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Last week I was in Lima, Ohio for a social media conference and on the stage I heard a speaker share that one strategy you could do to help boost your online authority or to help show up in more search results, especially as it relates to AI tools surfacing information that it claims to be of high authority. And it was suggested that one of the things that you could do if you're a podcaster is to make sure to add your podcast and its episodes to IMDb because it is seen as a very high ranking, high authority, high credibility resource for confirming that you are somebody that is legit. It can, if you have a listing there, you will almost certainly show up even higher in the results, the output of people searching for you. And if you were to ask, hey, who is Cliff Ravenscraft? What can you tell me? And if you have a bio inside of IMDb, it might actually cite IMDb's bio information, whereas if not, it could just pull information from other people's random show notes, the bio that they have written if they have a high ranking, higher authority site than your own. Anyway, I had not heard about IMDb having the ability for you to put your podcast, to submit your podcast there. Now it makes sense. Maybe I should have known about this years ago whenever they decided to start taking submissions. But I became aware of it in Lima, Ohio last week while sitting there listening to one of the speakers share this information. And I gotta tell you, I was curious. I'm like, hmm, I wonder what that process is like. So I did an experiment today. I went to ChatGPT. I opened up the Atlas browser. It's not something I use very frequently, but the Atlas browser is a browser made by ChatGPT. And since I am an avid, seasoned user of ChatGPT, it has a lot of my context information about me. And I figured I would use the browser on the left side, the little chat sidebar window on the right hand side, and that chat bar has the ability to see exactly what I'm looking at on the page. And I can ask it. I'm like, okay, tell me from here, what do I click on? It says, ah, click over here, do this. I'm like, wonderful. Okay, and now that I've done this, which option here do I click? Click this option. And I'm like, okay. It was a very convoluted system. I had to go in and fill out all sorts of database forms that look like they were created back in the late 90s. And I don't know when IMDb got started, but it seems to me like they're still using the original database form entries that was created when this site first came online. Now, thankfully, ChatGPT was able to quickly tell me, you go fill out in this field, fill in this field. And if I had not been using a side by side AI tool that was able to see everything on the page, my guess is that it might have taken me anywhere between six to eight hours to try to fill out the form and just to submit my main show. That has nothing to do with adding an episode, just my main podcast show itself, listing me as the producer, the writer of the podcast. And there's one other credit that you give it. The host. No, it's not the host. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But anyway, it would have taken me six to eight hours if I wouldn't have actually gotten fed up with the process and decided to just chuck it and say that was a waste of time. With ChatGPT, it took me just over 45 minutes to actually submit my show. And I did get it submitted. And I will know. It says it's estimated that I might know as early as tomorrow on whether or not everything is accepted. Now I have, well, I don't have any basis to base my feeling of how confident I am that it will get submitted, but Chat GPT seemed to know what it was doing and so I have a feeling that everything was filled out accurately. But what I'm saying is that I tried the experiment today just to see if I could figure out how to submit my show, and it seems possible. Now, whether or not I need to go back and fix mistakes, or if they reject certain things because they were hoping I would provide a link to this or an explanation for this or whatever. I don't know what that is going to be like, but I can already tell you that for me personally, I already question the return on investment, the value of, of doing this. However, I don't want to just immediately chuck it out the window. I'm, I'm interested. I'm intrigued. I will tell you that oftentimes when I go to the thinking model of ChatGPT and I tell it to go and do research on an individual, I notice all of the sources that start scrolling through. It's like it's showing you all the places, it's checking Reddit and blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah. And I see it look and list IMDb as one of those sources. And so there's still something to this that makes me question, hmm, I wonder if it would be valuable if at some point down the road, somebody's looking up. Who is Cliff Ravenscraft? Tell me a little bit about him. And if I have the ability to put credible, well sourced information that can be verified by a third party, and that might mean that what I have decided to make sure is listed professionally for me in that directory could be valuable. I don't know. It is an experiment at this point, one in which I'm not sure the overall value just yet, but it was convoluted, it was clunky, and it was incredibly time consuming. Now, the interesting thing is when I actually go in and list myself, I Cliff Ravenscraft was already listed by name under the Entrepreneur on Fire podcast with John Lee Dumas. So John Lee Dumas has his show in there and he actually has episode series, episode information. And so for each episode, I don't know if he's still doing it today, but each guest or each episode features a guest and it has all of the credits in there, much like a television show would have credits for all of the actors who play a part in that particular episode. So somebody else is out there doing it. My friend John Lee Dumas is out there doing this and has somebody that he's hired to go in and make sure that this information is curated there. And at some point that makes me think, well, there must be a significant return on investment for somebody to go through the process of doing that. And it's not just a fluke that somebody mentioned on stage. This is the reason why you may want to consider doing this as a podcaster. Anyway, so I went in, I did the experiment, I submitted. We'll see what happens there. The one thing that I know is that my name is already in the database listed under John Lee Dumas and some other program that Dylan Mazziotti did years ago that is associated to a television show that was on this one cable network or whatever. And I do remember being interviewed by Dylan Mazziotti. So maybe I was on some sort of television program. But anyway, it that my personal myself as