Dwayne Hogan's Linkedin Analytics

Should creators be using AI? I love Chris Brunstetter's take on this. Link to the full conversation in the comments.

If AI automates the world, what’s left for us to do? Choose. In the most recent DOAC podcast, Daniel Priestly talked about how one of the key character traits to be successful in an AI world is agency. This triggered me to have a conversation with ChatGPT to better understand how to think about agency.

One of the things I love about creating with AI is that it’s made me a better learner. I’m not a writer. And early on, I’d share AI-generated content that people (rightfully) told me was terrible. Not because the tool failed, but because I didn’t understand the writing process. That’s the catch: to get good outputs from AI, you have to understand at least something about the craft you’re working in. Writing. Coding. Music. Even cooking. AI doesn’t do it for you—it forces you to learn if you want anything good to come out of it. A little writing knowledge changed everything for me. Same with a bit of coding. I’m not a developer, but I’ve shipped a ton of working code just by learning enough to guide the model well.

Here's my framework for how I think about meta descriptions. The objections I hear to spending too much time on meta descriptions are... - Google rewrites them anyway. - They aren't used in rankings. - Improvements offer marginal benefits beyond a certain quality threshold. - Other SEO tasks have higher leverage. WHAT??? The meta description has a crazy amount of visibility. And, in an era where AI Overviews and AI Mode are taking away clicks, meta descriptions are more important than ever. There's a pattern I've figured out for getting (1) Google to use your defined meta description and (2) improving CTR. ➡️I call it the Zero-Click Meta Description. The mindset is like a Featured Snippet or an AI Overview. Pretend the searcher can’t click your link. How could you provide as much value as possible in 155 characters? The solution is to answer the primary question you're asking (implied or explicit) in your title tag. An example is the image for this post: a SERP for "how to optimize meta descriptions." Out of 8 "blue link" listings (excluding videos, AI overviews, etc), 7 use Zero Click Meta Descriptions or were rewritten to be one. I hear the skepticism. "But this is another example of Google taking away clicks." In my experience, I've actually seen higher CTRs. Google's not in the business of creating a bad product. They need ad revenue. I believe they're doing this because these meta descriptions capture more attention than the old school "Learn more about xyz topic here" descriptions. Here's a doc with a prompt to generate Zero Click Meta Descriptions for your page. Be sure to turn on Web Search in your LLM of choice: https://lnkd.in/es_NSN_A

I don’t stress over AI detection when it comes to ranking. Most new content that ranks uses AI. If you do a Google search for your target keywords and run the top-ranking pages through an AI detector, most of them come back as AI written. That’s just the world we’re in now. But when I create SEO content with AI, I do use AI detection as a gut check for "does this content sound human or robotic?" That’s why I fine-tune OpenAI models on human-written content. Prompts that ask to add more "perplexity" or "burstiness" rarely works. I’d rather just train models that sound human to begin with. Curious how others are approaching this. Are you optimizing for detection, or just focusing on good content? Full chat here: https://lnkd.in/gqKt7-He

Love this idea from Chris Brunstetter: Every creative output is an amalgamation of references, experiences, and knowledge. Star Wars didn’t come out of nowhere. It was samurai films, westerns, and radio serials, mashed together into something new. ---- It does feel weird to use AI to generate ideas, especially when we deeply respect the time, thought, and craft that creators put into their work. But nothing is truly original. Creativity has always been about building on what came before. Whether it's George Lucas, Maya Angelou, or Steve Jobs… they all drew from the work of others, consciously or not. That doesn’t cheapen their work. It honors it. The goal isn’t to copy, it’s to contribute. AI doesn’t replace the creative process. It helps me explore faster, remix deeper, and maybe even arrive at something that feels a little more like me.

I found a Substack that has completely rocked my world: Blockbuster Blueprint by Michael Simmons. If you’re trying to figure out how to actually leverage AI in your life or work, you will not find a better ROI than his content. The first thing I consumed was his course “Frontier Prompting” (link below). It totally reframed how I think about using AI—not just to get info, but to build new ideas. One of his base prompt frameworks goes like this: Start by asking AI for 10 diverse mental models on a topic (ex: marketing) from different academic lenses. Dive into each model, one by one—get deep. Then compare them: what overlaps, what conflicts, what’s strong or weak? Finally, ask AI to build a meta-model that combines the best of each. What you end up with is a completely new framework and perspective on a topic that never existed before.. And now that full chat becomes the foundation for your next article, talk, or strategy doc. Highly recommend: https://lnkd.in/gWH-Rxux

I'm finishing up a free LLM Visibility Checker in Google Sheets (well, you gotta pay for your own APIs). This tracker will: - Check to see if your brand is mentioned for a list of questions in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews - Check to see if your URLs are listed in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews for those same questions - Provide all of the sources found for those searches. DM me or let me know in the comments if you want me to notify you when it's complete (probably a Monday launch).

