Tips Tuesday – Video Brand Deals, Snake Oil AI SEO, Canva Updates

Tips this week include:

• Get a brand deal from your video
• YouTube launches Ask Studio AI
• How my holiday craft videos are doing
• The Create plugin changes hands
• Why you need an AI contract rider
• Chrome begins HTTPS warnings in 2026
• Why you need to rotate your passwords
• Snake oil AI SEO tricks
• AI SEO is a subset ranking
• Canva’s recent updates are stunning
• Canva’s new email marketing features

It’s end of the year holiday time. Are you getting in the mood for it?

I most definitely am!!!!

Video Tips

Get a Brand Deal from Your Video

I am SO proud of my client, Christie Hawkes!!!

Earlier this year she decided to jump into making videos.

And recently she made one about how much she loves a particular brand of leggings.

The brand contacted her immediately and offered her a sponsored post deal!!!!!!!

Go watch the videos on Christie’s channel.

They are not slick productions.

They are one person helping another by giving honest info.

That’s all it takes to build trust, y’all.

And that’s what brands are after too!!!!!!

YouTube Launches “Ask Studio” AI

Earlier this year I told you about the new AI Trends suggestions in YouTube and that they were great for getting both video and post ideas, including titles, metadata, and an outline of the content.

Well now, YouTube has added another AI feature called Ask Studio (meaning YouTube Studio).

It will have a look at your channel analytics, including engagement and the comments you get, and make suggestions.

Plus, it is a chatbot, meaning it is conversational and you can ask it questions to get more insights.

I will definitely be checking into this. And we’ll have a workshop on it in the DIY SEO Everywhere course next year, which is just 9 weeks away!!!! Geez, it goes fast, doesn’t it?

My Holiday Craft Videos

The day after Halloween I published my first Christmas craft video and post on Heartwood Art. I’ve got a whole series of these coming with cute reindeer blocks and a wooden Christmas village.

I’m SO happy with the way the Snowflake blocks turned out!!!!! They were super fast and fun to make too.

And if you turn your sound all the way up on the video, you can hear the bluegrass type Xmas song I created for the intro.

I also think the 10 snowflake designs I made will help sell the PDF line drawings book too. So, I’ve got LOTS of images for all those going up on Pinterest every day for a couple of weeks.

Plugin Tips

The Create Plugin Changes Hands

Mediavine recently announced that they are turning their Create plugin back over to the original dev for maintenance.

Y’all know that I am no fan of Mediavine coding, this plugin included. All of their devs come from an enterprise website background. And NOTHING they have coded plays well with WordPress.

I went toe-to-toe with some of their devs over it and they sure as hell don’t lack hubris in saying their code is pristine. Maybe so, in an enterprise environment. But not on WP sites. 

So, don’t expect this plugin to get any true improvements over this change. 

FYI, if you’re thinking about using it, this thing is a BEAST. It has the best schema markup for how-to posts, but only if you plan to add the steps that way. For recipes, WP Recipe Maker is the better choice.

AI Tips

Why You Need an AI Contract Rider

If you do any type of speaking gig, even if it’s just your voice, but especially if you are on camera with someone else, you most definitely need to protect yourself from AI cloning.

Mari Smith’s lawyers drew up this AI Contract Rider that you should have the show host sign to ensure they don’t allow your voice or image to be used by AI training or AI cloning.

Security Tips

Chrome Begins HTTP Warnings in 2026

Beginning in 2026, Chrome will start showing a security warning when you try to load a site that is not HTTPS.

Wait! What? I thought we were past this. Obviously not.

Remember 8-9 years ago when Google gave out penalties for any site that was still HTTP?

I remember working from 7am to 10pm every day for 3 months prior to the deadline trying to get all of the folks who were not currently my clients properly switched over from HTTP to HTTPS. (I had updated all of my clients in the previous 9-12 months.)

And Chrome, as well as other browsers, were definitely showing a big warning on all HTTP sites for months after that deadline. Plus, Google was lowering the rank on non-HTTPS sites as well.

The reason we all had to jump through these hoops was because THE big internet security consortium decided that non-encrypted data traveling across the web was a HUGE security issue.

Google belongs to that consortium. And they could strong-arm all of us to get it done or get de-ranked. And that worked.

After a year or so, that big, in-your-face warning was replaced with a caution icon in the URL bar. And then about 6 months later, that was removed.

I can’t even remember the last time I visited a site that was not HTTPS, but I guess they are still out there. 

But most likely, the new vibe-coded sites that folks can create in 10 minutes don’t have an SSL certificate or the proper links. And, as any of my clients can tell you, they’re missing a WHOLE LOT more than just that!!!!

