Humanizing Your Digital Presence, with Wes Towers, Uplift360

From construction industry websites to photography businesses, the digital landscape is transforming at breakneck speed – and those who adapt will thrive while others fade away. When Wes Towers received a business valuation three years ago, identifying AI as an existential threat to his company, he faced a pivotal choice: resist or evolve. His decision led to his most profitable year ever.

"We're calling it search everywhere optimization," Towers explains, describing how customer search behavior has fundamentally changed. People no longer search with disconnected keywords but engage in full conversations with search tools. This shift toward natural language is actually humanizing digital interactions rather than making them more robotic. The key differentiator for businesses navigating this landscape? Authenticity.

Your content must sound uniquely like you – not the generic, faux-enthusiastic tone that permeates so much AI-generated content. Towers advocates using AI as your "first terrible draft" while ensuring the ideas and voice remain authentically yours. "You want to be the master of the AI, not the other way around," he advises, recommending businesses develop clear style guides before employing generative tools.

For smaller businesses competing with larger entities, Towers offers counterintuitive wisdom: embrace your size as an advantage. While larger companies might offer more services, small businesses provide direct access to passionate founders who truly care about outcomes. By niching down and becoming specialists in targeted areas, even tiny companies can attract significant clients searching for genuine expertise.

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Transcript

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Introduction to Wes Towers

Erin Manning 0:12

Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast , the photo imaging industry's leading news source . Here's your host , Gary Pageau . The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip , Advertek Printing and Independent Photo Imagers .

Gary Pageau 0:27

Hello again, and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast . I'm your host , Gary Pageau , and today we're joined by Wes Towers , who's coming to us from Melbourne , Australia . Wes is the founder of Uplift360 , where he's going to give us practical business tips and SEO and getting your business found . Hey , Wes , how are you today ?

Wes Towers 0:50

Really well , Gary . Nice and early start . For me , it's my start of the day and your end of the day , so coming to you from the future , there you go .

Gary Pageau 1:00

So you've got a very different background than most of my audience and you came from the construction industry and , as we were talking before the show , we're kind of saying how do we make that relate ? But actually it directly relates , because you were wrestling with AI a few years ago and its impact on your business . Can you talk a little bit about that ?

AI as a Business Threat and Opportunity

Wes Towers 1:21

Yeah , so we do websites and SEO for the construction trades and construction . We call them tradies here in Australia . But I got a business valuation three years ago so it came back a rude shock to me . So it was far lower than I anticipated and the in the , the massive report that the evaluer gave me , he said AI was a massive threat to my entire industry . And it was three years ago , so it was pretty early days with everyone just sort of realizing hey , this could transform a lot of businesses and so the value came down .

Wes Towers 1:52

So it was a real kick in the teeth really , to say my business wasn't worth anywhere near what I thought it was , but it was the catalyst in a lot of ways to start transforming my business and introducing AI . So what I did was took the tools and technologies and implemented some of them into my business and just had the most profitable year ever , so transforming the business in that way . So took the threat as an opportunity and things are going really well now . But things are changing all the time . So it's an exciting and terrifying time to be in business .

Gary Pageau 2:27

So I mean , I think my audience will be able to tell you hey , I know how AI is going to affect my business with generative AI and things like that , but how was AI going to affect your business or in your industry ?

Wes Towers 2:40

Yeah , well , the valuer didn't put much detail on precisely what he thought was going to happen , only the point that he didn't know what was going to happen and I suppose everyone was kind of talking the first sort of jobs that might go , your programming tech jobs , because you know , AI can do that really really well . It can do content writing , I don't . It can do content writing . I don't know whether it's good or bad something . It depends on how you prompt it . Yeah , um , but the programming it's doing really well and that was foreseen a long time ago . You know three years ago . A was foreseen a long time ago , you know three years ago . A lot that's a long time ago exactly , yeah he was right .

Wes Towers 3:20

he was right in a lot of ways . If I had stayed doing what I was doing the same way , probably eventually I'd be made redundant . So some of the things like , as I said you mentioned before , we do seos but we're calling it search everywhere , optimization , because it's a different beast now I think you had a SEO guy on recently and touched on some AI but people are just searching in whole new ways . That may mean for me , I jump on chat , gpt if I'm researching something and I talk to my phone and we're searching in full sentences because we know the tools and technology understand full sentences . We're not just searching plumber Melbourne , we're searching for I want a plumber who can fix a toilet that's leaking .

