BONUS: Are You Ready For The New Google Analytics? with George Weiner

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google's next-generation measurement solution, and it's replacing Universal Analytics. On July 1, 2023, standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing data.

GA4 is much more than just a new “version” of Google Analytics. It’s a completely new platform – built from the ground up to collect, process, and report on data differently than before. Migrating to GA4 is a complex and integral process that requires strategic planning and expert implementation.

George Weiner is here to help!

George is the Founder and CEO of Whole Whale, a digital agency that leverages data and tech to increase the impact of nonprofits and for-benefit companies. In nearly a decade of operations, Whole Whale has worked with over 100 nonprofit and social-impact organizations, spent over $6 million in Google Ad Grants dollars, and supported an additional 150,000+ organizations through free online content and trainings.

He is also the co-founder of Power Poetry, the largest teen poetry platform in the U.S, a safe, creative, free home to over 500k poets.

About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:

Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.

She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published in 2020 as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements.  

Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts

Transcript

0:00:00 - Julia Campbell
Are you looking to engage your donors more effectively and create deeper relationships with them? Well, you're in luck. This episode is sponsored by my friends at instill that's i-n-s-t-i-l. A holistic donor relationship management platform, on a mission to revolutionize nonprofit technology. Together, we're hosting a free webinar to show you how to manage donor communications in the digital age, using technology and social media. Our goal is to build long term donor loyalty in a short term world. Learn more at jcsocialmarketingcom. Forward slash instill. That's jcsocialmarketingcom. Forward. Slash i-n-s-t-i-l. See you then. 

Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, julia Campbell, and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the Non Profit Nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a non-profit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hi everyone, welcome back to Nonprofit Nation, so excited to have you here today, in your earbuds, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, i'm your host, julia Campbell, and today's question is are you ready for Google Analytics 4? And what is the hype versus the reality with artificial intelligence? 

We have quite a few topics today, quite a few things to cover, and my friend George Weiner is here, and George is the founder and CEO of Whole Whale. A lot of you are probably familiar with Whole Whale, a digital agency that leverages data and tech to increase the impact of nonprofits and for benefit companies, and in nearly a decade of operations, whole Whale has worked with over 100 non-profit and social impact organizations, spent over $6 million in Google Ad Grant dollars and supported an additional 150,000 plus organizations through free online content and trainings. And George, in all of his free time and I know he's children too is the co-founder of Power Poetry, the largest teen poetry platform in the US, a safe, creative, free home to over 500,000 poets. That's amazing. So, george, welcome to the podcast. 

0:03:04 - George Weiner
Hey, thanks for having me Long time listener, first time caller. 

0:03:09 - Julia Campbell
I know and we were saying it's been a really long time since we have spoken and talked and hung out and certainly a long time since we met in person. But I know I've been following the trajectory of Whole Whale and just really excited to dive into this conversation. So I guess to start, let's talk about sort of how you got into nonprofit work and some of the things that are really exciting you about nonprofits and tech right now. 

0:03:36 - George Weiner
I got started with dosomethingorg. I spent seven years there. I became the chief technology officer and learned a tremendous amount of how you could leverage data and tech to scale impact, frankly. And then in 2020, found at Whole Whale and kind of went from there and built it inch by inch, mistake by mistake and lesson by lesson, developing how we look at analytics, digital advertising, AB testing, SEO, content marketing and then layering in different types of products and experimentation with our university courses to train other people on how to do what we do. We have things like the inclusivity tool, which will check a site for non-inclusive language from a database of over 1,000 different words and terms, and, more recently, rolling out things like causewriterai, which build custom built GPT based tools for specific use cases for social impact teams and nonprofits. So I got my start saying like, wow, we can do a lot of good with this tool. We can do a lot of good with this tech. Let's get beyond just hey, the internet's for donate buttons for nonprofits and say we can use this lever to change things. 

0:04:56 - Julia Campbell
Tell me about the inclusivity tool. How was it created? Who should be using it? 

0:05:02 - George Weiner
It was created. 