I saw the Minecraft movie with my family and cried at the end. Not because of the story, but because I understood my son a little better. He loves Minecraft. I often tell him "I don't get it." He tells me, “Dad, you can create anything you want.” I say "I don't get it." Watching that film, I saw the world he loves: the creativity, the freedom, the joy. Minecraft isn’t just a game to him, it’s a canvas. And after the movie, I glimpsed how he sees the world. I also had a thought this weekend... AI is my Minecraft. With AI, I can write stories, make music, generate images, build websites, code apps. I can create anything I want. It doesn't make me an expert on those things. It just provides a canvas. Just like my son in Minecraft. Maybe we’re not so different, we just build with different blocks.

I created a Life Coach in NotebookLM by uploading all the personality tests I've taken. I've taken a ton of personality tests to try to gain self-awareness: 🧠 Enneagram (I'm a 5) 💪 Strengths Finder (high in Adaptability) 🚀 StandOUT Assessment (Pioneer and Influencer) 🔥 Erotic Blueprint (Shapeshifter) 🎉 Sensation Seeking Quiz (high in Disinhibition) 📖 Myers Briggs (INFP) I had an idea from Tiago Forte to put them all into a NotebookLM Doc. I call it "Dwayne's Life Coach." For my first session with my life coach, I wanted to help me improve my creativity. I asked it to help me become a more prolific creator and to overcome my fear of what others think. It then went through a deep dive of all the docs I uploaded, explained why I struggle to create, and gave me recommendations for increasing my creativity. What I wanted next was a personal framework for creativity. I went over to ChatGPT 4o and put this prompt in: "I had Notebook LM do an analysis of the attached personality tests. Below is the result. Create and name a new meta-mental model for creativity that combines the strengths of each test and assessment while cancelling out the blindspots." It created a framework called Catalyst Cycle: A model for prolific, joyful creativity through adaptive experimentation, energetic release, and value-centered expression. "Creativity thrives when insight meets motion. For someone with deep intellectual, introspective, and perceptual gifts—like you—the key is to establish a self-renewing rhythm of idea capture, rapid experimentation, emotional integration, and public release. This model balances your instincts for privacy, quality, and meaning with your drive for innovation, novelty, and impact." One last thing I had it do was summarize in 5 bullets: - Act before overthinking. (Break the analysis paralysis of Enneagram 5 and Deliberative.) - Embrace imperfection. (Release perfectionism and Restorative compulsions.) - Create to nourish, not impress. (Disarm the Shapeshifter shadow and Significance fixation.) - Share even when it feels risky. (Lean into your Disinhibition and Pioneer drive.) - Refuel through motion, not mastery. (Shift from hoarding knowledge to energizing through creative flow.)

Larry Norris, founder of RedSEO, showed me this amazing 404-to-301 redirect mapper he built in python. If you have a client with thousands of 404s, you should check out this demo!

We no longer have to be slaves to social media. AI can help us break free from the dopamine traps. ⛓️ We think social media knows everything about us, and so we rely on the feed to give us the right content to consume. But social media thrives on not actually giving us the content we want. I often find myself sitting in front of my TV, scrolling through my YouTube feed searching for something to watch, and I'm often disappointed. Occasionally, YouTube gets it right and restores my faith in the algorithm. But next time, I'm back to aimlessly scrolling. It's freaking Google!!! If they wanted to, they could surface content I want every time I log in. But, they choose not to. This is by design. Because the infrequent rewards keep me hooked, like a slot machine. The experience is the same on every other platform. - Finding music on Spotify - Seeing others’ thoughts and ideas on Twitter - Keeping up with family and friends on Facebook - Finding visual media on Instagram It's time to escape the dopamine trap. With AI, we no longer have to rely on these platforms for content. We can create the content we want to consume. - I can create the music I want to hear. For example, I'm using Suno to make a running playlist at my desired BPM and style to keep me in flow during runs. - I can create the articles I want to read. - I can create the images and videos I want. No more dopamine loops. No more being spoon-fed content in social media feeds like a child. If I have a desire to see or hear something, and I can create it without staying in the dopamine trap.