Wes Towers 4:01

This is the brand . How do I do it ? If I can't do it , who's the best person to come in and fix it ? Those sorts of things . So whole conversational , which is exciting . It's almost making us more human , humanizing us .

Search Everywhere Optimization Explained

Wes Towers 4:16

Exciting , it's almost making us more human , humanizing us . We've got to think about conversations rather than just keyword phrases and shoving them into your website , you know so you know , that's interesting because I think I think people were kind of trained to search , almost thinking about keywords .

Gary Pageau 4:27

Right , I want to search for a photo book , the hardcover , and they're searching for keywords as opposed to , like you said , more of a conversational aspect of that yeah , 100 .

Wes Towers 4:41

So back in the day you used to do a lot of research to find the keywords that people are most searching for . And then you would , you would target those keywords and you would track them and you would say where you're going , where you're ranking in Google and you'd give a report to the client and they'd be happy if the rankings were improving and the traffic was improving and all that sort of stuff . But everyone's traffic is dropping and you're not necessarily getting clicks for the phrases . And the phrases are completely different . They're not just your keyword , your traditional keyword , they're full sentences so incredibly hard to track and measure .

Wes Towers 5:16

I mean , I had a client two weeks ago now . He found out by accident . Well , he found out because he he spoke to the client and said , hey , how did you find ? How did you find us ? And I said we , we found you on chat gbt . We were searching for the very best service offering . Uh , in in australia . This was a , this is a client . Uh , a long , a long way . It's about a two hour flight , two , two or three-hour flight , so not even the local business , but they wanted the very best in Australia . And he came up in ChatGPT because you know the search everywhere optimization strategy . But for us we couldn't really measure that , only that he spoke to the client , so yeah , that's interesting .

Gary Pageau 5:54

So when you mean by search everywhere , I mean , as we've been talking to various people about SEO we are finding that Google is becoming less relevant and it's impacting what they're doing . Of course , they've got Gemini and they're trying different things . How do you optimize then for AI search ?

Wes Towers 6:14

Yeah , the good news is , the similar strategies work for your traditional SEO , as do the AI showing up in the large language models . You want quality content . You want a website that's built so it's fast loading and the tech is all . The foundational aspects are strong , that's the obvious , but the message is the key . So , and there's a couple of aspects to consider when you're thinking about your message . So it's your voice , so how you say , say what you're saying , but also your message , and both of these things have to be uniquely yours .

Wes Towers 6:47

And that's where a lot of people are going wrong . They're just jumping on their preferred AI platform and they realize that they've got to publish content to be found , so they just go straight to the tool and they let the tool dictate what the content is . That the message

Creating Authentic Content with AI

Wes Towers 7:01

and the voice , and it's just generic , it's just the average of what everybody else is saying . But none of us want to be average . We want to be exceptional in our field . So you've really got to bed down your style guide of exactly how you write your content if you are using these tools . Right , your own voice , and but you let your own language , the particular phrases of how you talk , um , but your unique message and so whatever that unique aspect is to your business and that what humanizes your business effectively , your your unique thoughts and feelings and those human elements , what they mean as prompts .

Wes Towers 7:38

Build a really strong , solid style guide . Produce the content that way as a first draft , because you still got to check it , because it might get even with those really solid foundations you still might get it wrong . And you got to massage in your case studies and anything that is information gain that you can add value that no one else can . So your unique case studies or examples or stories Storytelling is a fantastic thing , particularly when they're your unique experiences .

Gary Pageau 8:05

But when you come from a Outlook would say you're more production orientated , like many of my listeners are . You know they run a photo lab , print shop , psp or whatever . They may have trouble isolating the story right . They just say I have this equipment and it does these things right and I print out this kind of paper and I use this kind of ink right , and so what would you suggest to somebody in that position to like humanize that story ?