Actually, i have to give full credit to someone named Mariel on our team who brought this topic up and had been keeping us updated internally with a list of DEI terms and language which was so rapidly changing. 

It felt to me that I I'll just be honest, i my brain doesn't work that way And I was having a hard time staying updated on that. But also I deeply cared about inclusive communications And so the way we approached it was you know, let's begin a database of this from the many different sources, thought leaders, and just put it to explaining in terms of searching a page, so you can do it for free inclusivity toolcom check any page of your site, or even we made PDF. So like you've got that, like giant PDF you want to send out and it'll, it'll search for potentially non-inclusive words. Context is key, right? This is not a binary judgment on your language And it may flag things like grandfathered in because it has historically racist roots in many of our language. In terms, there's actually a lot more going on And it's not a judgment, so much as you should be aware that these words may betray the purpose of your communication. 

0:06:20 - Julia Campbell
Exactly, i love that. I think that when nonprofits are thinking of tech and data and AI especially, they tend to go to the dark side and not think about the real implications to create good and to make our communications and fundraising better and more inclusive. So I love this tool. I think that it's just I'm going to put it in the show notes I just think that these kind of tools, like you just said, it's not meant as a judgment. It's just meant as a tool in your toolbox. It's meant to be something that could potentially help you, if you want. It's not going to be forced on you And it's something that could really illuminate and shed light on some problematic things that are maybe happening in your communications. 

0:07:11 - George Weiner
Yeah, i mean. the question to anyone using it is like do you find mirrors offensive? Do you find mirrors have a point of view? Do you find like I find mirrors offensive. 

0:07:20 - Julia Campbell
I find mirrors offensive. I'm just kidding, Sometimes depending. 

0:07:24 - George Weiner
But it is meant to be in that use case. However, it's tough. We're talking about sensitive language on sensitive topics ranging from mental health to social justice. You have opinions, i have opinions. Hopefully this just gives you an objective. Look, it's a hard problem And we were just hoping to throw a free tool into the ecosystem, and it's one of the great things about getting to play with social impact tech at a digital agency. 

0:07:53 - Julia Campbell
So I was playing around, like everyone else in the world, with chat GPT today, and What I found was that it's really helpful to use these tools From a blank page. So tell me about cause. Writer. Dot AI is that sort of what it's designed to do give you prompts, create outlines, do research like what are some of the, what are some of the use cases? Thanks for the cause. Writer. 

0:08:20 - George Weiner
AI plug. I want, i. I want to be really fair. Like you don't need that tool, that tool is, i'll park it for now, objectively for chat GPT. You know, as we're talking now, i know may be different than later because of the rapid pace of change. 

I think everyone should be experimenting with chat GPT, which you can find at chat open, ai, calm, and they are rolling out more and more features as you go along. And what's more of these tools, via the API, are being built into all manner of endpoints fancy word for saying look, you're on Your word processing, you're on your email, you're on your asana, your notion, you are canva. These things are going to just be layered in in the background and At a very high level. What I want to put the back of people's minds is that if you are Passively using these things and letting them happen to you, you are the product. 

We've been to this show before. It was called the facebookcom and you should just be careful when you are the product. So I would encourage you certainly, you know, acknowledge that you are never starting with a blank slate. Just to be clear, there has been mountains of information and Bias already pushed into whatever seems like a oh, look, a blank sheet of paper. That that's not the case and I think you you nailed it by saying what is the prompt right and this idea of prompt architecture? 

So a lot of threads to pull, but just trying to set the stage, i guess. 

0:09:55 - Julia Campbell
I love your view that all of this is a tool and it's really how you wield it. You know like you can use a hammer to build a house. Or you know, use a hammer Just to simply hammer a nail into some an ode to a birdhouse. So it's how you wield the tool and, like, your intention behind Using it is incredibly important, especially for your success in using the tool for sure, and you know, for a cause. 

