🙃 Are Blogs in Again? — 7 Ways Social Media Just Can't Compete with Kasia Manolas

Amelia [00:00:02]

[Music begins to play, overlapping with the introduction to the episode] Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Amelia [00:00:08]

I'm Amelia Hruby, writer, speaker, and founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio. On this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Amelia [00:00:22]

Download your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig and join us as we do it all Off the Grid [music jams and fades out].

Amelia Hruby [00:01:15]:

Hello, and welcome to Off The Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients or any of your clients. Or maybe you want to launch a show with no social media. Or maybe you're just considering if social media is still a good fit for you and your business. This show is for you, if any of those apply today.

I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio for entrepreneurs and creatives. I am the co-founder of the Lifestyle Business League, a community for small business owners who are growing successful businesses on their own terms and on this show, I am also your fellow explorer in this journey of running a successful, sustainable business without a social media presence.

You are currently listening to season two of Off the Grid. And if you're tuning in as these episodes release, we are in our late summer interview series where I am talking to some of my favorite influencers artists and small business owners about their favorite marketing tools and creative business practices.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:20]:

It's a super fun series so far, and today I am going to be joined by an IRL Chicago friend, a beloved member of the Lifestyle Business League, and a writer that I know you all are going to be so excited to meet in just a few moments.

But before I introduce her, you know that I want to tell you about the Leaving Social Media Toolkit. This is my set of three tools that I created that helped me leave social media and have now helped over a thousand folks consider if social media is right for them. It includes a five step plan for leaving any social platform, my list of 100 ways to share your work off social media, and a database for planning creative marketing experiments for your business. You can get all of that for free at softersounds.studio/byeig. It's linked in the show notes. Go grab it today.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:12]:

Okay, let's get into today's conversation. So Kasia Manolas is our guest today. She is the writer of Girl in the Dark Room, the creator of Feminist Thriller Club, the voice behind her wealth and wellness newsletter called Good Fortune. Have you picked up that she's great at titling things so far? and she's also the owner of Narrative, a marketing agency serving values aligned companies. Kasia does so much and is definitely one of our multi passionate guests on the podcast. Kasia, thanks for being here. I'm so excited to have you.

Kasia Manolas [00:03:47]:

Thank you. What a good, rich intro. I'm so excited to be here.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:50]:

So this episode kind of began as a response to one of the most popular episodes from earlier this season. So, at the start of season two, I shared an episode called Ten Things I Hate About Content Marketing. And you reached out in response to that to kind of share that maybe there were some things I wasn't considering or maybe I was lumping a whole bunch of stuff under the concept content marketing and we could bring a little more nuance to the conversation. So today we are going to bring that nuance by talking about the difference between blog content and social content. And you're going to share seven benefits of blogging that social media can't compete with this amazing list of things that you've come up with to share with us today. But before we dive into that, I wanted to touch on something we kind of talked about before we hit record, which is that you were sharing that you feel like how we define content marketing really depends on our professional background. And so could you tell us a little bit more about your professional background and how you define content marketing in your work?

Kasia Manolas [00:05:00]:

Yeah, absolutely. So I started my career as a content marketer at a tech startup here in Chicago, and I was basically hired to write blogs so that the company would rank in Google for important keywords, bring traffic, acquire customers. So when I think content marketing or being a content marketer, that's what my brain goes to. And social media, for me at least, was always an offshoot of that. So we might use social media to push out our blog posts or other longer, richer content, but in that case, that was a B to B startup, so social media was not a priority at the time. I think the background piece is so important because with my background, if I hear someone talk about content marketing solely as social media, I'm like, “oh, there's this whole other world of blogging”, for lack of a better word for it. That is such a rich way to get people onto your website and grow your audience as we'll talk about later in the podcast, in such a sustainable way.

Amelia Hruby [00:05:56]:

Yeah, I love this distinction you're making of like, different industries, think of content marketing in different ways, and when you're in kind of a tech B to B space, it's all about the blog posts and the SEO friendliness of your website and your content on the website. And we did an episode earlier this season on SEO that we had a really great conversation with Emily. People can go there and learn more about SEO specifically, but I think that just reflecting on my own experience, right? I had a blog before I was really sharing content on Instagram when I first started Feminist Mantra Monday, which, if you've heard me recount my social media story, like sharing Feminist Mantras was kind of the first type of content I shared on Instagram.

Amelia Hruby [00:06:41]:

But when I started doing that, I was actually posting them on a blog and then resharing that to Instagram. And then it became all about Instagram, and I shut down the blog and just didn't bother. I was just doing it on Instagram because people were engaging there. There were all these new sharing features that I could do that I felt like I couldn't do from my blog. And then now I've come full circle in this journey, right, of like, nothing is on Instagram and now it's only the blog. So I do feel like we're seeing these shifts. But I also love how you're sharing. For me, it comes down to what are your goals? And if your goals are to get people to buy things, I think blogs are a better place for that than social media.