Anyway, Google is bringing back the big warning in Chrome, and other browsers may follow suit if this is a suggestion from the big security consortium.

Why You Need to Rotate Your Passwords

Y’all know that I advocate using strong passwords that are at least 12 characters with upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special symbols.

The latest hacker chart I saw last week says that it will take 917 million years for a decryption tool to break it, even with AI’s help.

But a strong password is not all you need to do to protect yourself.

You need a unique password for every account you have.

And you need to change them at least once a year.

Plus, never reuse old passwords.

The reason you need to take these extra steps is because hackers don’t waste time trying to break passwords anymore. They are far too busy stealing them.

So, if one of your accounts gets compromised through a back door at the vendor, and that password is stolen, the rest of your accounts will not be at risk.

SEO Tips

Snake Oil AI SEO Tricks

Beware of snake oil tips to surface your content in AI search.

I’m seeing rookie SEO mistakes everywhere with the folks who are teaching this stuff.

Worse, some of them are giving schema markup tips that will conflict directly with Yoast SEO, or any other SEO plugin you are using.

Now, if you are on a site that doesn’t have Yoast, then maybe this will work, but only if it has the correct schema hierarchy from the top down and cooperates with the platform’s schema language.

Be aware that there are multiple hierarchies within JSON-LD schema. So, don’t think it’s the correct one just because it’s JSON-LD either.

There are legit things you can do to help AI bots consume your content – in fact, I’ve given you those tips freely here in Tips Tuesday all throughout this year.

Don’t believe me about the snake oil?

Just ask any of the folks who teach it for proof that it works. If they search on their own topic, or have others, who already frequent their sites do a search, that tells you just how rookie they are with SEO.

Show me the tools and the metrics you use. Show me the GA4 metrics of the increased traffic from AI Search.

They can’t do it. Hell, most don’t even know how to properly check if an SEO method is working or not.

We’ll most definitely be covering both the legit and bogus tips in the DIY SEO Everywhere course next year, starting with workshops in January (and that’s just a few weeks away)! Plus, we’ll review what I’ve already suggested folks do to increase AI Search visibility – with proof that it works.

AI SEO is a Subset Ranking

Part of what confuses rookie AI SEO folks is that they think there is a total difference in regular SEO and AI SEO.

There isn’t.

AI SEO is a subset of regular SEO ranking.

Do you really think that OpenAI has its own ranking system? Hell no!!! They get that from Bing – because Microsoft, the maker of Bing, has a HUGE investment in OpenAI.

Same with Google’s AIO (AI Overviews). It relies HEAVILY on regular Google Search data for ranking what you see in AIO.

Ahrefs has confirmed that 75% of the top rankings you see in AI Search are the same as regular Search. This has never not been the case.

Plus, what you see in any Search will be different from what others see due to your search and site visit history. This too has always been the case.

Like I said, be careful of listening to AI SEO search snake oil salesmen. Pro SEOs are laughing all the way to the bank over this junk advice that folks are using to bork their sites.

Yes, this issue has my hackles up. But the good news for my clients is that when more folks make use of these snake-oil tactics and trash their rankings and bot-friendliness, our sites will still be standing – on top.

Creative Tips

Canva’s Recent Updates are Stunning

Canva is going for gold with their latest upgrades.

Canva just announced their new AI, Affinity will be free for everyone forever. And, by no coincidence, they made this statement the day after the Adobe Max conference.

They just took a dump on Adobe, who is continuing to raise prices without giving significant improvement, at least not at the same level and rate that Canva has provided this year.

Affinity is also a standalone app that claims to be free forever. See more here. I’m definitely going to check this out because it promises to do vectors, which is not something that Photoshop does well because Adobe wants you to use Illustrator for that.

Something to keep in mind about this. We’ve seen other “free forever” apps get swallowed up into parent companies that are not free. Adobe has pulled that stunt multiple times.

I suspect the “forever” part will only be for certain parts of Affinity down the road. This is sort of like Adobe offering Firefly for free. It is also used as the generative AI part of Photoshop.

Canva’s New Email Marketing Features

Canva is not only going head-to-head with Adobe, they are also taking a swipe at older email marketing platforms like Mailchimp. See more about the new features here.

But, for all of the new design and collection features they released, they do lack one super important thing that the older platforms have – native integrations for things like member sites and e-commerce sites.

EVERY third party platform that needs to tie into an email list has a native integration for older and/or popular providers, like Mailchimp.

So, there are good reasons to stay with what is tried and tested for some folks. That includes me, as I have multiple member sites and I don’t do heavy email campaigns that need flashy designs.