Blockbuster was the king of the movie industry, with numerous stores all over the world.
However, they couldn’t compete with Netflix, a company that approached the industry from a fresh angle.
While Blockbuster relied on customers going to the store, selecting a movie, and taking it home to watch, Netflix simplified the process by allowing customers to choose movies on their website and have them shipped or mailed.
This innovation became a turning point for Netflix. They grew rapidly, became more innovative, and improved customer service.
Today, they are worth $147 billion. In contrast, Blockbuster refused to do anything progressive and became almost non-existent, with possibly only one store left in the US. This shows that Blockbuster did not take advantage of technology when it was necessary.
Despite advancements in technology, people are still buying desktop computers for certain tasks.
The same can be said for ATMs, physical human tellers, digital cameras and photographers, and laptops and desktops. Technology helps humans move faster and do things faster, but it doesn’t mean they can completely replace human workers.
The article also discusses the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in content strategy. While using AI to generate articles is not cheating, a human element must be added for quality control.
I recommend Oneblogaway.co for help with blogging and growing a side business. The community offers a free course, Blog Builder Pro, and the opportunity to work with the owner one on one.
Embracing new technologies is vital in today’s fast-paced world.
As technology advances, humans have more options and specializations in our world. Using technology ethically is essential, like Netflix did, instead of being like Blockbuster.
AI can be a valuable tool in content creation, but it must go through a thorough editing process before posting articles on websites.
In conclusion, the rise and fall of Blockbuster serve as a lesson for businesses to always put their customers’ needs first and embrace new technologies as they come.
It’s important to infuse your own voice and add insightful commentary that can’t be found elsewhere to avoid plagiarism.
Being active in your niche will help you stand out from others who are just trying to make money.
Don’t forget to take advantage of the OneblogawayCo premium community, where you can get one-on-one help and value. Start building your passive side hustle business to over $100,000 in revenue, even as a complete beginner.
BLOG TRANSCRIPT:
Chris Myles [00:00:00]:
Like it or not, AI is taking over the world. And as bloggers and affiliates, if we don’t figure out something fast, we might be left looking for a job. But if you’re anything like me, you may have some reservations on going all in with AI content for your authority or NIT site. So today I want to show you how I am starting to use AI content and how you can use it ethically so that you can make the most money as possible and still be able to sleep at night. But first, who am I? You already know me. My name is Chris and I’m a full time dad, blogger and podcast host here at the Blogger Evolution. And this is episode 92. Here we talk about building passive income streams that work for you so you don’t have to.
Chris Myles [00:00:41]:
And if you want to help build your side, hustle to over $100,000 in revenue even as a complete beginner, check out my premium community over at Oneblogaway Co. That’s Oneblockaway Co. I’ll be sure to leave a link down in the show notes there. You can also get a free course just for signing up, and you have the opportunity to work with me one on one. So as of right now, Blog Builder Pro, my flagship course that we’ve always talked about on this podcast, is available within one blog away just for signing up. So I would definitely recommend signing up sooner rather than later before I have a I come to my senses and just throw it out of there. But if you want help, even if you are a complete beginner, or if you have a blog that is struggling, trying to scale it up to the point to where it can make some money for you, this One membership has everything in it that you need. oneBlog away.
Chris Myles [00:01:36]:
Co be sure to check it out. Again, a link will be down in the Show Notes. But first, let me tell you a quick story about a missed opportunity, okay? Now, this story is about two people. One of these people is named Bibi and the other person is named Netty. Now, they were friends, but they had two totally different ways of thinking about business. And one of them, it didn’t end quite well for them. So let’s go ahead and get into it. Now, BB had an idea for a business, and this business was pretty cool, right? It was a nice wholesome business, providing families with entertainment.
Chris Myles [00:02:14]:
So they built a store, like an actual physical location that people could go to and get movies and then be able to take them home and then watch them with their families. Very legitimate. Actually a pretty good idea if you really think about it. Now, this story also takes place in the late 90s by the way. So anyway, late eighty s and ninety s perhaps. Anyways, so BB store was doing amazingly well and it actually became a household name. And it just kept growing and growing to the point to where they had locations literally all around the United States of people just getting movies, going home, and then being able to watch them. But then Netty came along.
Chris Myles [00:02:58]:
Now, Netty knew that she couldn’t compete at all with the tons of stores that BB had. So they had to get a little bit innovative and decided to attack this entire industry from a new, completely fresh angle. So they understood that the whole business model that BB had was that people would go to the store, find a movie that they like, take it out, and then go home and watch it. So they wondered, okay, what if we made this process a little bit simpler? Instead of requiring people to have to get up and go to the store to buy a movie, why don’t they just maybe go to our website, tell us what movie they want, and we’ll ship it to them, or we’ll mail it to them? That’s pretty good, because now you don’t have to worry about going to the store. It’s just you take 15 minutes, figure out which movies you want, and then they are literally delivered to your door within a few days. Now, this idea caught wildfire. It worked amazingly well for Netty and her company. In fact, it started getting so big that Bibi caught wind of this.
