Things are getting spooky in marketing this week, and Jay Schwedelson is here to break down what’s worth your attention. From Microsoft revealing exactly how AI tools evaluate your website to the surprising email subject lines that actually boost Halloween engagement (no, not the pumpkin), Jay shares what’s working, what’s weird, and what to avoid—plus a quick detour into brain-melting AI video apps and some questionable Netflix choices.

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Best Moments:

(00:45) Why Microsoft’s AI content guidelines actually matter for your website

(01:30) The simple Q&A format that helps AI (and people) understand your site faster

(03:30) How B2B brands can tap into Halloween without looking ridiculous

(04:45) The top three Halloween emojis that outperform the pumpkin

(05:15) One preheader emoji trick that lifts open rates instantly

(06:45) YouTube’s wild new AI feature that lets you rewrite video endings

(07:15) Jay’s unfiltered take on OpenAI’s Sora 2 app and the “brain snot” era of content

(08:00) The Netflix show too disturbing for Jay to finish

(09:10) Why the Amanda Knox Hulu series is unexpectedly binge-worthy

(09:45) Final call for free seats at the Guru Conference

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Jay Schwedelson: We are back for what's up this week from the Do This, not that Podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode of Breakdown, what's going on this week in business and marketing and life, and then we still have our other episodes the rest of the week and there's a lot going on in AI and email, all sorts of stuff.

Jay Schwedelson: All right, so first off, Microsoft. Microsoft actually came out and they shared what they are looking for as it relates to ai. Search and answers and all the things in all of their tools, what they're looking for on websites and in content that they're pulling from to put in their results. You're like, well, Microsoft, what does that have to do?

Jay Schwedelson: Uh, with anything? Why do we care about what Microsoft thinks? Because open AI is not Microsoft and all those other things aren't Microsoft. Well, first of all, that's not true. Okay, uh, number one, uh, Microsoft has its own big AI thing called copilot that a lot of people use. And the other thing is Microsoft is also doing a lot with open ai, which is chat GT.

Jay Schwedelson: So a lot of what Microsoft is doing is actually a feeder for what you're getting in chat GT. So it's really important to hear directly. This is directly from Microsoft. What they're saying you should do and what you shouldn't do. This isn't some random blog that's trying to figure it out, so it's always important to hear what they're saying directly.

Jay Schwedelson: So this is what they're saying. This is what you should do first. And some of this, of course we know it says you wanna write in self-contained. Question and answer blocks. This is probably the number one tactic everybody needs to know. It's not just FAQs, but you wanna have on your site very clear things that are asking very basic, uh, questions about your consumer product, your business product, your service, whatever, with very clear answers.

Jay Schwedelson: And also the problems that it's solving in very simple q and a. It then says you wanna have concise lists and tables. Basically, AI eats this type of structure for breakfast. It needs to be simple for it to scan, and nothing can be hidden. No information will be hidden in like these accordion tabs or these hamburger menus, or in PDFs, or in screenshots.

Jay Schwedelson: AI cannot. Go and grab that information quickly and know what it's all about. So actually, image-based stuff without, uh, all tags and without words associated with it, written words, AI is not gonna pick it up. So you kinda have to reimagine that, and that goes into what you shouldn't do. You can't just have all your stuff sitting in A PDF, it is not scanning these PDFs.

Jay Schwedelson: It needs to actually be on your site. You could have the PDF, but again, needs to be duplicated on your site. Then the other last thing is nothing vague, okay? We can't of seeing things like, you know, we'll help you grow or this will change your life. AI doesn't care, by the way. Humans don't care either. So this is what AI is looking for.

Jay Schwedelson: This fuels all sorts of the AI tools. So what else is going on? So, of course, Halloween is coming up and what's going to happen is two things. What's gonna happen is consumer markers are gonna use emojis in their email subject lines. They're gonna use the wrong ones. I'm gonna tell you the right ones. And then business markers are gonna be like, oh.

Jay Schwedelson: Halloween's, not for me. We are in a regulated industry like healthcare or whatever. We would never tap into Halloween 'cause that's off brand. That's cheesy, that's weird. And you have to realize that this is humanity. You need to get into the mindset of humanity. You don't need to be over the top ridiculous, but you need to join the party a little bit.

Jay Schwedelson: So let's first talk about the B2B side of things. Believe it or not, in your emails, your email subject line specifically, this is from subject line.com, right? When your email subject lines on the business to business side, tap into the Halloween theme, email open rates go up by over 15%. What does that actually sound like?

Jay Schwedelson: Right? So your subject lines could be something like, don't ghost your leads, your Q4 plan shouldn't be scary. What's haunting your funnel? Boo. You're missing Q4 pipeline. Avoid the email graveyard. Open this when you do this within 10 days of Halloween. Okay? From the 21st to the 31st, you'll see that open rate lift on the business to business side.

Jay Schwedelson: Lean into it a little bit, stop being so boring. And on the consumer side, uh, emojis work great. I'm gonna give you an emoji tactic that you should try for business and consumer. But if you're going to use an emoji in your subject line, which you should, it will give you about a 10% lift on the consumer side 10 days prior leading into Halloween.