0:10:23 - George Weiner
Writer, what we're seeing is that once you get past that initial stage of isn't it cool that I can have this? write a Summary of this article or create, you know, some generic email messaging for me, you begin to realize that your things are going to look like everybody else's things, because this is essentially a Large language model random number generator that will come up with the average of the human language until you Feed it more information, context About your organization and your purpose, and so, when it comes to building these purpose built end points So unique chats that know your organization, know your voice and know what you're about to do With that context, then you start getting unique outputs that can help with efficiency, and that's what we're focused on. Like really like, sitting with a nonprofit being like what you're writing here. Where's your data? Let's use your data intentionally rather than the fact that, frankly, it's already been ingested by this gigantic model and it has been mushed and mashed with everything else. Let's put our thumb on the scale where we need to to make sure that those outputs help you. 

We've also been playing with auto GPT and by the time you're listening to this, this is probably old news, but it's incredibly powerful because it can do Google searches, it can push and pull from API requests and it can Essentially act like an assistant you give it a goal and it will run through the steps to achieve that goal Without needing you to say go do this now, go do this now. So I, for instance, wrote an article about Statistics for nonprofits from 2018 to 2022. I gave it a prompt saying hey, i want this information, i want you to search Google for it, i want you to summarize the results and then I want you to organize it by year in an article post for our nonprofit newsfeed. And it then went about that task criticizing, analyzing, creating a plan, searching Google, storing that in short-term memory, summarizing that, then creating a cited source. Because this is a one of the critiques and it should be that with chat, gpt right, chat open, ai, calm, what it is doing is Sometimes bs-ing its way. 

0:12:33 - Julia Campbell
It's very confident that it's right. 

0:12:35 - George Weiner
Oh, it's a computer, right, right, it's a computer, it has to be right. You know that is a genuine critique and you should be very careful and one of the policies that we really Make sure all of our clients follow. In an internally like it is a first draft, i get very uneasy when it is released as gospel or direct endpoint. With a Constituted, i mean a constituent, without, without that caveat, but with tools like auto GPT and plugins, these are getting smarter and I'm gonna be pulled in and it is a. It is a definite opportunity. 

0:13:07 - Julia Campbell
I love seeing it as an opportunity and not necessarily as a threat. There's two prongs to this. People that are thinking it's going to be like Hal in 2001, a Space Odyssey, or it's going to be like Megan you know the doll, the virtual doll from the movie. Or it's going to be the savior, biel and doll, and None of us will have to write blogs anymore. But I think there's this happy medium, hopefully towards the end of the better spectrum, the more positive spectrum. But talking about tools, i wanted to have you on to pick your brain about Google Analytics, for because I know there are there's so many myths, misconceptions. People don't know what it is, speaking of a tool that is incredibly helpful but raises a lot of anxiety, like what is Google Analytics for And why do nonprofits need to care about it? Like, why do we need to know? 

0:14:03 - George Weiner
about it. It's shocking how big a change this is and how little I see about it, and I feel like there is a massive train barreling down the tracks on All web data. The number one used web analytics platform is Google Analytics, specifically universal analytics. It has been around for call it, 13 years in various iterations, as of July I first. 2023, that will Stop. Halt. No more data Closed for business, no shirt, no shoes, no service, nothing Done, gone as many ways as I can make this point. What's more, your data is then essentially in an icebox. For any historical information you had with universal analytics, hmm, that icebox will be thrown away into a dumpster, never to be seen again at the end of 2023. If you do Longitudinal reporting, if you do reporting on past year over year, and you do nothing, you can see what will happen. So I'm trying to raise a little bit of like Alarm about it, because I just makes me sad that, like someone is going to be sitting there December 17th of 2023 and be like wait a minute Where our numbers go and, frankly, you're sitting there in July second being like where our numbers now What is happening is GA4 is taking its place. We can get into the rhyme and reason, but big picture, data privacy and a switch to Event-based versus cookie-based type of tracking is the headline. 

