Episode 29
Jason Barnard, The Brand SERP Guy
Jason Barnard is "The Brand SERP Guy". He is a digital marketer, folk-punk musician, and was a cartoon blue dog.
Key takeaway:
Google is your new business card What appears when someone googles your brand name (or personal name) is fundamentally important to you and your business. Make it accurate, positive, and convincing.
Backstories:
8 years a Punk-Folk Musician
In the 90s - Double bassist and singer in a folk-punk band touring Europe. 600 concerts, 40,000 albums sold, 200,000 people saw the band.
10 years as a Blue dog
In the noughties - Starred in a cartoon TV series for kids produced by ITV INternational and aired in 15 countries. The accompanying website peaked at 5 million visits and 100 million pageviews / month in 2007.
12 years on a desert island
Well, Mauritius, off the coast of Africa. But you don't get much closer these days. A stunningly interesting story, and a lot of interesting banter to be had there!
https://jasonbarnard.com/
https://kalicube.pro/
Transcript
Jason Barnard, The Brand SERP Guy
Presenting Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) as a Digital Marketing Consultant, Musician, and Voice Actor
[:[00:00:28] Mark Stinson: And today, we're punching our ticket in Paris, France. And our guest is just the kind of eclectic, creative talent that we hope to bring on. Jason Barnard, he's a digital marketing consultant and musician. He's even voiced and animated a blue dog in a cartoon series. And I can't wait to talk about that. So my guest, Jason Barnard from Paris.
[:[00:01:12] Mark Stinson: There you go.
[:Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) on Being Born in Leeds, Moving to Liverpool, and Then Moving Again to Paris
[:[00:01:47] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I moved here 32 years ago. I've been away from the UK. I'm actually English by birth, born in the north of England in Leeds. I was brought up in a tiny village and went to school in a tiny town, which was interesting, and then moved to Liverpool, where my life just exploded into life. It was like black and white to colour. And then moved to Paris, where my life exploded into life again.
[:[00:02:40] Mark Stinson: Yeah. Yeah. A complete restart button.
[:Playing in a Band Called Stanley the Counting Horse and Having a Deep Voice With a Small Body
[:[00:03:09] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Pushing through that kind of difficult spot, sometimes it can be a waste of time because it doesn't work out, and sometimes you go, wow, I'm glad I did that. And you said I was in a band. I played music. I played music in Liverpool. I was a singer in a band called Stanley the Counting Horse, blues band. And I was the thinnest, thinnest, actually quite small. I grew quite a lot between 18 and 19 for some reason. I don't why, late puberty probably.
[:[00:04:04] Mark Stinson: Love it. Is it the six degrees of separation that we love?
[:[00:04:37] Mark Stinson: Love it. Well, listeners, I think you already know you should be buckled up by now because this is going to be a rollercoaster of an interview with stories coming at you from all angles. And as I say, digital marketing consultant, Jason, we want to get into Brand SERPs. So we'll get into that. We'll talk about your band, a punk folk band. And I can't wait to talk about voiceovers and animated cartoons.
Writing an Article About Content Strategy and How to Analyse Them and Having Trouble With the Writing Process
[:[00:05:26] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Today, it was writing an article, writing an article to explain to people. Digital marketing sounds really boring, but there's a lot of creativity that goes into it. And I was talking about content strategies and how to analyse a content strategy and understand whether or not you're actually reaching your audience with something that resonates with them.
[:[00:06:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I think the writing process is something I've had a lot of trouble with. I'm 54 years old now, and I wrote my first article three years ago, four years ago. And it turns out because my father and his wife are both writers, I was scared of the quality that I would be producing. And I had creative block, if you can call it that, just about writing up until I was 50. And now, honestly, I was talking to a friend and I still suffer a little bit that idea that my parents will judge the quality of my writing, even though they never read what I write.
Jason’s Framework or Creative Process in Starting to Write an Article
[:[00:07:06] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Kind of. I just write any old stuff. I start off and I say, this is what I need to write about, or I was writing a video script. I do a lot of video. And some of them I improvise and some of them I write and then read off the teleprompter. Is it called the teleprompter?
[:[00:07:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, okay, jolly good. And I enjoy both. I actually prefer adlibing just in the sense that I feel more at ease.I let it flow and it's fun. But I think when you read off a teleprompter, you get to the point much more concisely and precisely. And it's much more understandable because you've actually thought through. And you get rid of all the guff. I've just spoken for a minute and probably half of it was useless, uninteresting guff.