Wes Towers 8:36

Yeah , so I mean the end client or the customer is always interested in the outcome , so not necessarily the process , or unless it's a DIY solution . So then they're interested in the step by step , but that the outcome that people are trying to achieve they're still exciting . I mean , I mentioned that it's different for a photographer business , but I mentioned the plumber because we work for construction clients mostly , but a plumber he might have a blog post about how to . I mentioned fixing a toilet . He might have a blog post about toilets and how to fix them and that sort of thing Incredibly boring content unless you've got a leaky toilet and it's causing you massive problems then all of a sudden , that content is really valuable .

Wes Towers 9:21

So it'll be the same in every industry , but photography is an exciting field as well . So you've got the distinct advantage that you can show examples , and some of the process might be helpful . Some people are really they'll geek out on process , um , and others will just want to see what's the end product . So by , yeah , producing masses of content within your blog or your news or whatever the case may be , is a great way to to have all that , because they'll find the piece that's interesting to them . Um , they're not going to read every word on your website , for that's for sure .

Gary Pageau 9:55

Yeah , and probably shouldn't right . So what are the ? I mean , I have found sort of an uptick in people like really relying on AI generated content for their website because it is so easy . But , like you said , it's that weird sort of phraseology . It's that weird sort of phraseology , sort of like a faux enthusiasm . That is just so insincere . But if you're not a good copywriter and you don't have someone handy like yourself to help , you know , do you say , use that as a start and then edit it heavily , because I think that's where a lot of people are .

Wes Towers 10:29

Trouble

Building Client Relationships and Business Growth

Wes Towers 10:30

is starting yeah , well , so I , I wrote a book 10 years ago now and so , um , and I'm not a writer , but I wanted to write a book and share some of my thoughts and I enjoyed it . But everyone I spoke to in the field so I sort of talked to a lot of people how do you structure a book ? How do you write a book ? I said you just got to get to your first terrible draft , so you just want to get your first terrible draft done as quickly as you can , all your thoughts dumped into it , into the page .

Wes Towers 11:00

Well , think about the AI content as your first terrible draft . So you've got something on paper your thoughts and how you get to that point . You want to be the master of the AI , not the other way around . So what I mean by that is you want it to be your ideas , right ? So even if you were to pick up your phone , I use chativity and speak to the phone my ideas and they're kind of messy and not really well articulated , but it'll start to articulate them and put them in a sequence and a structure that just is a refined version of my ideas , not their ideas , because it's just generic if it's the AI being the master and dictating what the ideas are .

Gary Pageau 11:43

So when you said you had a client who queried a customer , right , how do you suggest other people do that ? You know , talk , talk to customers , get feedback of customers , because there's a lot of ways people get feedback right now there's reviews and things like that , but what are some of the ways people can get more realistic impressions from their customers ?

Wes Towers 12:09

Yeah , well , this is the , I think , the exciting part of AI forcing us to be more human and engage in conversations . It's not a linear path . The way people find businesses I mean , even with my experience talking to new people who make an inquiry , I always try and find out how they found us Right . They used to be really clear . They'd say oh , we found you on Google , we found you on you know , someone referred you found you on socials . Whatever the case may be sure , now they kind of don't really know because they've had touch points . They've probably seen me on socials , but they googled me and they they probably chat . You know we're talking to their chat chpc there's . They don't really know because there's just so many touch points coming from all different angles , and that's why I'm sort of talking about search everywhere , optimization . You kind of get a sense of where they first found you , but they don't really remember because there have been a few touch points in the meantime . But I love the aspect of having real conversations with real humans .

Wes Towers 13:11

I'm a relational kind of guy . So whilst I've introduced ai massively into the process of of the business , um it's , it's freed up a lot of time so I can engage with the clientele , sure to a greater level and just build those solid um relationships . I think people like to buy from people and people that they know like and trust , so trust . So I think that's the real goal humanizing your brand but humanizing your business and keeping it relational .

Gary Pageau 13:39

I think that'll set Now you said you just came off your best year doing this , when some people would say that AI was going to put you out of business . Yeah , I know . Is that because you took the feedback from your evaluator from three years ago , or what was the pivot point for that ?

Wes Towers 14:22

Yeah , 100% . So he didn't tell me why he thought it was a threat or what , but it was a real motivator to say no , you're wrong , I'm going to harness AI , I'm going to find out what he's talking about , what that means , what I can introduce without losing the core values of the business and how we do it .

