Sometimes Jay Schwedelson gets deep about data or strategy—but this time, he’s answering your weirdest, most random questions. From nonprofit marketing tips that actually work to his all-time favorite reality TV obsession (yes, he has strong opinions), this episode swings from helpful to hilarious in the best way.

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Best Moments:

(01:15) Why first-person CTAs like “Count me in” or “Yes, I want to help” drive higher clicks for nonprofits

(03:00) The 75-word rule that separates good emails from ignored ones

(05:34) Why showing real human faces—not AI ones—boosts engagement by 38%

(05:58) The bold prediction that “humanity will be the algorithm” in 2026

(07:45) Jay crowns Love Is Blind Season 9 as the best (and most unhinged) reality TV ever made

(08:30) Why he can’t stand true crime—and what that says about us all

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Check Out Jay's INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/jayschwedelson/

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Jay Schwedelson: We are here for ask us anything from the Do this, not that podcast. This is our short episode where all we call, we getting questions, we get in work questions, we get in ridiculous questions. We try to tackle one of each. And if you wanna submit a question, it's really easy. Just go to j schon.com.

Jay Schwedelson: There's a button that says Podcast. Another one that says, ask us anything. And, uh, we love getting questions, how we do the show. And so today we got in some audio questions. So let's go to the work question first. What do we got?

Haley: Hi, this is Haley. I'm from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I help run a nonprofit called The Verb Kind, where we mentor incarcerated youth in juvenile detention centers. So my question is, what's the best way to market a nonprofit? What's the best way to get new volunteers to, um, raise awareness and to kind of spread the word when it comes to social media and digital marketing?

Haley: Thank you.

Jay Schwedelson: Haley, that is, uh, first of all, amazing. Uh, I think anybody that is spending their career in the nonprofit sector that's helping other people, especially like what you're doing, I just can't say enough amazing things about you. I, you, you are way better human than I am. I wanna live vicariously through you and, um, I hope you are crushing it.

Jay Schwedelson: 'cause we need people like you to crush it out there. Back to your question. You know your question's really interesting because I think that it doesn't just apply to people in the nonprofit sector. Certainly I think it's even more so in the nonprofit sector, but these tactics I'm gonna share with you, they really do apply across almost any time of marketing, business, consumer, you name it.

Jay Schwedelson: So let's first talk about simple, quick tip things, your call to action, whether it's on a social media post. It's on a landing page, a button, it's in an email. Those rectangular buttons, your call to action buttons. So often they say things, especially in the nonprofit world, they'll say things like, donate now or Give now.

Jay Schwedelson: Or if you're not in the nonprofit sector and you're listening, you may say, buy now, or download now, or register. Now, in general, what we always wanna be thinking about with our marketing is not what's in it for me. The person that's running the nonprofit marketing or the brand marketing or whatever, but always what's in it for the person that's seeing this messaging on social media, on email, whatever it is, and when you write your call to action.

Jay Schwedelson: Buttons anywhere, social media, website, email, whatever. When you write them in, first person, we see clickthrough rates go up by over 20%. So instead of donate now, it would say, yes, I wanna help. I mean, imagine somebody opens up that email and instead of it saying, donate now it says, count me in. How can I support?

Jay Schwedelson: Right? Or instead of donate. Now it says. Yes. I can't wait to help. Right? All of a sudden, uh, the person is, is active and they're engaged. And it's the same thing with volunteers. It's not like, hi, we need volunteers. It needs to reverse the messaging where it says, um, I wanna be part of the team. Right? And so this whole idea of flipping the script to first person and all of your marketing when they're at the point of, of really taking that next step, you will see click-through rates rise quite a bit.

Jay Schwedelson: The other thing is the biggest mistake I see in nonprofit marketing, whether it is an email and social whatever, and by the way, this is the case for consumer marketing, for business marketing, is we all have a lot to say. We'll send out an email and there'll be these lots of words in the emails, okay?

Jay Schwedelson: Here's the reality of it. When you are marketing to a prospect, does not matter if it is someone that you're trying to get to donate or to buy or to download a B2B piece of content. The secret sauce thing for prospects is 75 words or less in a single paragraph. You cannot have more than 75 words in a single paragraph.

Jay Schwedelson: When you do, we actually see click-through rates drop off. Massively when you are communicating to existing customers, okay, somebody that actually cares about you, or existing people that are already donating to your cause, you could be more verbose, a hundred words, 150 words because they're in it with you.

Jay Schwedelson: But if you are using the same copy and the same length of copy for your prospects as you are your existing customer base, you're making an epic mistake. Those are two very different populations and prospects really barely care about what you have to say. The last one is something I hope that we all realize at this point, which I think we do, which is using real humanity.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm so happy that there's like this massive pushback on a lot of the AI generated. Imagery as it relates to human beings, right? A lot of people are saying, wait a minute, I don't wanna see, you know, AI generated humans in an ad or in an image, whatever. We wanna see real people. And we see that even though it's hard to tell what's real, what's not real, uh, we do see that when we have, when you see, uh, posts, social media posts, for example, across any platform, whether, and it doesn't matter if it's B2B or B2C or nonprofit, when posts include.

Jay Schwedelson: Period. End of story. You are gonna need to get really comfortable. Your team's gonna need to get comfortable. Your brand marketing is gonna need to get comfortable inserting real humans, your team out there doing stuff, eating pizza together, showing your pets, uh, doing whatever, showing customers using your stuff in a real place, okay?

Jay Schwedelson: Showing people that are volunteering, doing real stuff. Humanity is going to be the algorithm as we head into next year. Um, so that's what I would be thinking about across the board and, and keep on doing what you're doing 'cause it's super important. Um, so let's jump into the ridiculous question. What do we got?

Alexis: Hey Jay, this is Alexis. I'm from Dayton, Ohio, and I just wanted to know what is your favorite reality TV show and why? And specifically, if you could include the seasons, that would be incredible. Thanks.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright, Alexis, this is good stuff. Um, because as you know, I have horrendous taste in tv, but on this one particular topic, what is the best reality show? I happen to have incredible taste. Um, now my problem with judging reality shows what's the best and what's the best season. I've come to the conclusion about something.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't like going back and watching old seasons of reality shows. I don't know why. It's not entertaining to me. It's like, that happened three years ago. I know they broke up or whatever. I don't know. It just doesn't do it for me. So when somebody's like, Hey, what's the best, whatever, it's always the most recent one.

Jay Schwedelson: Um, I'm like a goldfish. And so the answer to that question right now is clearly without question. Love is blind. Season nine, I am fully caught up. Uh, I have, I mean, the wedding stuff has not happened yet. Whatever. I will tell you, if you've never watched, love is Blind, you're a loser. You are, you are. I'm sorry.

Jay Schwedelson: You're like, no, I'm not. No, you are actually. It's true. I'm so sorry. You are, and this season in particular is the best season of all time. Mostly because 90% of the people that they cast are out of their minds. Okay. The, uh, there's no, I there is. Nobody on that show that should have gotten through all the checks and balances of going on national tv.

Jay Schwedelson: They're all some version of what is going on with them for real. Okay, so I cannot wait for the season to fully end, so I can do my full recap. But if you've never watched Love As Blind, season Nine. Watch it. Enjoy it. Stop watching these, you know, murder mysteries. Stop watching these true crime. Why is true crime so popular?

Jay Schwedelson: What is going on? What is going on with me? I don't know. Anyway, I appreciate you being here. Guru Conference right around the corner. Check it out. Guru conference.com. It's free, it's virtual November 6th and seventh. You are gonna miss it later.