Comparing Writing and Doing Videos With Playing a Gig and Playing on a Record
[:[00:08:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. It's interesting. I find I get it's more stiff and I get more nervous. And I was talking to the friend, who was actually the singer from the band we talked about earlier on, who's still a very good friend of mine. And he was saying, between writing and doing videos, for example, I feel more that he's doing videos. He was saying, writing seems to be more absolute, concrete, set in stone. And it's a bit like the difference between playing a gig and playing on a record.
[:[00:08:49] Mark Stinson: The live note is it. Yeah.
[:To Overcome Writer’s Block, Where Does Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Get His Source of Refueling?
[:[00:09:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Actually, it's really, really boring. I just force myself. And what I find is when I force myself, it's a barrier. And once you get through it, I suddenly go, oh, what about that, what about that, oh, blah, blah, blah. And my natural enthusiasm and positive attitude comes to the fore. It really is forcing yourself through that barrier. It's like coming to Paris. Force yourself through that sticky period, and it will flow, if it's going to flow, because some things just don't. Some things are not going to live. Some things are not going to flourish. And maybe part of the art as well is to know when you're going down the wrong path.
More About Brand SERPs, Why It Matters Right Now, and What Is Jason Currently Working on With It
[:[00:10:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, yeah, no. I can actually turn this around and say I'm being creative here. Because within the digital marketing space, nobody else is looking at this. I'm the only one. I call myself The Brand SERP Guy, because I'm trying to brand myself with that.
[:[00:11:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And what's been very interesting is the more I look at it, the more interesting it has become. But at first sight, it just seems so boring. So sticking with it, I would say, if I throw myself a flower, as we say in French, I think I've been creative and smart by realising that this isn't a boring dead end that everybody else thought it was going to be. And what's been nice this year is I actually set out to say, right, okay, 2020, year of the Brand SERP. It's the year of the search engine results page for your exact match brand name search, what appears when somebody googles your brand name.
[:“It's up to me to create that message, who I am and what I do. It's me who decides. And Google is just there to reflect it.” - Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)
[:The Mechanics of How You Make Sure Google Reflects Your Brand Message on Your Brand SERP
[:[00:13:04] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): That is the boring bit. You're right. Up until there, it was philosophically very interesting.
[:[00:13:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Just really quickly, in fact, I realised the other day, in fact, what's happened is if you look at my Brand SERP, you search for Jason Barnard. You'll see on the right hand side there's what we call a Knowledge Panel, which is the information that Google considers to be factual about me. And that contains the blue dog, the band, my mother, my daughter, photo of me, that I'm a British French musician, and the songs I've written and my social accounts. And so that's basically my life story in 400 pixels, which is very strange.
[:What It Comes Down to Is Simply Good SEO Strategy for Yourself or Your Brand
[:[00:14:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And so what I've also found, which has been interesting, is it's a really easy entry into SEO. It's a really way, easy way to understand these techniques, which are changing meta titles, changing meta descriptions, what Google shows, the blue link and the little description underneath, creating great videos, making sure that Google understands that your audience is engaging with them is another way to get videos on there, for example. And what it comes down to is simply good SEO strategy for yourself or your brand.
[:Jason’s Research Project in Kalicube Pro’s Database and the Story of How His Wikipedia Page Got Deleted
[:[00:15:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I want to appear in search, which is great. But actually the other thing is I also want to talk to people like yourself or interact with people by email or on social media or in person in the bar that's behind you. People who are listening can't see that, but there's a bar behind him. And I want, when they look up my name, when they look me up on Google, that they see what I want them to see. They see the brand message that I want to get across.
[:[00:16:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that's been really interesting about how much information Google is willing to show on that right hand side and how well groups do in terms of ranking, how much Wikipedia dominates. Wikipedia obviously is this it's both glorious and awful, because glorious in the sense that it makes you feel good. It's great for your ego.
[:Adding Your Brand in Kalicube Pro and Understanding Google by Looking at it From the Outside in a Tiny Niche
[:[00:17:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Kalicube.pro. You just go and there you see add my brand. And you can add yourself as a person, a music group, a brand, a local business, and invent basically entities. And that's a whole different ballgame, as you would say. Basically, it's tracking what appears when you search for something identifiable, such as a music group, a person, or a brand or a local business or an event.
[:[00:17:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And this is passionately interesting for another different reason. The data, the information, understanding, Google is this machine. It's the most intelligent, quick, massive machine that mankind, humankind has ever created. And the people at Google don't understand how it works. And my job is to look at it from the outside in this tiny niche, which is just personal brand names and brand names and say, how does it decide and how can we influence it?