Kasia Manolas [00:07:21]:

Yeah, I agree. And I don't even think we have that in our seven things we're going to touch on. But it's like a trust piece. Like longer form content can really develop trusting relationships.

Amelia Hruby [00:07:31]:

Yeah, I love that. Well, let's go ahead and dive on into these seven things. So, as I mentioned earlier this season, I had ten things I hate about content marketing. And today we have seven benefits of blogging that social media just can't compete with. So really, like all in on these content titles here. But thinking about why blogging might be a better fit for someone than social media, I want to start with your first benefit, which is all about longevity. So can you unpack with us why you get better longevity with a blog than with social media?

Kasia Manolas [00:08:07]:

Yeah. So, like, in the simplest form, let's say we post something to Instagram. That post will be in somebody's feed or even a story is 24 hours, and then it's kind of just gone. It doesn't really come back again. So there's this need to constantly supply content because it is such a short lifespan. Whereas a blog can rank in Google forever until somebody writes a better piece of content and you get supplanted on, like you own that spot in Google, you don't have to do any additional work. If somebody searches a question and your blog answers it, you will forever be the resource on that topic. That is so rich and longer than a simple post. And a lot of times people use Instagram posts to essentially write a whole point that would be a blog post. It's like, okay, if we took all that effort and just published it on our websites, that can live so much longer and help so many more people.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:00]:

Yeah, I definitely have personal experience with this, so I'll share something I've really never talked about on this podcast, but on my personal website. ameliahruby.com, years ago I wrote a blog post that summarized a concept I learned from a book. I think the book was called the Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a Fuck or something like that. But in that book, the author talks about how she would create personal policies for herself and how those policies would help her make interpersonal decisions. Basically, it was a lot about boundary setting, but I wrote this blog post that was just like, this is really helpful for me and I love this. And that blog post drives more traffic to my website than almost anything else on there. I think it's been usurped by my list of 100 ways to share your work without social media. But that blog post is still doing numbers every month because people are searching personal policies and finding it, and I get comments on it every so often. And it's just been just like a really interesting lesson for me in longevity. And again, that's not even content I invented. I was just sharing a summary of someone else's work. And of course I linked to the work and I attributed it, but I just have found it so fascinating. And I know that one of your most popular and longest performing blog posts kind of also relates to other people's work. So how have you seen this in your own ecosystem?

Kasia Manolas [00:10:28]:

Yeah, I would say one of my most successful articles. I was really personally curious, how does Reese Witherspoon choose books for her book club? As an aspiring author, I'm like, okay, how does that happen? Because that's a slam dunk for your career if it ever does happen.

Amelia Hruby [00:10:42]:

Oh, yeah.

Kasia Manolas [00:10:42]:

So I put together this original research. There were no other articles on the topic. I just sorted through my own research and I put together the research into a blog post, published it. It ranks number one in Google for the keyword. Like, how does Reese choose books for her book club? And that brings, I think it's like 1000 users a month to my website. Then I created like, a $10 digital product. It drives passive sales in the business. I do no additional work on this month to month, and yet I'll sometimes get an email like, you just made $10. That's fun.

Amelia Hruby [00:11:14]:

I love that.

Kasia Manolas [00:11:15]:

That blog just lives forever. I don't have to do any other work to it. That's so cool.

Amelia Hruby [00:11:21]:

Yeah, it is so cool. And I think something else that's great, like, we're emphasizing you don't have to do any other work to it, but you also can go in and update it so, like, in the lifespan of my personal policy blog post, I've had eight different email lists and I just go in and change the sign up page. I just go update it at the bottom of the blog post. So people can always be connecting no matter whether they landed the first week I posted in it or four years later. And I think that that is also something that it's both the sense of one and done. You can post it at lives forever, but it's also updatable. So it can evolve with you over time.

Kasia Manolas [00:11:58]:

Yeah, that's such a key point. I even find based on what performs well, I'll go create products for it because I know, like, okay, people are finding me in this way and curious about this topic. And you can go add like, a button to a product or you can change what your email list is. It's such a beautiful resource.

Amelia Hruby [00:12:16]:

Yeah. So the content stays relatively the same, but our CTAs can evolve or our calls to action can evolve based on how it's performing or what's happening in our business ecosystem. Social media just does not offer that at all. That's not a part of it. And that's something that is, I think, really special and valuable about blogging. I love it. So let's go on to the number two benefit of blogging, and this one is really all about nervous system regulation. So tell us, what's your next benefit of blogging that social media can't compete with?