an artist or whatever it's called, it is not updated with my information. So I went in and filled out and submitted another form with a little bit of a bio about me, my official site linking back to my website and things of that nature. And so that has been submitted and I got a email saying, hey, this is under review. Here's where you can track the progress and the status of your submission. And then I noticed that, wow, I can go in and put in data that can be verified by anyone and it can be confirmed and they could possibly update the database with that information. But then I noticed that for you to be able to go in and add your own profile photo and or some other related stuff, it requires that you have a paid pro IMDb account. And I asked Chat GPT how much that is and it says it's roughly $20 a month. It's one of those 1999amonth things. You get a 30 day trial. It says you could sign up for the 30 day trial, go in and do all the things you would want to do under the Pro account, and then cancel it before it renews. But I didn't even go to that length. First, I wanted to see what happens with putting my own podcast in there and just adding some bio information, even without the image at this point. Again, just testing out the waters of what's happening here. But then I asked myself, why would anybody want this as a podcaster and does it solve some sort of problem? And also I'm asking what kind of outcome would I want from the time, effort and energy to submit my stuff inside of IMDb, my podcasts, now some potential motivations that come to mind. Some people will do this for credibility. There are people who feel like if I have a book, I'm seen as more credible. If I'm listed here in this directory, I'm seen as more credible. If I have these letters trailing my name, I'm seen as more credible. And for me, credibility is not necessarily an issue. I feel that my name, my reputation, the amount of work, my body of work over more than 20 years gives me all the credibility that I need. My name has been mentioned in many books from many of my peers and mentors. I've got a lot of credibility. So for me, spending any amount of time submitting my podcast to IMDb, credibility is not something that I'm looking for now. Discoverability, this is something that I am noticing. By the way, I do not search the web via any search engine anymore. I do not go to Google for anything. I only type in what I'm looking for in ChatGPT and it goes and gets me the resources and I confirm and validate and verify from there. So as I said, when it's going out and it's doing deep research and I can see it cycling through all of the sources down there and I see Reddit and I, I see YouTube and I see all of these other things and IMDb, that layer of discoverability, the fact that I can have some measurable control over what is said about my identity and My brand. That is the level of something. It's like, okay, that gives me something that seems worthwhile. It was worth the time I invested today to see if I can figure out with AI what it would be like for me to go in and try to submit this. Now the next thing that comes to my mind is authority. And that's a lot with credibility as well. Am I an authority in this space? And I don't know. In my mind, I don't think that the fact that I have an IMDb entry for my podcast adds to my authority in the space. In my mind, authority comes from having a body of work of the things that I do I'm known for. And I'm not just known for it because I talk about it a lot. There's a large body of evidence of people whose lives have been transformed by the work that I do. And so for me, it's authority comes from having helped people get results or putting out information and education that has impacted a lot of people. And there's great word of mouth, and I don't know that necessarily IMDb is going to do that. Now, another reason why somebody might want to go through this process and have a robust profile for themselves and their podcast on IMDb is EGO. And I'm not going to. I'm not going to knock anybody who attempts to do things to boost their ego. It's not necessarily as bad as some people make it out to be. I used to be very egocentric in the earliest days of my podcasting. It's not so much of a thing for me today. I could probably care less about how other people perceive me these days. And so ego's really not all of that important. It's just that I. When I go back to this, I think about it more along the lines of what information will surface if somebody searches for me, and what level of ability do I have to influence that information in an authentic, genuine, and transparent way? So for me, that's really what this is. Now, there would be some people who could do this as a professional portfolio, and I'll get to that, like, who should care in just a moment. And some people could use this to find opportunities, but those are more for people who are in the entertainment or the media industries. So let's talk about who should care about this. If you're a podcaster, should you care? And by the way, you can care or not care, it doesn't bother me. But here are some people I think might want to perk up about this idea of being listed in IMDb, if you are an entertainment podcaster now, some of you know my origin story is that my wife and I got started in podcasting by doing entertainment television show podcasts, fan podcasts. For the TV show Lost. We did a bunch of other fan podcasts related to television shows and movie franchises, and we had tens of thousands of subscribers. And there were a few shows that had over 100,000 subscribers. And so if we had the ability back then to be listed in IMDb, I definitely would have gone through the time, effort and energy to do that. Especially for those shows where we could, where we interviewed directors of the show, writers of the show, and cast members of the show. Because you can actually go in and attribute or credit them as being a guest on your podcast episode. And when somebody goes searching for their IMDb page, you will be listed in the credits. Your podcast, that would be A podcaster, I think, could truly benefit from this. Those of you who are doing like documentary shows or those narrative storytelling podcasts, maybe that maybe there's something to be said for creating your series that's much like a creative work, as a television show is a creative work. I don't think every interview format podcast out there needs to have this entry, but it does seem to be working for John Lee Dumas. And I can see the value, especially if you are working with notable guests. And in fact, one of the benefits that you could offer to a notable guest is that for everybody who's listed here, you will have an attribution, you will have a, you will have an entry, you will be listed in IMDb, that could actually call to the ego of some of