Chris Myles [00:04:05]:
Now, BB. Ignored it at first because they were like, you know what? We like having people come into our store. That’s just the way that we like it. So BB. Was like, you know what? We’re good. But then after a while, they were like, you know, okay, maybe whatever Netty is doing has a little bit of merit, so maybe we should start doing that as well. So BB. Got into it.
Chris Myles [00:04:25]:
And BB Started competing with Netty of just being able to have people come to the website, choose a movie, and then come and then be able to watch it in the comfort of their own homes. In fact, Netty’s business, just sending people these movies, got so big that Bibi had the opportunity to just buy them at one point and think, you know what? Maybe we should just come together. But Biebe declined that opportunity because they just liked the way things were going for them, and that was it. So now here’s the kicker of the whole story. Netty, as being as progressive as she was, had another chance. Instead of mailing the movies and people having to wait a couple of days before they got the movie, what if they were able to watch the movie right there on the spot, on TV or on a device? Now, that sounds pretty normal for us today, but this was next level 1015 years ago. So BB. Drew the line and refused to follow along with what Netty was doing, even though what Netty was doing was blowing up.
Chris Myles [00:05:34]:
Now, after all of that happened, you fast forward 1011 years now, Netty’s company, the one that was just trying to be a little bit more innovative, was doing a little bit more in terms of what they could do to further service the customer. Their business is now worth 147,000,000,000. That’s billion with a B dollars. Meanwhile, BB’s company, who refused to really do anything progressive, their company’s worth, is not even publicly available to know how much they’re worth. That’s how small and minute they are. In fact, BB probably has maybe one store left in the entire United States. Now, if you haven’t guessed it already, Biebe is Blockbuster, netty is Netflix. So the hidden gem in this entire thing, bibi or Blockbuster, did not take advantage of technology.
Chris Myles [00:06:38]:
Netflix took advantage of technology. You see the stark difference there. You see, the thing is, technology can be scary. Arguably with this new AI content chat, GPT, Auto, GPT, all the things that are out there right now, that is just making it so much easier for people to put content online. Arguably, it’s not just blogging that really needs to be worried about this, right? Have you seen some of these AI music where people are AI is dubbing people’s voices, and if you’re not careful, you forget that that’s who you’re listening to. A computer. Well, what about stock images? That’s another thing. Coders, programmers, if you have any of these jobs, you probably should be at least a little worried about what’s going on with this AI content.
Chris Myles [00:07:28]:
But is it the end of the world? No, it’s not. Because technology usually helps humans move faster and do things at a faster pace that we can spend time doing what we want to do somewhere else. So, for example, have ATMs replaced physical human tellers? No. Do they make it easier for people to if they just need to get cash or make a deposit? Of course they do. But when you go to a bank, there’s still tellers behind the window. What about digital cameras? What about your phone? Have these types of cameras replaced photographers? No, photographers are still doing fine. Maybe they’re not in every place that they used to be in the past, but now they’re still there for a lot of important occasions. And if you don’t want one, you could probably get away without one.
Chris Myles [00:08:18]:
Just from a friend who happens to have the latest iPhone, but it hasn’t replaced them. What about electric cars? Have they replaced gas cars yet? No. Well, not yet, but if it ever does happen where electric cars can fully replace gas cars, that’s not going to happen anytime soon, right? We’re talking about years and years down the line, maybe even a couple of decades. Have laptops replaced desktop computers? No, not at all. It’s just a little bit more convenient, right? Because desktop computers in most instances are still vastly more powerful than a laptop. It’s just that in order to do some regular browsing, maybe even some streaming of Netflix. You don’t need to sit down at your computer desk and do it. You can do it anywhere you’d like as long as you have your laptop or a tablet.
Chris Myles [00:09:08]:
But people still buy desktops people are still buying desktop computers to take care of other types of tasks. The idea is, as technology continues to get better, it’s just now as humans, we have more options. There’s more specializations in our world now. But the idea is we can’t be like Blockbuster, where we were not embracing these things. We have to be progressive like Netflix and embrace what’s going on and try our best to do it as ethically as possible. So what do we need to do? How can we use AI content for our blogs and authority sites ethically? Well, if you do decide to include AI into your content strategy, have a very good editing process before you post your articles onto those sites. In fact, this is what we should have been doing anyway, right? If you were hiring a writer to write content for you when you got that content back, were you just slapping it up on your website? Unless you really trusted the writer, you probably were putting it through some type of editing process. We need to do the exact same thing when we get that raw article from the AI content, there’s a few things we need to do to it to be absolutely sure it’s good enough to be placed on our websites.
Chris Myles [00:10:35]:
Number one, we have to fact check it. Hands down, we need to fact check it. As great as Chat GPT is, as great as a lot of these other tools are, they can say some really wrong things really, really confidently. That’s probably the scariest part about a lot of this. But they can do it very confidently, yet be very wrong. Fast and wrong is still wrong. So you need to fact check the articles as soon as you get that content back from the AI. Don’t use just Wikipedia though.