Kasia Manolas [00:12:50]:

Yeah, this is something I feel for myself, but when I spend time on Instagram or TikTok, my brain just feels fried and I have a harder time concentrating. But if I go to Google and read an article on an interesting topic, my brain is like settled, happy, and it's like, I want to engage with content. I love learning. I love using the Internet to learn. And it's beautiful that we have so many different avenues to do that. And TikTok probably works for somebody else's brain. I found for myself that feeling of peace of nervous system regulation if I interact with content that's on a blog or longer form in an article, that just really hits for me. And I think that's true for a lot of people.

Amelia Hruby [00:13:34]:

Yeah, I definitely have talked about on the show before, discussed with other guests that sort of like dopamine seeking behavior that we get into on social media and how the constant refresh of new information and new, new leads us just to continue to seek that and then feel a real deficit of that if we try to pull out or away from it. And I agree with you that when we're reading a blog post, the longer form nature of it keeps us in a different sort of regulation or perhaps we're more regulated and less dysregulated. But I think for myself, what was coming up too, while you were talking is like, yeah, when I read a blog post it also often sparks new ideas for me. Like I'm reading a blog post in a way where I feel peaceful but my mind is very active as opposed to when I'm consuming social media or when I used to consume social media posts I was A, not feeling peaceful, but my mind was actually very passive. I wasn't really thinking and applying and imagining how this could fit here or there. I was more just like consuming. And so reading a blog post for me feels like a more creative act in a kind of funny way.

Kasia Manolas [00:14:45]:

Yeah, I love that you said that. I hadn't thought of it that way, but it's so true. Even just like how rapid we scroll, social media just doesn't give our brains any breathing room to think about what we're seeing. And there's that overstimulation feeling of like I can't retain anything I'm seeing or hearing because it's too much. And the speed of reading like a book or a blog is so much slower and gives our brain space.

Amelia Hruby [00:15:10]:

Yeah. And what I love about reading blogs that feels different to me than reading the news online is that normally if I'm encountering a blog on like a personal website or a business website, it's not like full of ads everywhere. Maybe the person's promoting their own work or like there in some capacity. But it's not like I'm constantly encountering these advertisements for totally different things inside of me. Just trying to read this one long form piece. And that's definitely for me, helps me stay more regulated and more present with the content.

Kasia Manolas [00:15:42]:

Same.

Amelia Hruby [00:15:43]:

So speaking of ads, your next benefit of blogging is all about conversion. So in what way are blogs better for what types of conversion than social media?

Kasia Manolas [00:15:55]:

Yeah, I always think of this in terms of what mindset are we in when we're on social media versus on a website. On social media, we're probably there recreationally, we want to tune out, numb out. We're not even in a buyer's perspective necessarily. But on a website we might be more inclined to click on things or we might just be more in that buyer persona. It's another way to say this. The other thing is like the conversion on social media is hitting the follow button or the like button or the share button. If you're on a website, usually the conversion, we have a lot more flexibility with it. We can ask people like subscribe to this newsletter, purchase this product, which in my opinion are like really rich conversion asks versus asking for a follow.

Kasia Manolas [00:16:42]:

I think that asking for a follow is a really enticing, like, we all want that fancy, “We have so many followers.”But what does that actually mean for your business or your bank account or your well being? It actually doesn't mean much. But if you're on my website and I ask you to subscribe to my newsletter, you're now in my ecosystem in such a permanent way. Of course you could unsubscribe, but I'll be in your inbox, which is such an intimate place, and I can share with you when your nervous system is regulated versus sharing with you when you're wanting to numb out on Instagram. And don't get me started. I love newsletters. I think getting email subscribers is one of the most valuable things we can do for our businesses. And it's free. Asking somebody to subscribe is not a huge ask, and it's a place we can supply all of our rich intellectual content right into somebody's inbox versus hoping the algorithm shows it to that person.

Amelia Hruby [00:17:40]:

Yes, 100%. As I was prepping the workshops for the Refresh, my workshop series that happened a few weeks ago, I was thinking a lot about the sorts of different layers of intimacy we have with our community. And I actually ended up really following the same distinction you're making of like, we sort of have this, the most external layer of our community is just our followers, people who are vaguely aware of us. Maybe they listen to your podcast every once in a while, or they've followed you on a social media platform, but there's no guarantee of continued engagement there. It's just they have that sort of like maybe they know who you are and maybe they know you make a thing. And then from there, I think we step into subscribers. And so subscribers are people who've committed to hearing from you in an ongoing way, whether that be on email or on a podcast. I'm going to nerd out on something podcasty that maybe is not interesting to everyone. But really bugged me recently is that Apple changed the podcast button. Apple podcast changed the button from subscribe to a podcast to follow a podcast. And I understand perhaps why they did that, but it drives me nuts because my podcast listeners are not my followers, they are my subscribers.

Kasia Manolas [00:18:56]:

That is so interesting.