Wes Towers 14:44

So I can foresee that the way in which we get to the end result may change , but the end result will remain the same , so the outcome that clients are looking for when they come to us , that'll remain consistent . So we just have to stay a little bit nimble in this time of significant transition , which will I don't know how it'll continue for the foreseeable future , but to remain solid on the values and find the streamlined approach with some of this tech that's coming .

Gary Pageau 15:17

How has your clientele changed ? Have you gotten different types of clients since you made this change ? How has that come about ?

Wes Towers 15:25

Yeah , I've always done websites and SEO . I did it for a broad range of clients

Top Three SEO Strategy Tips

Wes Towers 15:30

. We made the decision to niche more closely to the construction and trades businesses purely because most of our best clients were in that field . We still take on clients outside that field who were referred to us because been around doing this a long time and the similar principles apply across industry . Right , just that we've gained a lot of knowledge in certain niches . It probably forced me to to think about okay , what's an ideal client look like ?

Wes Towers 15:59

How do we attract more of that ideal . So I think if you go for the , the ideal , you'll get others by accident anyway , and that keeps life exciting and fun and different opportunities to work on different things is is exciting to keep things fresh , and even for the team developed , developers and and so on , keeping their lives exciting um as well . But yeah , if you , if you , focus on the very best , you get the others , by accident , I think , and that's what we did .

Gary Pageau 16:26

So, because I find that interesting ? Because , like in our industry , what you find is people are always looking for . You know , I want that new clientele , I want that new market , I want the people who aren't shopping for business . I want to say they neglect their existing customers but they don't optimize for them . But I think what's going to be happening now with some of the tools that are out there is people are going to be honing more , should be honing more closely on their core clients and , like you said , there's niches within those niches , within those areas that you can maximize and then other people will discover you .

Wes Towers 17:10

Yeah , well , that's right . And so the more niche you can get , the quicker you can do work , because you know roughly what the end client is needing and you've learned a few things that are really suited to them . But it can be boring . So I think in creative fields and my field is creative too , designing and so on , photography is creative the people in these creative industries are obviously creative people . So , um , you got to get that balance right between keeping people excited and doing fresh things and new things and so on , but having um so that's that's good for the human . Um , you know motivations right , but also the the business aspect of systematizing things , so you get an outcome fast and profitably . You got . There's always that tension .

Gary Pageau 17:57

The truth in the tension , I think , is something we we all hold in business so let's talk a little bit about , like what people can do to grow their business right . So I imagine a lot of your companies are fairly decent size . Your clients really does this , but how do you , what do you do with a smaller company who wants to look big , who wants to come across as I wouldn't say more full featured than they are , but want need to tell a bigger story ?

Wes Towers 18:27

Yeah , yeah , so we'll . For those smaller clients , we'll sort of come alongside . So as a big company , we're probably doing a lot of the grunt work for them , using their voice , and tell them it's a quick draft , but sometimes I'll just record screen while I'm doing it for them and show them exactly how I got to that point and they use that as a tutorial to do some of it themselves and just setting themselves up with the tricks that streamline things . With the tricks that streamline things , there's always a risk . There's always been the way that tiny micro-businesses have wanted to look bigger than they are . But I think there's a real advantage and power in the small micro-business because you're dealing with the founder . So I would say use your genuine strengths . The client's dealing with the person who really cares , because it's their business . They client's dealing with the person who really cares because it's their business . They're not dealing with someone , some junior who's only just come into the industry and doesn't really want to be there . So you know there's advantage , strengths and weaknesses .

Gary Pageau 19:41

I would say zero in on what's uniquely you and amplify that message , because you'll attract the right people that way because you'll attract the right people that way , because I think one of the things businesses tend to do is they tend to say you know , I am only this , and they tend to be not necessarily dismissive , but they're almost envious of bigger competitors who can do more things right and it's like it's okay to be just that if you're the best at whatever that is .

Wes Towers 20:11

Yeah , and so niching is really powerful in that you can be the expert in a small niche when you're a small company , but you can't be the best in every field , and that's the beauty of I mean , for my own business , we've won some massive clients purely because we're really specific . We've got a bunch of steel companies , yeah , like that sort of in the construction field , but , um , steel companies all around the world requesting that we do the website , purely because they know we've done it before and we do an exceptional job in that field . And now we kind of understand the industry right . Um , if I was a generalist I would never have got those big clients , because why would they choose me ? That would be so difficult to compete against the big guys in that space .