Ga4, in my Opinion, is not ready for prime time with regard to the visualization of data. It's storing it just fine, but I think it is bad, mediocre on a good day maybe for visualization of the information, and it's going to take some time to understand. Every single metric that you know and New from universal analytics is different, and it's just a matter of how different it is. So there's a huge learning curve. Most organizations, i feel like, may have this Installed at an out-of-the-box level, which is pretty decent, i think, all things considered. So you'll have some information. 

In a worst case, you're going to lose your web data until you go back in and say, oh my gosh, we need to install GA4 now. They may have some Automatic migrations that happen, or auto setups, but there's still buttons you need to press In order to have this in place. So, like I'm trying to have as many of these conversations possible, we're racing to do this with many, many clients, because then there's smart configurations that you have and probably need for tracking. But you know it's a headache, but it's an opportunity to redo your data Analytics tracking, i guess so this is for for people that are just not knowing Even what Google Analytics are. 

0:17:03 - Julia Campbell
I would hope that people would know at least if your market or a fundraiser, but this is for web data. So Clicks to your website, referrals to your website, conversions, goals, anything that you set up to track website traffic Is that correct, correct, thank you. And how will this affect Google ad grants? Is it going to affect people that have Google ad? 

0:17:27 - George Weiner
grants. Right now I think you're fine, as long as you have the the tracking and conversion set inside of Your ad grant. However, if you like, really care about the performance of on page and what not and what's going on Once that traffic hits your site, you're probably gonna want those analytics back. But as of right now like I think, it is still technically possible, but you have to check, because they change these rules every month of whether or not it's required or not and what do nonprofits need to do? 

0:17:56 - Julia Campbell
what's the first step if they realize, oh man, i'm using universal Analytics, i really want my web data? What's sort of the first step that they need to do before ideally before July 1st, but say it's after July 1st when they're listening to it, to this. What do they need to do? 

0:18:16 - George Weiner
make sure you have GA4 set. Do you know how many people came to your site yesterday? If you can answer that question and it's after July, has a, you have GA4 set up. Okay. The next question is do you have transparency into the goals, such as Did somebody donate? did we get an email? did someone spend a meaningful amount of time on a meaningful page, tracked as a conversion so that we can tell we are doing good things on the internet, mm-hmm. And then, as you go through, one of the things you can say is like, as you prepare these reports, you know, do I understand What an engaged session actually is? why are my maybe users different on this versus when they were for Universal Analytics? we've put together a lot of these like FAQs and a lot of free resources on whole whale comm slash analytics that just sort of walk you through a lot of the nuances and headaches for this. 

The next big thing that you'll want, after you have GA4 and your conversions tracked, is to take a look at your historical information, your Universal Analytics, which, as I mentioned, are in an icebox that is going to be thrown into a dumpster At the end of the year. This is like a crawl, walk run type of way of saving those data, depending on the level of here's what you need to know, like what is the level of specificity that your stakeholders ask about historical information? and The more specific that people expect that data reporting to be, the higher you have to go on preservation of data. On the low end, just run through and export a bunch of PDF snapshots of year over year data and you get a general idea and we have a Article on this of saying like, here's like the different levels, so that's on one side. Just export a bunch of PDFs. You'll be fine. 

You can find the broad idea of tracks and trends and, on the most extreme, you know you are exporting all of your Historical data into BigQuery and then layering on top of that a looker studio so that you could visualize and analyze Every single question of like oh, what about that campaign in 2021 where we did it between September to mid-November? like, i want to know the data on that. Like, if that's the level that your team and stakeholders expect. Like, you have to be doing the Cadillac option, which at this point seems to be the Big query connect to looker or whatever your you know, choose your visualization dashboard. 

0:20:47 - Julia Campbell
So whole whale created a fabulous series of dashboards For universal analytics. I don't know if those are still available. Did you create those for GA4, or is that a little bit more? 

0:20:59 - George Weiner
We have, we have a great boards out there in the world. We're still modifying them because we're still watching and seeing. 