Amelia Hruby [00:18:58]:

I know. And it's such a small linguistic thing. What I'm really trying to get out there is that sort of it goes into all three of these benefits, the longevity of the relationship. I think subscribers are with you for longer, how regulated they are when they're receiving and coming to the content that you're creating. Right? Because I think in a podcast app or an email app, that's a very different space than a social media app. And also how well they convert. I just find that emails and podcasts are places we can really build trust and convert customers or clients as opposed to social media. When you're just in that follow realm, it's still a lot of space between vaguely being aware of you and buying something from you. And so this very minor Apple podcast, which really bothered me for this reason.

Kasia Manolas [00:19:46]:

That just made something click for me, that's like, I wonder if there's this relationship between trust and regulation that we might hit purchase through instagram, but it's probably like an impulse buy that we feel really uncertain about and kind of chaotic about. But if we hit purchase from a podcast, it's maybe a more grounded purchasing decision rooted in trust. And I really like listening to this person and I really trust this. Yeah, that just clicked for me. But that word thing is so interesting. That would bother me too. I do think we associate followers with passivity and they can come and go and it's just not that deep of a relationship. But a subscriber is definitely a level deeper.

Amelia Hruby [00:20:25]:

Yeah, well, to all you lovely Off the Grid listeners out there, you are deeper in my heart than just a follower. So please subscribe, share with a friend, rate and review all those things. But I hope this is an ongoing listening relationship for both of us. So let's move into your next benefit of blogging that social media can't compete with. I really love this one. It's a little more nuanced and it's all about the nature of blogs and how they perhaps give us a little more privacy in our work. So unpack that for us.

Kasia Manolas [00:20:58]:

Yeah, I always think of where we're sharing and creating really changes what we share. So for example, in my own life when I'm sharing on Instagram, I'm usually sharing, like, my house is in the background or what I'm wearing or who's around me. That doesn't allow me a lot of privacy for my lifestyle. But when I go to share on my blog, for me at least, it's usually a much more intellectual exercise like sharing what I'm reading, what I'm thinking about. And of course that can be personal too, but for me that allows for much more lifestyle privacy. It's maybe not intellectual privacy, but to me that lifestyle privacy is so rich and I think everyone has different boundaries with what they're going to share or not share on social media. But this is what felt really good for me is I think the older I get, the more I want to just keep held to my chest. And also there's just so much comparison on social media that I almost don't want to feed into like what are we wearing, how are we living, where are we traveling to? Those are all great things to celebrate and honor, but for me, blogging and sharing content is just a much more intellectual exercise that I couldn't richly do that on Instagram.

Amelia Hruby [00:22:12]:

Yeah, I really love this reflection and this point. I think that there is definitely something to the influencer model on social media or the personal brand model on social media that really almost demands that you sacrifice privacy for the sake of personal sharing and connection with your audience. And for some people that feels really supportive and fun. And I will say, even for myself, if I look at my Human Design, I have a three/five profile and three is called, in Human Design, is called the Martyr, and that person is really intended to go try something out and then report back with how it went for them personally. And so sharing in that way feels really natural to me. It's a lot of what I do on this podcast, but I think that when I'm on a podcast or on a blog post, it feels like I get to choose what I share and no one is really requesting or demanding that of me. Where I think we often see on social media that people feel really entitled to know about the personal lives of the influencers or just the creators and artists and other human beings they're following online.

Kasia Manolas [00:23:25]:

I totally agree.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:26]:

And I also love the piece of this that, kind of about the educational nature of blog posts, the intellectual nature of blog posts, sharing ideas, teaching how to do things. It's actually also just a really interesting evolution of the blog itself, because my first introduction to blogs was all personal blogging. Right? Back in college, I had my little craft blog. I was obsessed with reading blogs like A Beautiful Mess or like A Cup of Joe, blogs that are still around. I mean, those blogs still exist as thriving businesses and have evolved over the past decade to continue to thrive in a blogging space. But I feel like there's this distinction as well between the personal blog that really did get consumed or subsumed by Instagram, and then now what we have is actually more of like the educational blog that's coming from the SEO space and the desire for SEO reach or traffic. But what I like about it is it's just like there you're sharing with purpose. I would so often get on Instagram and just be like, here's a pretty picture. What am I going to relate to it? I'm just going to type out my feelings until something sounds good enough, as opposed to when I go to write a blog post. I'm much more in my essay writing mode. Article writing mode. There's an intention. I'm going to share something specific. I have a call to action. And it's not to say you can't do that on social media as well. But there's just a way that I think blogs in this day and age really lend a more educational approach to content.

Kasia Manolas [00:24:58]:

I agree. I think it's not only education, but I think it also comes back to connection. I was thinking of an example as you were talking about the personal blog. Even if we step out of educational, I was thinking of an example like, okay, let's say I'm in this really loving relationship and I post a photo of me and my partner on vacation. Really the connection I'm asking for from my followers is like, see me and witness me and celebrate, let's say my loving relationship. If I then go take to my blog and tell you how I met my partner, what this relationship has been like compared to others and what I've learned from this. Now I'm inviting you to learn how you might meet a partner or what are some healthy signs of good relationships.