Gary Pageau 20:56

Right yeah , what are , like , the top three things people should be looking for when they want to start a search everywhere optimization strategy , like the first things that they need to pinpoint as the things they should immediately fix .

Wes Towers 21:12

Yeah , so search everywhere , optimization . It's obviously overwhelming because everywhere there's a lot of places , right ?

Gary Pageau 21:19

Yeah , we got your YouTube , you got your social media , you got your search engines and all these things yeah .

Wes Towers 21:25

Yeah . So you really want to focus on the platforms that are the best match for your industry and brand , put most of your attention on those important things . So if it's a b2b business , then you probably want to be linked in . But if you , you know , if you're b2c , you might be more facebook or or the meta platforms . So you put your most of your attention on the platforms that work best for your industry . But you can use tools like pubbler or um lots of other tools to to syndicate this same message out to multiple platforms . So you're streamlining process that way . So there's lots of platforms you can post on , but your website , I believe , should be the foundation , so probably number one . You requested three . Focus on your website because it's the one territory , it's your space , you own that space . You control all the messaging . Everywhere else pretty much is noisy because everyone else is there and there's distraction and people will be looking .

Gary Pageau 22:22

And they may even be paying more for keywords and all these other things that can affect search .

Wes Towers 22:27

Yeah , yeah , that's right . So I mean , there's so much noise out there online so ideally you'll you'll attract them out there , but but they'll eventually come . If some people are saying the websites won't be a thing because you won't need them anymore , I don't believe that to be true , because it's . It's your digital shop front still . So if people want to make a transaction or buy something , they're going to go to a physical . So if people want to make a transaction or buy something , they're going to go to a physical shop , a physical location , to make the transaction , or they're going to go to your digital shop front .

Gary Pageau 23:00

People are really saying websites are going to go away . That's interesting .

Wes Towers 23:04

Yeah , some people have said that yeah , so yeah , I don't think so .

Gary Pageau 23:08

I mean that seems to me like it's a little detached from reality . I think yeah that's right .

Wes Towers 23:15

So I mean , there's only a lot of the younger crew use tiktok and so on . So you can be endlessly scrolling and you might be featuring on tiktok , but you're only there for a second , you know . So you've only got that uh moment of engagement and you can't even click through to find out more really . Or in tiktok , some of the app and instagram , other platforms you can click through but try to get your message out there as much as you can uh in the core areas . So that would be so . Number one would be website . Number two would be getting your message to the platforms that make best sense to you . But number three would be having a compelling message that other people want to share . That's the real goal .

Wes Towers 23:55

If you're doing something exceptional , other people might want to share it . That's useful to to people . So for you , you're doing a podcast that's massively shareable because it's adding true value um to to lots of people . So people will share it because it's truly valuable and it's getting your personal brand out there and your business brand and everything like that . So making that content that's shareable is a real would be the third thing that I would say is really important to be found everywhere .

Gary Pageau 24:23

Cool . So where can people go for more information , to learn about what you do and to find out more great tips ?

Wes Towers 24:33

yes , well , the

Closing and Contact Information

Wes Towers 24:33

our website . No , I just said website the most important website is a good place , wouldn't it ?

Wes Towers 24:39

yeah , yeah , so , and from from the website uplift360.comau . We're australian , so dot au is the best place , and you can find social media platforms as well , uh , in in the at the bottom of the website . So , and even my link , personal linkedin , is on the , the links there , so I connect with anyone if anyone reaches out . Uh , so you can . You can book a meeting with me if you want to , on the on the website , uh , or you can connect on the social platforms . That'd be great sounds good listen .

Gary Pageau 25:07

It's great to uh talk with you . Thanks for your time and your expertise . I learned a couple things I didn't realize . Websites are going away , so I better find something else . Anyway .

Erin Manning 25:20

I'll talk to you .

Gary Pageau 25:21

Thank you very much . Talk to you later . Thanks , Gary .

Erin Manning 25:24

Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast . Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom .