in our world that doesn't feel like, oh, you're just like telling me a random story that I don't need to hear.

Well, that I think it, it's being a Marketer at the same time as you are a creator. I mean, and I've spoken with a lot of teams and about this or even an educator and a marketer at the same time speaking with a lot of teams with, you know, recipe sites, food sites, you know, brands and those. That is where kind of it lands. But the one thing also is, is your plain vanilla recipe card. Does it, you know, is. Is it an instant answer? Right. Does it provide all the context? Because that, that's what we're going to start seeing. And we're already seeing it with search generative experience, which if you haven't seen it, you're on a search results page, it asks you if you want to generate a text or it already provides that it may show you some steps and ingredients. Right.

Um, so point being, like, you're on Google, you search for a recipe and it's like, would you like to see this recipe here? Like it kind of, it builds it all within the search result page.

Yeah. And it. They'll give citations now, but a featured snippet would be they're actually providing a chunk of the page for you to click on. There's another view which is actually, it's generating text from sources and citing them. But my debate has always been is a recipe is a great meal or dish that you make. Is that an instant answer? Is that an instant answer? Type recipe. I think that there are types of recipes that could be that. Right. So the ratio for simple syrup, it's pretty much everybody's got the same one. Right. That's, that's, that's your, that's your kind of apple pie. And, and you know, basics. But, you know, apple pie is very different.

Sure.

You know, it's very. There's chocolate chips, there's a lot of different ones. There's some. There is unique value to having a, you know, that perspective and detailed. Can you go overboard? Sure. I mean, I think we have a, you know, there's. There was a kind of a. I think there was backlash to there being a, you know, thousand word or opus and it making no sense or, you know, they're being low quality. But establishing your credibility through storytelling and writing content at all stages of the buyer journey. That's being a good marketer and educator. So if you know something about a ingredient and things that people don't know, you providing that context, mistakes people make, you know, fast, you know, tips for, for. For doing this in maybe a different way. Substitutions. If you are really providing unique value, you're providing it multiple Learning methods, you know, a. Visual cues, audio cues. You know, you got to do a lot of work, but you're really separating yourself and you're building your image. You want to get to the point where someone will trust your recipe by just a recipe card. You know, if, if I got a Jeff Hertzberg bread recipe, I don't have to think about it. I just say I'm gonna follow it to the nose and it's gonna come out really well. But you don't just get there overnight. And so you gotta be, I think Google as well as we all have to recognize like we aren't there maybe. And if there is the possibility of providing unique value, cleverly doing that is still going to be the best practice, you know?

Yeah. It's almost like it's not just how do you figure out a recipe and deliver that, it's also how do you, within that position yourself and the recipe as like, how do you. Or how do you market it? So, like, how do you convince people that it's. You're the best person to give them that recipe? And this recipe is the best answer to their question of like, chicken noodle soup. Like, what's the best chicken noodle soup? Is that kind of what you're saying?

Absolutely. And I think, and I. You. You heard me speak at a conference recently, and something that I mentioned was in the roundtable the day before was do not fake authenticity. And because that is where there's going to be the heaviest hand from the search engines if you try to project that you have this experience or if you're weaving yourself into the story and that story is not legitimate. Right. It's only going to take one small infraction for your trust to evaporate. So if you're telling a story about your mom grew up in the hills of Tuscany and she gave you this recipe. And then in another story, you're talking about how your mom grew up in Ireland and she gave you this recipe and you're the same person over time, that's going to cause some chaos for you. And so these authentic. Being authentic is going to be the future of everything we do.

And how much of that is tied back to an individual. Like, is the idea here that a search engine we'll use Google in this case, is able to track you as a author and a creator and build kind of a comprehensive understanding of who you are and therefore your how authentic and the level of trust that like Google as a search engine should put.

In you, you as an entity, as a publisher, As a corporation, sure. As a, as an individual, as a group of individuals who will legitimately make claims and facts and present data. Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's not necessarily worth it to go down the rabbit hole of exactly how, but combinations of links to you. Right. The original methods for calculating authoritativeness were heavily skewed towards a link graph and how that presented topic, site section level authoritativeness. And it's a great way of understanding the world, right?

Yep.

And as systems got as it became easier to analyze text, polarity, sentiment, expertise and build all those things that all built up. So years and years ago, and I just use this as a short anecdote, Google attempted to do kind of author level assessment and rolled it out their system. It is one of those things where just it was a little bit hack and slash, it wasn't perfect.

Rolled it out, meaning they tried to do it and it didn't really work. So then they stopped doing it.

They stopped it and then now what you're seeing is a path, a trend back to that because they know that that will be very important and they have to keep working on that. They have to keep working on credibility because we're in a world where the supply of content just went to infinity. So the collective.

Because of generative AI. Because of generative AI, you could create as many. There could be 10 million articles created today on a certain topic and they'd all be a little bit different, but generally the same. And from generative AI.

Yeah. And so the, the challenge is if that is true and there are commodity recipes. Right. And let's just say there's 100 million chocolate chip cookie recipes get posted to the web tomorrow. What, how can a search engine do its job? And that's where, you know, not that I'm being empathetic for this situation, but I'm saying, you know, what is what will be the deciding factor. That's where your head's got to be. It's got to be. Okay, well yeah, if there's 100 million, you know, commodity chocolate chip cookie recipes, why would I think mine's special?

Uh huh. And you have to have that mindset because that's going to be the mindset of a search engine is why is this one special? So functionally speaking, what does that look like? Like you're creating a site, you're creating a post. How do you do that? Like how do you communicate trust and expertise?

I think you are thoughtful for your audience. You're thoughtful. That and I've looked at heat maps wayfinding which is a fancy way of saying clicking. I've looked at these on so many recipe sites and so many food brands that have recipe sections. They also have lifestyle and recipe. You know, there's blend of certain, certain situations. And I look at and great majority of people do wish to read these things. All the contrarians, they, you know, you look at them on Twitter and they're like 100 and they're like, these are terrible. Just send me. Okay, well, for those people, provide access to the recipe. You want that recipe card, make sure it's easy for them to get to make sure that that's accessible. But also education is critical. And I mean the way that if I'm teaching someone how to. And I'm, I love cooking. I'm really into all different types.

Have a beer company that you've owned?

I own a beer brewery. Most people don't know that, but I own a beer brewery in, in Georgia, Brunswick, Georgia. Silver Bluff Brewing Company. So I'm really into ingredients and quality and you know, I make, I make pizza, make bread, a lot of bread and stuff. So I'm super into it. And so providing videos, providing quality imagery that illustrates that you had. Have actually made this. Right. You're not just writing out, providing unique context. I always like the example of when I watch Transcript of my own, this podcast. What was I thinking? If I'm the person, if it was you, could I add a little bit of value to each section? So even when you just make a video, could you go through that and even add more value? Oh, you know, when you're making caramel, make sure that you, you know, don't do these five things or whatever. Like if you're making, you know, non. And you're trying to do it on the same day, you know, here's the things that you need to make sure of. Or else, you know, you're, you're beat, right?

Yeah.

And so that's, that's, those are the things that are going to add unique value and, and set you apart. And the tough part about that is if someone chooses to distill your value down to a recipe, what is your recourse? And I'm asking myself the question because that's one that I've been thinking about today. It's. What would I do if someone tried to distill one of my beer recipes down to six bullets? Right. And how would I feel about that? And what would be my. The manner of. How would I deal with that? What would I do to present that? And I think that, that's the question everybody's kind of got to deal with right now.

Yeah. Point being, and this is something that we talk about a decent amount but probably not enough as it relates to search is one of the best ways to do well in the world of search is to understand the technical components as you should. You know, what does it look like to structure a site well, to, you know, have appropriately sized, you know, web cord vitals, like all of this stuff do that. But ultimately what we are trying to do is we're trying to think about how do people be as successful as possible with what they're trying to do when they come to our content and experience our content and interact with it. And ultimately you can push back on this if you feel like it's incorrect. That's what a search engine is trying to do, is help people be successful with the thing they are trying to do. And in our case, in our world, it's like make a recipe. Well. And so what does it look like to walk people through that? The hard part is it depends. Like, some people like step by step photos, some people like a video. Some people need a ton of background on the why or they're at least interested in it. Other people just want the recipe card. And I hear you touching on that a little bit, which is like, it has to be comprehensive. Does that feel accurate?

Yeah, it is, absolutely. And that's from experience as well. And it's the part that it's painful that it has to be. And I think that the food blogging community and the recipes and food brands and beverage brands had to get that religion sooner than other companies and other industries. And they're in that process now. So B2B2B technology companies, for example, they still, they're, they're years away of having gotten that religion that they actually have to satisfy all the industries and they have to have audio and video and they have to, they have to teach as well as, you know, market. But food bloggers, they're, they're ahead of the game here because they've had to be there because their stuff had to be accessible to all different types of learners earlier than other groups. And so I do think that that's why they're often used. It's also, I'll give you a little bit of a. Oh, it's also because the metaphor that's frequently used for natural language processing is that topic model is a set of ingredients.

Yeah.

So it's very, it's very easy to connect the dots between these things. You know.

Yeah. Point being, people understand that when you're like, hey, you're looking for a thing, and generative AI can do a good job of manifesting those things and giving those to you. It also does a. It's also a good opportunity to paint the picture of, like, the gap that is still exists between going somewhere that somebody's an authority. Like you talked about, Brad, I think of Mauricio, who we interviewed on the podcast. He has a site called the Perfect Loaf. Like, I know if I'm going to try and make a sourdough bread, I'm going to be more successful spending my time on the Perfect Loaf than I am right now using Bard and saying, give me a sourdough recipe. And it's because of all of those things that you're talking about that are wrapped around it.

Yeah. I love that example. And it's to say, also, is the collective mind of all the chocolate chip cookies in the world the output that I want?

Yeah.

And I think that that's, that's. That that's where it's really going to be interesting. And then the question then becomes is, is that the thing that Google will show me?

Yep.

Because what they're doing is not. So there's a little bit of a misconception of if you're asking a large language model to create a chocolate chip cookie recipe that's different than what you see in the search generative experience. The search generative experience is trying to grab chunks of text and information and cite them. Almost like a buffet. Buffet of chunks. Right. And trying to present them in a logical way and wrap that information up. So I think you have a lot of options for generating and interpreting the collective world. Like a large language model is giving you the collective genius of some set of websites. But is that truly how people are going to present them to you? So I think you have a yin and a yang who you're defending against here.

Yeah. In. In the two different scenarios, one being like a chatgpt, which generally speaking is going to be thousands of sources averaged versus the search generative experience. And I think that might be a new phrase for people, but what you're talking about there is within Google, it's a type of search result that kind of builds an answer. And what you're saying with that is it's usually going to be a collection of a handful of sources as opposed to thousands and averaged out perfectly said.

Yeah. Just imagine if they took the best snippets from five articles that represented their view of expertise and then they presented that right there. They've previously had what they call featured snippets, which is one sites. That's a block. I'm generalizing it. But they're smushing together what they believe presents a Quickbook report, as it were. And then some of those are getting into steps of a recipe as I've seen as of today officially. So.

Yeah. Do you know, can you think of a prompt like off the top of your head that would trigger. I know this stuff changes day by day, but yeah, I was looking at one.

Yeah, I was looking at one 10 minutes before we recorded. And if you have labs activated, Google Labs activated and you typed in caramel apples recipe. Yeah, you should see a SGE or some similar ones. And so, so that was one where I was looking at it just recently because I was explaining to someone explicitly how that worked and how they shouldn't be worried about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they had, they've been thinking about this for quite some time and. And you may have different experiences with your lab setup. I want to say that it's Google Labs and you can, if you, if you haven't applied for that, if you're listening, it's 1, 1 minute you submit a form and then you get access to some of these special early.

Right. Y. That's awesome. That's a great takeaway for folks who would want to check it out. It's super helpful. And I think, you know, one of the big takeaways that I had from our, from when that conference that we were at and the talk that you gave was this idea of the importance of the expert. And I think some people are like, wait, the. It doesn't matter anymore if I'm an expert because Google and AI are going to be the expert and they're going to be able to replace me. But what you're saying is actually it kind of superpowers you as the expert because now you are more valuable than ever. But the key is like you actually need to be an expert. Like you can't be somebody who's just like really good at mass producing content because that's kind of gone away. And so it feels like the shift that has happened is a shift towards true expertise of the individual creating the content. Number one. My question would be, does that feel like an accurate representation of kind of the landscape right now?

Yeah, absolutely. It's, it is that it's. There's going to be some clunky things that happen and helpful content. The hopeful content update, which is Google assessing your entire site at the site level for how good the content is in their eyes. These, this you know, search generative experience which is they're almost doing interesting, their ability to provide interesting observations about your recipe could be woven in but in the end, yes, they're, it's another battleground for search. It's, it's additional chunk of real estate for you to win. And so the best sites you're going to be able to be there, you're going to be able to have your regular result, potentially a recipe result. So I, I, I like to view it as this is just yet another type of search result. And over time will they merge to one? Perhaps. But it's definitely changed the way I think about what could happen and really focused me on recognizing that in the end, yes, the true expertise is going to battle and it's not as simple as it used to be. But if you know the general recipe and you know the basic recipe and you know why yours is unique, if you have tips for a particular recipe, if you're providing unique value, those things are going to provide a lot of value for you over time. By the way, I remembered one of the ones I was looking at. If you have SGE activated and you did chocolate chip cookies recipe, you're probably not going to see it. But if you type easy chip cookies, chocolate chip cookies, you will see it. So they're doing some interesting things with intent and so that's interesting.

Yeah, interesting. And again in order to see that you need to make sure that labs is activated so you can see kind of some of these early things that Google is testing. So the second question that I'd have related to some of the expertise this is wouldn't be pertinent for us at least pinch of yum. But for those who are working with contributors like other people who are creating the content, is it just essentially the same thing that applies like let's say you have five authors who are publishing. You need to make sure that those authors are truly an expert on the thing that they're publishing content about. Because on a site level you're going to be assessed as like how, how authoritative is your site. And so if you have one person who's writing about health related stuff and they're not, they don't have the credibility for that, then that's an issue.