Kasia Manolas [00:25:44]:

Now the connection is not only about I'm in this relationship, like, come see me, or validate it or celebrate me. It takes it into a human to human connection level where we're sharing ourselves as humans. That might not necessarily be an educational blog post, but I think we're always seeking as humans to understand other human experiences and learn something about it for ourselves. That's why we read, that's why we consume. And then, of course, there's the educational angle. When I'm writing, I'm always thinking about the reader. What are they going to glean from this? I want to be in service of them. I think that layer can get lost on social media a lot quicker because it's such a visible platform. I don't know a better way to say it than asking people to see you.

Amelia Hruby [00:26:32]:

Yeah. Or I even just think of the language of so many social media platforms. You're just asking for somebody to like it, not necessarily to respond to it, not necessarily to engage with it or connect with it. It's just that sort of surface level, like double tap of liking it. And I think that that is a very different degree or layer or kind of surface level of interaction. And a blog can just invite so much more honestly, whether the comments are on or not, whether that person's actually responding to you or not. There's just a different way of sharing and receiving present there.

Kasia Manolas [00:27:12]:

Yeah, I think that's why I like writing. I mean, we read books and we never talk to the author and say, like, good job. We just receive it and enjoy it. And I think that's the role of writers is to put things out into the ether that you may never hear from even podcasts too. You may never hear from your listeners or readers, but you know that that connection is out there in the ether.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:33]:

Yeah. And I will say on that point, I often hear from podcasters that they're like, I don't ever hear from anybody that actually sends them to social media because they want that response. They want that sort of validation that someone's listening. I think that that's also a very natural or to me, a very common human desire. But I feel like what we're talking about here is less of one is right or wrong or better or worse, and more of really just cultivating an awareness for the content you're creating. How much of your personal life are you sharing? What is staying private? Are you feeling like there's a tension between those things? How much of what you share is very personal? How much is more educational or connective? I think for us, what we're finding is we both have this affinity for being able to. Keep more things private when we choose, and content that really is intentional and inviting connection rather than simply shared for validation. Blogging better suits those desires that we have than social media does.

Kasia Manolas [00:28:40]:

So well said.

[music fades in]

Amelia Hruby [00:28:45]:

Hi, Off the Grid listeners. Amelia here interrupting our conversation today because I want to share with you one of my favorite marketing tools. When I left Instagram, I invited all of my followers to subscribe to my mailing list in order to keep in touch with me, and I promised to send them monthly-ish notes on a lot of the themes I used to talk about on social media. I've used many email service providers in my day, but my favorite of all of them is Flodesk.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:13]:

Flodesk is a gorgeous, easy to use email service provider. It helps you create beautiful, thoughtful emails. And even better, it's really set up to help you create easy to use landing pages so people can join your list and workflows so you can automate sending messages to folks who sign up through different pages. Flodesk is how I run all of the welcome sequences and lead magnets at Softer Sounds. It's also how I run the Leaving Social Media Toolkit that you might have downloaded after listening to this podcast. I'm surely not sending those emails out myself manually. Flodesk is doing all of that automagically.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:54]:

If you'd like to give Flodesk a try, please use my affiliate link below. In the show notes, you'll get a discount, I'll get a kickback, and we will all send more beautiful emails together. Again, check out the affiliate link in the show notes. For now, we're going to get back to this episode of Off the Grid.

[music fades out]

Amelia Hruby [00:30:19]:

So let's move on to our fifth benefit of blogging that social media just can't compete with. And this one is very SEO related or is really all about SEO. So can you tell us a little bit about how blogging is so much better for SEO and particularly domain authority than social media is?

Kasia Manolas [00:30:38]:

Yeah, and I think the way I first said this to you is like, blogging is so much less fickle than Instagram. So, for example, if I write this blog post and it ranks in Google, I can step away from blogging for like, several months, and that blog will still rank, whereas Instagram, you're almost like, punished for not being consistent. And of course, Google wants us to be consistent too, but it's so much less fickle.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:03]:

I always think back to some interview that got shared virally around, some influencer asked somebody at Instagram like, how much should I be creating to get boosted in the algorithm? And they were just like, just six to ten stories a day and one to two feed posts a day and a minimum of three to five reels a week. And I'm like, that's what you want from me? A person with a job and a life and who desires to sleep and feed myself and hang out with my dog. And when you say like, it's less fickle, that is immediately what comes to mind for me of the expectations are just for how much and how often you will publish content are just so much less from Google as a search engine than they are from Meta overall as a platform. And as a result, we can maintain our domain authority, which is kind of a marker of how high you'll rank in a Google search and do that for a long time without feeling like we have to create more and more and more and more and more.