0:21:06 - Julia Campbell
But there is a I love those dashboards Because I wouldn't even know, like you. You go to universal analytics, you go to Google analytics and it's so overwhelming And there's so many data points. So what I loved about the carefully like curated dashboards that you created you pick some data points based on What someone's goals were or maybe what their job title was, which I thought was really helpful. 

0:21:31 - George Weiner
Yeah, i mean that had been down. It was like one of the number one searches for like nonprofit Dashboards for for Google analytics, and I'm glad so many people found it useful. We've created that for GA4. However, the asterisk is that Google has put a daily and hourly quota on queries to GA4 data. It says, though, the company wants to make money, and so it actually kind of We've built it, but it will break, and you'll be like why is this breaking? Why is it's this quota limit here And again, that's one of those articles that we have of like how to kind of get around it and solutions, but in terms of like the massive, robust Looker dashboards, which is the new version of Data Studio We built that previously in Data Studio. 

I'm using the word looker, but it is a Essentially the the same product. The problem is, dashboards just built on top of raw GA4 Might break. If you put too many widgets just means like ask it too many things at one time, okay, which is frustrating, and that happened in November of 2022 is like surprise, we're just putting this in place. Maybe it's different now, maybe not. So, yes, i love those dashboards, but here's the truth. Just be careful if you are relying on them with the At the level that you did our last one. 

0:22:54 - Julia Campbell
As a digital marketer, i had just have so many questions. What do you see as the implications For the cookie lists future and can you talk about what the cookie lists future is for people that might not know and Digital marketers should know, but a lot of people might not know? and then, what are the implications for us? 

0:23:15 - George Weiner
The cookie lists future. I mean the future is now. 

0:23:18 - Julia Campbell
Future is now. It's cookie lists present. 

0:23:21 - George Weiner
It's a vestige of an old web design and I think it's a good thing. The fact that your internet browsing History followed you around the internet and allowed ads tracking and then every time you came to a site, they could like look at everywhere you had been and then, like, do weird things with your data without your knowledge, like It strikes us now as archaic. So we're moving out of this golden age of, you know, mining people's unsuspecting web data. So that's good right, like win for data privacy. 

Yeah, win for data privacy and and win for smart architecture, because it's just dumb. Now There are still short-term, long-term cookies set by your analytics tracking, but it is looking at just it's your own sort of relevant history, but we are moving toward event based, behavior based interactions. Did you or did you not do this thing, and is this thing maybe indicative of somebody interested in donating or interested in this cause or type? based on Behavior? so it's behavior first rather than demographic Assumption first, type of pieces. So there is opportunity there in terms of event tracking Specificity out of the box It does pretty well. It is tracking a lot of things, like you know PDF downloads and visits, views of videos and there are a lot of like indicators that you can get inside of GA4. Beyond that, your cookie list world also gives you maybe a false sense, for example, false sense of Open rates, and right now it's like, oh, my open rates are doing so well, like careful. 

0:24:54 - Julia Campbell
Don't tell me that just my open rates are great right now. It's clearly my, my doing, and not the data privacy and Cookie list future. 

0:25:09 - George Weiner
Right now, yeah we're joking about the fact that all Apple devices will auto open Absolutely everything, because the cookies are not tracked the same way they used to with regards. Oh my gosh, that's our sort of joke about what's going on. 

0:25:20 - Julia Campbell
Do you think that's going to happen? 

0:25:22 - George Weiner
It's already happening. It's happening. Okay if I were to cut your data and show you Android devices versus iOS devices, you'd be like people on iOS love opening our emails We're the best So I think it's important to know When your data are lying to you. Just to take an honest look at it and I think there's a new definition, because cookies actually did give us, you know, creepy levels of Understanding of user behavior, and we just have to understand how those things have been redefined and and where the skeletons are hidden. 

0:25:54 - Julia Campbell
I think When your data is lying to you. I love that, because what's so interesting about this conversation is all of this operates in an ecosystem. It's not just like chat, gpt, google Analytics for open rates, data privacy, cookies. It's these are all things that are in the landscape That marketers and fundraisers really need to understand or at least have on their radar. To try to understand What I kind of like about Something that you said is event based, and I think that also has implications for email. So an email open rate is great. It just probably means you had a great subject line or maybe someone opened it by accident. But someone clicking on an email is totally different, and is that what you're talking about when you're talking about event based Data, where someone actually does something, it's not just like someone came to your website. 

0:26:47 - George Weiner
I'm maybe loading that term inappropriately So let me separate it out. Event based tracking is the fundamental way that GA4 now tracks Everything. There's some event that is triggered, maybe it is a session start, it is some behavior On the site that triggers an event, and there are like five out of the box events that are automatically tracked and then on top of that Are layered the type of metrics that we are all used to of users, average time and all of that. But that is all built on a layer of events, of events, and there's some cookie information that is layered in. But it can run with just events. So when I use like event, first event based, that's GA4, now event, let's park that there. Behavior, show me the behavior. Now open rate. I don't fully trust anymore. Click through rate. Right, that human click that thing. There's no faking that like right, you had to open, you had to click a thing. So I'm paying a lot more attention to Those clicks. Hopefully that makes sense. 

0:27:48 - Julia Campbell
No, that absolutely makes sense. I think we're moving beyond, even on social media, hopefully moving beyond just reach visibility and moving towards engagement and actual clicks, because that's what is going to drive action at the end of the day, not just simple views or simple reach. So my other question is and you might forgive me for this might be a very ignorant tech question So will GA4 affect SEO and getting found in search? 

0:28:24 - George Weiner
You know, i think, in the same way that a Stethoscope doesn't change your heartbeat, you're just listening. You're listening to your web traffic. That said, if you, if you don't measure it, it won't get better. And that's a big part of SEO understanding your data. So I don't expect to get better if you limit the ways that you're measuring your SEO. But there's no tie to it technically speaking in a oh, google will penalize you, sort of way You know. 

To round it back to where we started with chat gbt, i'm paying very close attention to the implications of chat first search. If you don't understand what I'm saying, like, go on to bang and use their chat first search or use a tool called perplexityai. Perplexityai, do a search and you're going to get a window into How we're going to move from a link list first search experience to a chat first answer. That is going to Consume a large amount of information based searches. Let me put it another way if you're relying on things like 10 facts about this topic or what is the history of homelessness, or something that is information based, i'm pretty sure your traffic has a short shelf life because it is information based. So one activity would be useperplexityai mimic searches that currently drive volumes of traffic to your site and you're gonna get a window into what's gonna happen. You will be a footnote in the answer of a GPT search which will limit the amount of clicks not eliminate but limit. 

But for transactional searches, people are still going to. You can't donate through chat GPT, right, someone will still find you, still donate. But there is a lot to unpack in that other category And it is one of the things we are racing to shore up for our clients. And how do you prepare for this coming? We've already had this show. It was called remember, mobile First. Like you and I went through this, gotta be Mobile First. And we're like, ah, no one will ever search for stuff on phones. It's so tiny. Remember Those phones are so tiny. 

Who's ever gonna search and donate on a phone, right, and we just watched as mobile traffic was 10, five, 10%, 15% of the market, 30, 40, 50, over half, and you're like, oh my gosh, that happened over a decade. I think this is gonna happen over one, maybe two years. 

0:31:08 - Julia Campbell
So how can we prepare? I mean, what if you are-. 

0:31:11 - George Weiner
I feel like this is my own home right. 

0:31:13 - Julia Campbell
Well, this is my question. Actually, i work with historical societies, museums and places that actually do have a brick and mortar place, so if you are a place like that, how would chat search affect someone's ability to find you and get directions? I'm just interested. I'm gonna go to Perplexity AI immediately after this and start just searching for my clients, but I wonder what are the implications for organizations that have traditionally done well in link-based search. 