Jay Schwedelson: But don't use the pumpkin. Please don't use the pumpkin. It is overused. It's actually one of the worst performing emojis. Uh, surrounding Halloween, the ones that perform the best, the top three emojis. I know this is ridiculous, but who cares? The top three emojis are for consumer emails. Or the ghost, the skull and the spider, for two reasons.

Jay Schwedelson: One, they send out number two, they're a little fun. Number three, um, they're not wallpaper like the pumpkin. So if you're gonna use emojis, which I think you should, I would use those three. And the last one, if you've not never done it, is use emojis. Whether you're a business or a consumer marketer, use the emojis in your pre-header.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay. In your preheader, you could even do bookend emojis where you have the same emoji, a ghost as the first character and last character of your preheader. If you've never tested emojis in your preheader, it can do really, really well. The preheader is that second subject line. Um, you know what I'm talking about anyway.

Jay Schwedelson: Let's talk about other things going on. This is terrible. YouTube just released this thing where you can now change, you can create alternate endings to YouTube shorts using their AI tool. What does that mean? So YouTube shorts are the short videos, so not the long videos. So now what you can do and YouTube release this right within a short.

Jay Schwedelson: The, the video, you can pick a moment and then you can write a prompt like you would on any other AI tool for what happens next. And then AI spits out a whole new ending. You basically can remix the, the YouTube short and have it, the video completely changed to what you want it to be. And this is what I really don't want with ai.

Jay Schwedelson: I don't wanna like go like, oh, I didn't like the ending, the Batman. Let me do this and I get a new watch, a new ending of Batman. This is ridiculous. I'm not on board this, whatever. Speaking of all that, so SOA two, you know, came out from chat, jt Open ai, open ai, you know, power Chat gt, and they released SOA two.

Jay Schwedelson: SOA two is the app and the tool that you can, the same way that you use chat GPT, you can go to SOA tool, SOA two, and you could write a prompt and it will make you a ten second. Video clip. And so it, it's been on invite, it's been on an invite basis only, but now more and more people getting access to it.

Jay Schwedelson: It's already number three on the app store, the store two app. So I had access to this thing and I've been messing around with it. And it's the end of the world. It's basically the end of the world because it takes about one minute to make the most realistic, uh, real, um, videos that you could possibly imagine.

Jay Schwedelson: And it's. The app itself is kind of horrendous. No offense be well, I am offending you. It is horrendous because what it does is it turns any video that you make, it goes into this like TikTok style scroller where you just keep scrolling up and seeing all these AI videos that have been created, and it's just one slap of garbage.

Jay Schwedelson: I mean, when I talk about brain rot, this is one step even worse than brain ride. It's like brain snot. I don't know what's going on, but this, I mean, it's wild. You have to play around with it, but I think it's horrendous on a good day. Um, so let's talk about nonsense. What's going on? What is useless? Things that are going on.

Jay Schwedelson: So what did I, what am I watching? The number one TV show on Netflix right now? I tried it. I can't watch it. It's the monster, the Ed Geen story about that, uh, serial killer dude. Um, first of all, I can't handle anything scary. This is very, very, very disturbing. I made it through one episode. That's it. If you like this thing, I don't know what that says about you.

Jay Schwedelson: It's the number one show though. So what do I know? But it's Stars Charlie Ham. Now, Charlie Ham, for those of you who don't care, don't know, um, he was the Star of Sons of Anarchy, which is my number one favorite show of all time, is about a motorcycle gang. If you've never watched it, you should go watch it.

Jay Schwedelson: I thought Charlie Ham was gonna be like Brad Pitt. I thought that this dude was gonna be the biggest star in the world. I don't know what happened. He had some bad movies like King Arthur and a few other ones. Whatever. I like this dude. But, uh, he freaks me out in this, in this show, the monster, uh, the ed gain story, whatever.

Jay Schwedelson: And then I had a bail on that, so I was sitting there, my wife, I'm like, we gotta watch something that is not gonna freak me out. So I'm like, let's put on Love is Blind. So I started, love Is Blind season nine and it of course is tremendous. They did a great job casting, unlike the Golden Bachelor who totally screwed it up.

Jay Schwedelson: Love is blind. Season nine is amazing. I also just watched the Hulu series. This is Wild. If you haven't seen it, about Amanda Knox on Hulu. It's an eight episode series that was executive produced. By Amanda Knox. It's called the Twisted Tail. Amanda Knox, you know, she's the one that got into that whole murder trial in Italy, and I have to tell you something, I knew nothing about this story.

Jay Schwedelson: I, I didn't know that she was even found not guilty. I didn't know. I didn't remember anything. I just knew there was Amanda Ox, there was Italy. I didn't know anything. This is the most. Wackadoo situation, story, sad, wild, whatever. I recommend watching this thing on Hulu. It was way better than I thought it was gonna be.

Jay Schwedelson: I was like, what is going on? So that's on Hulu. What else is going on? Guru Conference. We're like days away. This is wild. If you haven't gotten a seat a, a, a virtual seat, what are you doing? It is free. It is virtual. I'm gonna be there. That's not an incentive. Please go guru conference.com and leave this thing a review if this podcast doesn't stink.

Jay Schwedelson: All right, you're awesome. Have a great week later.