Most business blogs are built to write about others: the trending topic, the list everyone else published, the search term with volume behind it. The other path is to write about yourself instead, meaning your own authors, your own experts and the community around your brand. Here is how I'm making that shift across my travel and lifestyle network with subject matter experts and AI interview tools, and how any business can find its experts and build a passionate audience around them.
Why brands that feature their own experts and community outlast blogs that chase search terms.
- "You" means the publisher and its authors, and it extends to the community of experts and customers around the brand.
- Expert-sourced content connects with readers in a way AI-only writing doesn't, even when AI helps produce both.
- An intake interview lets experts who don't write still contribute, in their own words, in 15 to 20 minutes.
- The relationship after publishing is where a one-time contributor becomes a long-term partner.
- Search traffic follows good content, but building for a post-search world means spreading your traffic across several sources.
The clearest example from my own network is a vodka martini article on ManTripping. The old version was a nice piece with a few recipes and canned copy from the GPT-3 era. It was dead: no traffic, not indexed and no reason for anyone to share it.
What Happened When Ten Experts Replaced a Soulless Vodka Martini Article
We rebuilt it as a vodka martini guide with tips from 10 top bartenders and vodka makers, covering vermouth ratios, shaking versus stirring, glasses and olives in the words of people who make martinis for a living. Less than three days after the update, the article started showing up in search. The initial numbers were small: one search click and 10 impressions across five different keyword phrases on the first day it appeared in search, but for a page that had been invisible for months and years earlier, that's a positive sign and proves the value of building original content around experts not just pulling stuff from an AI chatbot.
Audiences react to that better than to Claude writing something soulless. Both are AI, but only one really can connect with audiences.
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Writing About "You" Includes Personal Stories From Your Authors and Community Too
When I say "writing about you," I mean the publisher, the publisher's authors, and the community as a whole. On CruiseWestCoast.com and ManTripping.com, I can't travel everywhere I want. Featuring interviews with people who just came back from a cruise lets me capture their expertise and experiences and share them with readers who are planning the same trip.
The same thinking changed how we handle news. I decided I didn't need to write about every news story that comes along. Now I comment on the big ones and truly add something special. We did that with the whale strikes in Alaska's cruise waters in a Cruise West Coast piece on what can be done to help cruise ships avoid hitting whales. To be honest, it didn't do great in search. But there's more to a blog post than search traffic, and a piece like that works well in a newsletter, sent directly to your people.
How an Intake Interview Turns Experts Who Don't Write Into Contributors
Many of the best experts have no interest in writing an article, and plenty don't have the experience to do it well. An intake interview solves that. The contributor answers a short set of focused questions, and those answers become the backbone of the piece, with their words kept as their words.
The part that still takes work is convincing people how easy it is. No matter how simple the process feels to us, it's hard for contributors to believe an interview takes only 15 to 20 minutes, or to know what a good answer looks like. Reducing that friction is still the biggest issue we're working on.
Where To Find Experts Who Will Say Yes
Finding experts is the easy part. Start with the core sources you already have: your staff, your customers, your partners and the people already pitching you. Then expand to request services like HARO and SOS (Source of Sources), where you post a query and experts respond.
The bigger long-term asset is your own network of people to reach out to. Build relationships with them so the outreach is warm and they know what to expect, instead of wondering who the heck this person emailing them is.
Turning One Roundup Into a Relationship After You Publish
The work after publishing is what builds the community. Thank people, ask them questions, share something personal and talk with them about their lives.
I include something personal in every thank-you email for a roundup, even something as simple as: "I'm really excited about how great this roundup of winter golf getaways turned out. It's been so long since I've had a chance to visit some of these destinations. I hope we can do more traveling this year and see some of you in person!"
Then follow up on the replies. When a PR contact writes back, "Really appreciate being included, we've got a bunch more clients that might be good too!", don't just leave it there. Ask who the clients are, how you can help them and what opportunities you can support. That turns a transactional exchange into a relationship, and relationships are where you start getting stronger.
Why Should I Care? SEO in a Post-Search World
SEO comes naturally when the rest is right. SEO is "mature" today, and a strong, well-organized site without technical issues has a chance. There are advanced techniques, but it comes down to three things.
First, is your content original and better than what's already out there? If your answer is no, because you just use AI-generated content without any personality or original content ... you're fucked ... go home.
Second, good content alone isn't enough anymore. Shape your editorial calendar around topic clusters that build authority and answer real questions. That's why our interviews try to ask something practical, like what guys need to know before booking a yacht charter or planning a trip to a destination.
Third, build your brand. I used to have a sign that said "Why Should I Care," and it still drives me. Why should Google care? Why should Claude care? Why should my customer care? Answer that well and your customers share the article with their friends, or link to it from their news page. Crawlers see those external signals, which helps that piece and, cumulatively, your brand as a whole.
This Is About Building a Brand That Survives When SEO Goes Away
I spent 20 years chasing one source of traffic: search. Now I'm building for a post-search world, with traffic spread across search, paid, newsletters, branded search and direct visits, so if one leg breaks I'm not SOL.
There's nothing quite like waking up one morning and seeing that your entire traffic from Google fell off a cliff. I've been through it with multiple sites, and I've worked with friends and clients who had the exact same thing happen. Google just decided, "nah bro, this site isn't interesting," and wiped out businesses making $100,000+ a year. That sucks.
Pick five people this month whose knowledge your customers would value, interview them, publish their words and send the piece to your list before you ever check its rankings.
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