Yeah, I mean on the nose. What I'm recommending to teams in their operation steps is to make sure that the writer either in your, if you're sending briefs out or requests for you and you're the expert and you're having somebody else write, you're including your unique values. So the points of differentiation, point of view, make sure you, you know, lean into these concepts, why they're doing it, or if you're leaving that obligation to the writer, they should be submitting those back to with their draft. So yeah, it depends on who's the expert and who's doing the review. That's, you know, the easiest way to get to this point. Because a lot of people just write and I'm totally cool with that. Right, yeah, sure. You have to know what unique differentiated value you bring. And if you need to force that step, because you have lots of contributors, ask for it if it's their obligation and then if it's not, if it's your obligation, include it in your request.

Sure. And are you then including your name, are you including the expert's name in the byline of the article? Yeah, reviewed by. I've seen that. Like article reviewed by. Da da da da da. Like written by this person, reviewed and fact checked or whatever by this person.

Yeah, absolutely. Thinking of your. The trail of evidence, as I've heard it called internally at a large publishing company. But. And if you have an. But if you're representing an admin or a group of writers, that doesn't disqualify you here, you just have to explain it and say, yeah, we have seven people. Their names, these are them. Over time they've been part of this community. These are the current team members. Like, explain why you represent yourself as, you know, cool cup staff, you know, make sure that you're communicating authentically and that's going to be fair and appropriate enough for you to have success.

So, so that's great. That's great. We could talk about this for probably three hours, but these are supposed to be short episodes. My guess is coming out of this, Jeff, there'll be people who are interested in Market Muse, interested in connecting with you. Obviously you have a deep wealth of knowledge around this. Interested in checking out the brewery? You can do a little shout out for that if people. People live in the area or visiting. But can you give a little bit of a insight into how you work with creators? Market Muse? Talk about that a little bit because this is a tool that's built to help people who listen to the podcast and how people can follow along with you as well.

Yeah. So sure, you can email me. Jeff Marketmuse.com I'm active on LinkedIn and Twitter. Jeffrey Underscore Coyle on the X Twitter and then also LinkedIn. Feel free to shoot me a connection mention. The podcast market Muse really helps teams who are publishing to learn what they should be creating, where they have gaps and then how much. I like to say it's the what, why and the how much for content. So what should I be making, why, what data is telling me that and how much should I be creating? And then we take it all the way down to execution. So we have technology that will evaluate your existing recipes and give you insights about whether they are representing expertise, give you insights about potentially areas where they could be improved. And we've just released a AI assistant that uses our our technology in the background so it provides more comprehensive outlining than any other product on the market right out of the gate. And we can work with you if you're a one person shop with a blog all the way up to kind of we work with some of the largest publishers and food and food brands in the world. But please do that. And then if you go to silverbluff.com we we ship to 44 states.

All right.

Including District of Columbia, three of our products and yeah we are our Mexican lager is has won the US Open World Beer cup silver medals in both. And we just got noticed. We won beer of the year from the brewskis to 2023 this morning. You're the first person. Wow.

Breaking news on the Street Plugger Pro podcast.

So if you're a fan of any IPAs, double IPAs or Mexican lagers, we have those three available. And then if you're swinging on I passing through Georgia, make a stop.

That's awesome. And it's just a through line of excellence in everything you do, Jeff, whether it's be or like SEO and search software. So thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Hey, for sure. And I appreciate it and I awesome questions and I'll put one last note. If you have been impacted by changes, I just don't. If you are providing unique value, don't lose hope.

Yeah.

Reach, reach out. There are communities of people going through this. You know, I'm one of those people. But it might not be fixable today, it might not be fixable this month. But if you were providing value, it will be a path. There will be a path. And I know, I've heard it a number of times, especially in this space where I know you're putting your heart and soul into those sites and there are paths. So just, just know that there are people who are thinking about this and a lot of them are willing to, you know, talk to you about it.

That's great.

Yeah. And so do that. Take advantage of this awesome community.

That's really cool. Thanks. And we've had those conversations with people who are in the middle of that, and it's, like, extremely discouraging but extremely encouraging to know that others are going through it. You have a change and you're it affects your traffic, which affects your income, which affects your life. But a great reminder to, like, keep after it. And there are people willing to help, like yourself. So thanks, Jeff. Really appreciate it. And thanks for coming on.

Hey, take it easy. See ya.

And that's it for this episode of Tiny Bites by the Food Blogger Pro podcast. We really hope you enjoyed that episode again. Head to the Show Notes to learn more and we will see you next time.