0:31:50 - George Weiner
Short answer. It depends. I'm trying to give you buckets. If you are information-based, like you are sort of like, oh, we're kind of like the Wikipedia for this topic, yes, that is high risk. If you are sort of transaction, like somebody needs to transact with your organization, i want a family-friendly thing to do on a Saturday in Nassau, you're fine, actually, you'll come up and the human still needs to go there. They need directions. Now you may not get as much visibility into that and you should be paying probably more attention to upstream metrics that you would find on Search Console and those types of pieces that show your digital footprint as it relates, and so you're gonna go upstream in your data to see what that impression looks like. But I'm less concerned for, like the museums out there, however, there is certain types of content that I would be rapidly creating to capture a different type of search behavior. 

Okay, what kind of content Now you're gonna tell us Give me an example I'm more than happy to be like. 

0:32:56 - Julia Campbell
I'm thinking okay, so I have a client that is an advocacy-based organization in Texas and they are fully advocacy and the information-based and they have a newsletter around current legislation and what it means and how to get involved and where to call and what to do. So what kind of content could they create? Because I feel like they're in that bucket that's at risk. 

0:33:24 - George Weiner
So let's hypothetically this is coming from me because I know we care about it And let's just say it's from marijuana. We care about marijuana reform in our state and we have a bunch of information about this. You're in a danger zone for the types of probably inbound search queries that you have. 

That said, i would double down on your state-specific information and opinions actually, and then I would try to come up with types of content that place you among peers as to the top organizations that deal with marijuana-based reform, innovative ways of dealing with that and getting that type of opinion. 

You're in a weird period though, right now, where there's a huge opportunity to leverage GPT tools to generate that type of informational content. 

before the sort of door shuts on traditional link-based, which is a fancy way of saying I would be using GPT on every article like I possibly could to build a massive moat in every way, shape or form around the types of content library that gives historical context to the topic of marijuana history, advocacy, stats, facts, related resources, adjacent related themes as much as possible, because you're gonna be able to build that footprint and reputation, because what you're going to need is to be at least in the top four results to be referenced by chat bots that scan and summarize what's going on, and so, if you wanna be referenced, you have to race right now with these new tools to generate this, with the knowledge the sad knowledge that that traffic may go up for a short term and then drop off a cliff, but will help you then in this new game of who is an authority on this topic. 

You have to become a referenced authority on the topic And there's a lot of work and a lot of nuance there. And then just a park on the side. there's a reason I'll say whole whale is working very, very hard on YouTube of buying a lot of our content. 

0:35:31 - Julia Campbell
We were talking about this earlier. I love that. 

0:35:34 - George Weiner
It's the number two search engine on the internet right now, but things are about to be thrown up, but I would park that in the back of your mind as well. What can you YouTubeify? 

0:35:46 - Julia Campbell
and create, not even necessarily video content. We were talking about podcast content, audio content maybe, to start, but I think this is incredibly important. So I've always talked about the importance of becoming that go-to, indispensable resource in your field and becoming a thought leader. And if you live in a tiny town, that's going to be a little bit easier than, yes, if you're a national organization. But if you're a national organization, you should be aiming to be the national thought leader. I just always think you should be aiming to be that go-to resource that people cite, that has a unique perspective, that has valuable, irreplaceable input. So what you're saying it's almost like doubling down on that kind of content And I think, circling back to the generative AI, large language models like chat, gpt, people are saying, oh, how can we compete? 

And I say just be unique. That's how you can compete. Put your fingerprints on everything, make it yours, make it look like it was not written by a bot, like, don't make it mediocre, because things that are mediocre and forgettable, they're going to go by the wayside. Like, are you seeing that too? 

0:37:01 - George Weiner
Absolutely. We warn against this. We kind of joke, we call it the gray jacket problem. It's just like a funny framing that I was at this fundraising conference speaking at a panel and I was next to somebody who was also named George and we wore the same gray jacket And I was like this is ridiculous. And I was like embarrassed. But I was like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what happens when individuals run onto chat GPT with that blank slate and type in some generic, write me a blog post about why the environment matters And it looks unique to them. But in effect, everyone is putting on that gray jacket. 

And when you show up in public, i think our antennae, our human pattern recognition for stock photography, is through the roof. Like I could show you stock photography. Be like yep, stock, stock, stock, stock, not Exactly Building that pattern recognition for GPT generated content. As these words leave my mouth. What does that mean? That means if you are not intentionally using these tools and you are passively using them, you're just letting it fill in the next sentence for you It is going to be wildly detectable, not unique, and that is the gray jacket problem. 

0:38:07 - Julia Campbell
That's so. I love that analogy so much I was just using chat GPT to try to generate descriptions of certain talks that I give. 

Every single one was so boring, so the same. It was like unleash the power and potential of this and like the same five words kept coming up And I thought this could be valuable. But I was like next time I look at a brochure, a speaking brochure or a speaking conference, and look at the descriptions I'm going to know which ones are written by AI and it's without any tweaking. Like, obviously you can tweak them, but I love the gray jacket problem. I think that's fantastic. 

0:38:49 - George Weiner
Well, there's a parallel and you have tremendous expertise in this because you live this with the social media handed to the intern strategy. 

0:38:57 - Julia Campbell
Yes, This is that I love that. This is exactly that Hand it to the intern who has is young or maybe social media savvy or maybe both, or the volunteer that says, oh, i can run your LinkedIn, but they don't have that unique brand voice or perspective or understanding and they don't have the stories and they're not working on the ground in the trenches on the problem. And we love our volunteers, we love our interns, but, like you were saying, it's that philosophy of let's just completely 100% hand it off and not give them any support and not give them any ideas and just hope that they perform a miracle, and you're almost setting them up to fail as well and you're setting yourself up to fail. So it's like a double-edged sword there. 

0:39:48 - George Weiner
So I think that's fantastic. We've been to the show. We've been to the show together. 

0:39:52 - Julia Campbell
Oh, we've seen many iterations of this crazy show. Well, we're at time. We have to schedule another. We have to schedule the GA4 Apocalypse episode, when it was like Y2K. Do you remember Y2K and how? 

everyone thought that computers would explode at midnight when ID or 2000 rolled around. But I think this is. I agree with you. I think this is a huge issue. It is something that a lot of nonprofits rely on, but I don't hear a lot of people talking about, and I think there's huge implications. But it's all wrapped up in this big ecosystem of how we're using smart technology, how we're using it as a tool and how we're using it to really further our goals, create more impact, whatever that may look like. But how can people find out about you, find out about Whole Whale, get connected? I have a thousand links that I'm gonna put in the show notes, but where can we find you online? 

0:40:57 - George Weiner
Well, you can find us at wholewhalecom. We also have a podcast where we talk about nonprofit news and rant about these types of things and have on guests. We should have you on. 

0:41:09 - Julia Campbell
Thanks, I can rant a while. I'm good at ranting. 

0:41:14 - George Weiner
So, yeah, that's where you can find us, and thank you for taking the time. I hope this doesn't sort of only cause I feel like sometimes, when I'm done talking, i've terrified people with like oh no, if you don't do this, like all things will melt down. Like on every side of every coin there are two sides, and the upside here is unprecedented in terms of its potential to help you do more with less. Like this is that, and I'm very excited about that. 

0:41:41 - Julia Campbell
I'm excited too, and there's resources out there, and I'll provide more resources. Whole Whale has thousands of blog posts and podcasts and webinars and tons of resources designed for the nonprofit sector to help people navigate these changes, and for me, i just want people to be aware, to know and then be able to make educated decisions as to how they move forward. So that's really my purpose. I hope that we did that today and I'd love to have you on again, george. 

0:42:12 - George Weiner
Love to come on and talk about any of these topics. There's so much more that I was like oh, i'm gonna come back and be like why didn't I say this? Why didn't I say this? 

0:42:19 - Julia Campbell
I know I do that all the time, but thanks so much and, yeah, have a great rest of your week and we'll see you again soon. I'm gonna come back and talk about the podcast. I'm gonna come back and talk about the podcast. Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review, because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to, and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell 7-7. Keep changing the world, you non-profit unicorn, and I'll see you next time. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page