Amelia Hruby [00:32:03]:

I will say, like in a search engine, you can see if you rank first or not in a way that Instagram you can't see if Instagram is sharing somebody else's post before yours. So I think in that there's a little more transparency and there and a little more direct comparison of like, maybe you don't have to post as often, but in the meantime somebody could write something that gets boosted above you and you're like, oh no, my spot's gone. So that's still a piece of the equation. I really appreciate that the time moves slower in a certain way and the expectations for how much and how often you'll produce are just so much more relaxed and to me than feel a little more human.

Kasia Manolas [00:32:43]:

Yeah, I think human is the word that comes to mind as you were talking. I just feel like I'm allowed to be a human with my website and my blog and social media feels like it detracts from my ability to live day to day and just have so much spaciousness.

Amelia Hruby [00:33:00]:

Yeah, to take a slight detour from this human point, something that I do think a lot about though, is the role that AI tools will have and how they will shift our relationships to blogging and social media. Because I'm so curious to see if search gets taken over by more and more AI results and more and more blog posts that are not written by humans and those gain more domain authority and rank higher. If that happens, I could imagine people returning to social media for a more personal human approach, and I wouldn't say like I'm worried about that, but I feel very curious to see how this will shift in the years ahead. And I'm curious if you have a take on this and how you think about AI in relationship to blogging or writing content.

Kasia Manolas [00:33:56]:

Yeah, I think about this so much because I think instantly writers were like, oh no, now a machine can do what I do, at least in the current state of AI that is just so not true, at least not yet. But I also think I work with brands on their content strategies and the pieces that perform well AI could not come up with they're so original, they're so human researched. I'll give an example, like I'm working right now in an article for a client on five different SaaS startups that are like, crushing online acquisition. And what are they doing differently? I'm conducting interviews, I'm pulling quotes, I'm pulling the thread between these five and finding what is similar about them. I'm doing human based things that a machine can't keep up with. And when this piece is published, there's no AI version of this article. It's so original. I have a really optimistic view of AI that I believe our human based content will always be the richest. It'll always rank the best. When I've used AI to inform my writing, it's always a regurgitated version of something that's already on the internet, which Google actually penalizes. So in a sense, I don't see AI content ranking that high. That can totally change as AI gets smarter. But for now, I feel like human content will always win out and especially like longer form. I mean, AI could infiltrate social media, there could be like bots creating video. I mean, there's probably extreme versions of the future in every realm.

Amelia Hruby [00:35:29]:

Yeah, I really appreciate all those reflections. I also am very optimistic about the role of AI. It's something that we use at Softer Sounds to create transcripts and even slowly stepping into AI drafting show notes. Of course, what I also see is that the show notes that it writes are never ever what we actually end up sharing or creating for a client. Sometimes they'll have a nice phrase or they'll pull out like a piece of the conversation that maybe we weren't highlighting. But the writing always feels to me better and the syntax is better and the spelling is correct and all these things when an actual human has created it.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:11]:

But I will say that I've noticed from these AI tools that I'm using at Softer Sounds, I use a tool called Castmagic, and we'll upload a podcast episode, it'll give us a transcript and it'll produce all these AI pieces that titles and quotes, and it'll write scripts for reels, and it'll write you a newsletter and it'll write you sort of SEO headings. And something I've noticed is that it's much better at the SEO stuff and the video scripts, I think, because so much has been scraped from things that rank highly in Google and likely also from YouTube. And so that's really just a noticing that I'm sharing more than anything else. But I think that what it supports here is this idea that writing with personality, writing in your own voice, quoting other people in their voice, doing research. Again, those are things that an AI tool can't do and that make your posts more compelling. And as a result, at least right now, that means they perform better in search or in somebody's inbox.

Kasia Manolas [00:37:21]:

I always instruct clients to the best ranking content really speaks to that person's expertise that can't be replicated. And your expertise is based on your life experience. AI doesn't have that and we ultimately, you write a blog post about how you've grown Off the Grid. That's a real life situation that I want to hear about. That's really good content. AI doesn't have experience growing a podcast. They could maybe pull things from the Internet about what other people have said, but it's not like a succinct one woman story.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:55]:

Yeah, exactly. We still want those examples, and we want people to admire and to look up to and to follow in their footsteps. I very much want that. There are all sorts of business owners I admire, and any interview they do about how they got where they are, I will consume it immediately.

Kasia Manolas [00:38:13]:

Same.

Amelia Hruby [00:38:14]:

All AI could give me is like a generalized how women business owners succeed. And I don't want that from AI. I want to know how each individual one does it. Then I can process that through my own experience and talents and desires and dreams, et cetera. So I love this. I'm feeling so optimistic about the future of writing on the Internet, and we still have two benefits of blogging to go. So our next one feels very resonant with this whole conversation we've just had about writing. And it's one of your, I think, just personal reasons. You love blogging, which that it's great for writers. So why is this a benefit of blogging over social media?

Kasia Manolas [00:38:52]:

Yeah, I've just seen this for myself. When I am trying to be a creator on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, I need to have photography skills, video editing skills, and those are just things that are not my favorite thing to even learn about. Like, sure, I could, but my brain doesn't love it, and a TikTok creator's brain obviously does love that. So for me, blogging is just catered to what my brain likes to do, which is writing. And the written word is, for me, like, my favorite medium. So I think some of it's just, like, knowing yourself and knowing your talents and where can I plug and play where it's really easiest for me and I shine.

Amelia Hruby [00:39:30]:

Yeah, I love this. And I think I'll expand on this to say I remember when I was on the Twelveth House podcast, I had a conversation there with Wallace and Michelle about how if you're a creator who's really focused on one social media platform, be it Instagram, be it TikTok, be it Twitter, you develop all these skills for kind of how to game that platform. And those are non transferable skills. Like, getting really good at being seen in the Instagram algorithm is not a skill that benefits you anywhere other than Instagram. It's the only place, and it's also always changing. And so you have to be so rapidly shifting your skill set in a way that then you can't transfer to somewhere else. And of course, part of that's writing, part of that's photography, those are transferable skills.

Amelia Hruby [00:40:20]:

But I just see too many people build these skill sets that either they can't transfer or as to your point, they just have no interest in doing further. Right? Like, you are a smart, talented human. You could learn to edit video, but why spend hours and weeks and months and years of your precious life doing that when you have absolutely no desire to ever start a video editing studio or something like that? And so I completely agree and just wanted to highlight too, just like, how social media platforms make us develop skills we're maybe not that interested in. And then also many of the skills that we have to develop to stay relevant there don't transfer to other places.

Kasia Manolas [00:41:00]:

That's so true. Yeah.

Amelia Hruby [00:41:02]:

So last one of our seven benefits of blogging, I really love this one. It kind of relates to the privacy piece that we touched on, but I think it goes in a different direction. And that is that your blog can be a separate space for your business or your life or just a separate space in general from your social media. So how has this supported you and your work, Kasia?

Kasia Manolas [00:41:25]:

This really first came up for me on Instagram because I started to have more of a professional presence. So I had a personal Instagram and a professional Instagram, but of like, it's Instagram which I think we just associate with more of a personal life angle. So, like, friends and family all poured into my professional one, which was previously really just a space for other writers, readers, business owners. And I found even the way I showed up on it changed as people moved over from my personal to professional. There was no escaping it. Now my mom and dad follow it and of course my blog is still open to the public and my parents could read it, but unless somebody goes to kasiamanolas.com and wants to peep everything I've been writing, they probably won't. But on Instagram, it's just okay, if I post this on my story, I instantly think like, oh, my dad's going to see that. And for me, I just loved cultivating a space that felt like I can be my full professional self here. I'm also not forcing my family and friends to watch it, who maybe don't care. The content is really for, let's say, another entrepreneur. And I don't need to force my high school friends to watch that too. That for me felt really good.

Amelia Hruby [00:42:38]:

Yeah. I have also had this experience as I shifted my personal Instagram profile and into being more of like a micro influencer space. As I've talked about on the show before, when I went from having 500 followers for people I knew to having almost 3000 followers kind of over the course of a year and a half, it really then shifted who was paying attention and my focus was on all these people I wanted to buy my book and join my selfies course, but also present there was my dad and my high school best friend and in my relationships with them, my book and my selfies course don't come up. It's not a part of that relationship. And I think that something that happens on social media. There's this real collapse between our personal life and our personal brand or our business brand and it's kind of all expected to show up in one space. I felt all this pressure of like, oh my gosh, do I have to be exactly the same and all of this in every social encounter that I have? And for a while I really kind of judged and shamed myself that I felt like I had to be one thing or I had to be everything everywhere all the time. And now I just feel so free that I have a Softer Sounds website and all the podcast stuff lives there and my friends who live here in Lincoln where live like none of them know anything about it. They don't care and that's fine.

Amelia Hruby [00:44:05]:

Similarly, my parents have never been on my business website. They're not on my business email list. That's not what's happening. And that actually feels really good. I find it much more intuitive to be able to kind of put on different hats in different places and share different parts of myself with different people. And you certainly can do that on social media. But I think from what we talked about before, those pressures to be really personal and the sort of openness of everyone being everywhere and following everyone, you really lose some of those distinctions that can just be really nice. It's like not everybody that I know needs to come to my house. Not everybody that I know needs to see my bedroom. Not everybody that I know needs to go to my workplace. Right? Those are different relationships that take place in different physical spaces. And I love not just having a blog, but having separate websites for me such that people can go to different places depending on what they know about me and how they want to engage with my work and how they know me at all.