Google as a Machine Is Writing Its Own Code; All the People Have to Do Is Decide What Goes in and Correct It if What Comes Out Is Wrong
[:[00:18:54] Mark Stinson: Keep working on it. Yeah.
[:[00:19:09] Mark Stinson: I'm imagining you're the gearhead, the car mechanic, who knows everything about what's going on under the hood. And I'm asking you how to get better gas mileage. It's so simple sometimes.
[:The First Thing You Need to Do to Improve Your Search Results Is Give Your Entity a Home
[:[00:19:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It's a double whammy.
[:[00:19:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Whatever you are, a person, a music group, an event, a podcast, your podcast, same thing, it's an entity. It's a thing that we can identify or a brand. You need to give that entity, the thing you can identify, a home that Google recognises as the go-to place for that entity.
[:After Recognising the Entity Home, You Have to Find Corroborative Information Around the Web and Prove It for Google to Understand
[:[00:21:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because we have to remember that every time we search in Google, we're asking a question or presenting a problem to which we're looking for the solution. And Google's job is to recommend the best solution to your problem or the best answer to your question. So in order to do that, it needs to understand today at least who you are, what you do, who your audience is. And it's as simple as that.
[:There Are Two Things Google Cannot Deal With: Contradiction and Inconsistency
[:[00:22:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): You should know that.
[:[00:22:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. But interestingly enough, as human beings, we think, yeah, but that's obvious. And then you look at it and you say, well, it's not half as obvious as you think, because you're putting information all over the place.
[:[00:22:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it's not obvious, which is the principle source. And so as human beings, we aren't very structured and we tend to contradict ourselves. And those are two problems for Google, two things Google cannot deal with, contradiction and inconsistency.
The Journey of Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Into Animating and Becoming a Voice Actor for a Cartoon Blue Dog
[:[00:23:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, in fact, that's time. Because when the punk folk band ended, I played the double bass. That was awesome. And I was a rock and roll star. And we didn't make it big. But what was great about that is when you're in a rock band, you are absolutely convinced to the bottom of your little toes that you're going to be a star and play stadiums like U2 do. And what's weird is it's so obviously not going to happen, but you are so convinced that it is. And when it all stops, you stand there and you're going, crumbs, and your whole life falls apart.
[:[00:23:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, my wife and I created a story around the songs and created a website for it. And that was a big success very quickly. So I learned to code Flash, which was Adobe Flash, Macromedia Flash and made cartoons and games and songs and ended up eight years later with a thousand games, songs, and animations on this website.
Adjusting Their Voices in Singing for Boowa and Kwala and Trying to Sound Out of Tune for the Yellow Koala
[:[00:25:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): There were a couple of things that happened. One of which is my voice wasn't quite low enough at the time, and I was 30 years old. And so I took it down two semitones to try and make it bigger and deeper. And her voice was a little bit too low, so I pushed it up two semitones. And after a few years, we realised that my voice had actually dropped two semitones, so I didn't need to do that anymore. And her voice had gone up.
[:[00:25:49] Mark Stinson: Take it off a little bit.
[:Building a Family for Boowa and Kwala and Having a Hard Time Finding Voice Talents in Mauritius
[:[00:26:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And we created these families. And so for a year, they had families, but the families never said anything because we didn't have the voices. And then after a year, we thought, okay, we create the families, but they can't not say anything, they can't be mute. So I went off looking for voice talent on the island, and there wasn't any. And so I ended up doing five voices. And that's, we were talking about that earlier on, the creativity comes in. You're saying, I don't have a choice. I have to come up with something, and I can't find somebody who does the voices that I would expect.
[:[00:27:16] Mark Stinson: Yeah. Too many people in your head.
Taking the Form of the Different Characters in Doing Their Different Voices
[:[00:27:48] Mark Stinson: Absolutely. You separate yourself from reality and take on this character as you've been describing.
[:[00:28:10] Mark Stinson: Yes, it's very physical.
[:Connect With Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Through Kalicube Pro and His Podcast
[:[00:28:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Yeah. That's on Kalicube.pro, same as the site I mentioned earlier on. There's a podcast section. There's a tool section where you can look into all this digital marketing stuff. The podcast is actually about digital marketing, which is why I wanted to come on this show because I wanted to talk about creativity.
[:[00:29:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. And you can see, I think my cheeks have gone red and my smile's gone right up to my ears.
[:[00:29:30] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thanks, man.
[:[00:30:10] Mark Stinson: Unlocking Your World of Creativity with Mark Stinson. Copyright 2020.