Chris Myles [00:11:04]:
You want to get some good information there. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very authoritative website. However, find some real sources online, find some real sources offline, and make sure that the content that’s going on to your site is accurate. In fact, you probably can go as far as asking the AI to tell you where it got the article from to begin with. That way you can save a little time and know whether or not it’s from a reputable source. Number two thing infuse these articles with real personality, keep your readers in mind as you’re telling these stories. Tell actual stories within your content. Now, this one does come with a little bit of a caveat, and you have to be careful.
Chris Myles [00:11:47]:
Don’t write a ten page story. Sometimes a story could barely be a couple of paragraphs. If that right, be very quick with it, but just give some type of indication that you’ve been there before and that you’re truly there, keeping the reader in mind, trying to help them out of a jam that you have already gone through in life to tell real stories. Also, and this is interesting, we recently interviewed Kyle Roof, and one that he talked about when it’s in terms of plagiarism is that sometimes we look at the direct plagiarism is using the exact phrase somewhere else. But in this instance, we’re talking about the type of plagiarism where even if something is rewritten a certain way but it says the same thing, google can still consider that as plagiarism. So how do we get around this? We need to infuse our own personality and add to the conversation. So find something insightful that’s probably nowhere else on the internet. The easier this will be to do is if you are out there actively in your niche to begin with, because that’s going to separate you from everybody else who’s just doing it just to make a few bucks.
Chris Myles [00:13:10]:
So do something unique to add to the conversation in your article. Also reduce the fluff. As great as this AI content is, they are really good at saying the exact same thing over and over again, just in different words. Take that out of your articles. In fact, to be very strict with the AI content and just say, hey, you need to do better at this. Rewrite this paragraph, include a story about this in this paragraph, whatever, and it’ll spit it right out. So reduce the fluff. Next up is you need to format the content.
Chris Myles [00:13:43]:
Use very, very short paragraphs. We’re talking two, maybe three lines max. It’s very daunting if you’re on a mobile device and you see a big wall of text, right? Make very short paragraphs. Include images, include videos, include any other type of multimedia that’s going to help the reader do whatever it is that they’re trying to do with your article after you format it. Now it’s time to quote, unquote SEO the article or do something to the article to make it more friendly to search engines. Not just Google any search engine that you’re trying to target. Target. Put your target keyword in certain places.
Chris Myles [00:14:24]:
Make sure it’s in your URL. Make sure it is in the title tag of your article. Make sure that it is in the first 100 or so words of your article, and then naturally throughout the rest of the article itself. When you have an article, google the phrase that you’re trying to rank for as well within Google and see what the people also ask questions are there. Look at their related searches. That’s going to give you a clue of how Google sees that particular term and include some of those into your article, as long as it makes sense. It’s going to take a little bit of human brain power to do this, but it works. And then a little trick that I like to use as well is to optimize these articles using Phrase or Surfer SEO or whatever you happen to like.
Chris Myles [00:15:10]:
I personally like phrase. It’s a great program that will look at what’s out there on Google, figure out what topics, what entities are being discussed, and make sure that I can include those same entities, terms and stuff within my article as well. After you’ve done that, add a call to action. Now, the call to action could be quite a few things. It can be simply, hey, go read this other article. You might be interested in it. It might also be just to say, hey, come join my email list ninja trick. For that, make sure you have a lead magnet.
Chris Myles [00:15:43]:
Don’t just say join my newsletter, it’ll work out a lot better. So a call to action could be to join your email list. Another call to action could be just to simply buy the product. Maybe this is a review, maybe it’s a buying guide, maybe it’s a list post. And now your call to action is here is our best one that we liked when we tried it. Here’s a link. Make sure it’s an affiliate link and then go and purchase. And you can make some affiliate commissions on the other end.
Chris Myles [00:16:09]:
Once you’ve done that, post the article and move on with your life. The reality is you should have been doing this with your articles from the beginning, regardless of where we were getting the articles from, even if you personally are the one writing the articles, you need to put it through this process. If you wanted to come out the other end as something that is helpful, as something that keeps our readers in mind, and something that can. You don’t necessarily need to change someone’s life after they have read this article, but it needs to be something that after they’ve read it, ish checked every box that they ever had about that particular question or concern. You should be doing that. Anyway, now we’re just getting the raw article from the AI and then go from there. So is using artificial intelligence, is using AI cheating when it comes to blogging? I don’t think so, as long as you stay progressive and add a human element to the raw data that you’re getting back. All right, so if you need some help with this, to really blow up this blog, to really blow up this side business into something that’s worth over $100,000, then I highly recommend going to check out oneblogaway co I’ll be sure to put a link down in the show notes there.
Chris Myles [00:17:28]:
You’re going to get a free course just for enroll bowling, plus you’re going to get some direct help from the members in the community as well as direct help from me in the DMs. All right? Plus, I’ll even throw in a free audit of your website if you’ve already gotten started or if you have an idea that you want to go with, let me know once you get on the inside and we’ll hash it out together. That’s oneblock away, co I’ll catch you next episode.