Kasia Manolas [00:45:07]:

Yeah, I love that the way you explain too. We're kind of taught you should be your full self everywhere, but that's actually really not how life works. Our parents don't follow us into business meetings. We're allowed to have different nuanced versions of ourselves that come out in different situations. And like you were saying, like instagram really, I think you used the word collapses. It really collapses that into just one space in a way that can be also nervous system deregulating because we're like, how do I show up for all these different audiences in a way that feels like palatable and makes sense when really I do kind of want to divide that up. It also made me think of I have multiple brands and multiple websites. That was a strategic decision to separate it out because not everybody is going to be interested in all of those things. It's also like business mindedness to separate things out and where do we cultivate attention and on what? And what do those people care about?

Amelia Hruby [00:46:06]:

Yeah, exactly. It's like having your community in mind to me and thinking about there are different people who make up my community and I can support them in different ways in different places. And I love that. Blogs, I think blogs and websites are an easier way to do that than trying to do all of that on social media. She says, as someone who used to have like six different Instagram accounts profiles that I would flip back and forth between to do different things, it was so hard. Too much. Too much.

Kasia Manolas [00:46:39]:

I can relate. It is a lot.

Amelia Hruby [00:46:41]:

It truly is. Okay, so to recap for our listeners the seven benefits of blogging that social media just can't compete with, that Kasia has shared with us today were longevity, regulation, conversion, educational-ness, domain authority, it's great for writers and you can have a space that's separate and more private. So I love all of these. Kasia, do you want to chime in with any other reasons that you love blogging or content marketing more broadly?

Kasia Manolas [00:47:17]:

I mean, I'll just give one final example. I was talking to my coach, Taylor Elyse Morrison, who is your co-founder of Lifestyle Business League. We were talking about affiliate sales with content marketing. Like, if you write a blog, I use Jasper for AI and I love it and here's my discount link. You don't have to do anything else but publish that and you can get affiliate recurring sales. And that's something I've been unlocking in my business. And I'm like, you know what, social media just can't give us that. Her and I were talking about it. We're like, it is like magic sales. Like you just don't do anything and something happens.

Amelia Hruby [00:47:49]:

I feel like I should have you and Taylor both come on for just like a whole episode on passive affiliate income because it is a whole world and strategy that I see people implementing that I myself would like to learn more about. So maybe we'll do that in the future.

Kasia Manolas [00:48:04]:

Yeah, I'd love that.

Amelia Hruby [00:48:05]:

Yeah. Taylor's the best and she'll be on Off the Grid as a part of this series in a few weeks. So stay tuned, folks. You will get to hear from her again. She was on in season one and she will be back soon in season two. Well, Kasia, I am sure that at this point people have gathered that you are a masterful content writer and that you have so much to offer to all of us. So how can they continue learning from you? How can they work with you? Where can they find you? Tell us about all the things you're up to these days.

Kasia Manolas [00:48:38]:

Yeah, I really have three things to point to. So I have my business called Narrative, which is my agency. I write for brands. I put together their content strategies and the content and help values aligned brands find more customers, which is really valuable work. I enjoy it. The second thing is I've really found that a lot of bootstrapped companies like my own can't necessarily hire people on retainers like mine, but they still want to use the strategy and learn more about it. So I recently put together a seven day email course on content, strategy and SEO that's really affordably priced. If anyone wants to dive deeper into this and really use the strategy to boost their own business. So there's that. And then the free way that I like to keep in touch with people is my newsletter. Like we were talking about email subscribers, which you can find on kasiamanolas.com. I write every Tuesday, mostly on building wealth and well being and really talking about financial freedom.

Amelia Hruby [00:49:36]:

Beautiful. I love it. So many good things. Listeners, those are all in the show notes for you to check out, explore, sign up for at your leisure. Thank you so much, Kasia, for joining us. Thank you so much for reaching out to me with your thoughts on my Ten Things I Hate about Content Marketing episode. If you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen. Now you can bring a whole new critical mindset to everything that I shared because you know so much about why blogging is amazing. If you too ever have many, many thoughts about something that I share on Off the Grid, I'd love to hear from you. You can send me an email at hi@softersounds.studio and let me know what's on your mind. That's where I'm going to leave this one today. So I will just sign off and say that until next week, my friends, I will see you off the grid.

Amelia Hruby [00:50:30]:

Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Find links and resources in the show notes and don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig. That's softersounds dot studio slash b-y-e-i-g.

This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Purple Planet and our logo is by n'atelier Studio.

If you'd like to make a podcast of your own, we'd love to help. Find more about our services at softersounds.studio. Until next time, we'll see you Off the Grid.