those people or somebody else who is looking to rank their authority online and be seen in discoverability as well. Anyone who is podcasting today because they have a media career or they're pursuing a media career, television, film, radio, whatever the case may be, this could be a good move for you. If you are a speaker and you are looking to build mainstream discoverability, such as I want to be listed as a guest on Good Morning America and whatever television shows and talk shows and things like that. If you're going for that and you've hired a publicist to help you get on those big national television shows, it might make sense for you to have an IMDb entry for your podcast. And then, of course, you know, there are several podcasters that might hear about this and go in and attempt to figure this out. And I would question whether or not it would be of value. Most hobbyist podcasters probably aren't going to see too much benefit from this outside of, in my mind, the discoverability of having IMDb and its bio about you being something that is ingested into those large language models when somebody's searching for your name. Outside of that, I don't see the real value. I don't think internal company podcasts or corporate podcasts would benefit from having an IMDb page. If you have a local business podcast or a local community podcast, probably not going to do much for you. If you're looking for listener growth and one of the main reasons you would be willing to do anything and everything to get listed everywhere, this is probably not going to help you improve the number of people who are introduced to your podcast. It's not going to help there and in any reasonable way that I can see. And then of course, if you're looking for a return on investment, it's like, oh my gosh, I'm going to find my next client because of this. I think there are a lot more useful things you can do with your time if you're looking for finding that next ideal client through your podcast. Being listed in IMDb is probably not gonna move the needle very much. Overall, I think anybody who would spend a lot of time chasing after IMDb listing, such as going in and doing anything more than listening, just listing your podcast as a show in IMDb and having your own bio as the producer, writer and whatever that other credit thing that I had in there, I don't remember what the other one was, but anyway, there are three different things that I had in there outside of doing those two things, I might not ever do anything else with this. But the type of person I think who would be drawn to do something more, if you're the type of person who tends to chase after more certifications or to get more credentials, you like earning so many awards and being ranked among other, you know, highly ranked directories and having badges and all this other stuff. And again, I don't. I'm not putting any of that down. But. But if those forms of credibility speak to you, then, hey, did you know that you could put your podcast in IMDb? My question is, what if the real authority, how people perceive you comes from consistently showing up and creating a valuable body of work over time for me. I'm glad I did the experiment. I have certainly satisfied my curiosity. It would be nice if maybe IMDb created an MCP for. Is it called an MCP? Yeah, I think it's called an MCP. If it was something that an AI tool could go in and just do all of this for you. And I'm sure that could be written and or will be something that will happen in the future, that it would make it so much easier. And there are probably people who are already out there who have figured that out in the media landscape. But I may even actually create more related to my IMDb profile. If the one reason why it makes sense for me, if it does seem to have some sort of impact on being able to specifically influence what gets surfaced about me in other people's AI search results, then who knows. But I don't believe that being listed in IMDb is going to create a single new listener to my podcast. I don't think it's going to bring me any clients. However, I will tell you that if I was to get back into doing an entertainment podcast, and I made it a point to have guests that are creatively connected to the television show and or movie franchise for which I'm podcasting about, that is a place where I would have every episode in IMDb and I would credit every guest that's there. And by the way, you don't have to go in and add every single episode of your show. You could actually just go in and list certain episodes where it makes sense to credit a guest. I would assume. I don't know. I'm not an expert on IMDb, but anyway, that is the episode. This week I was told that a podcast could now be included in IMDb. It made me curious. I did the experiment I've been thinking about why would I even want to do this? Why would anyone else want to do? I thought I would document it and share it with you. So I have a question for you. Are you in IMDb? If you are, send me a link. Email me cliffravenscraft.com and if you are not in IMDb, has anything I said here piqued your curiosity? Are you going to go in and see if you can't submit your own podcast for IMDb? If you do, I'd be interested to hear how that turns out for you and if anything I've shared here originally piqued your curiosity, but because of how I've landed here at the end, you might maybe some other time, but not right now. I'd love to hear that too. And before we go, I just want to invite you to check out something that I have been working on. Some of you know that I have been facilitating paid Mastermind groups since 2012 and I've been facilitating mastermind groups going all the way back to October 2010 when Pat Flynn and I started the Green Room Mastermind, which is still meeting every week all the way up through today. In fact, I'm recording this on Wednesday, June 24, 2026 and had a great meeting with the Green Room Mastermind. Anyway, one of my favorite things to do in this world is to facilitate Mastermind groups for those who are on the entrepreneurial journey. To give you a room where you can tell the truth about what's going on in your life and in your business. To get clear on the next best aligned step given where you want to go and where you currently feel stuck. To help brainstorm with other business owners who understand the decisions that you are facing and to help you end the isolation of trying to figure everything out on your own. There is so much value that happens when you get into a room with other business owners, many of whom who have already accomplished the things that you're trying to accomplish. That the people who are dealing with things in their personal lives that when it comes up for you, somebody who's already navigated that can share what they've learned along the way. It's not always all about business, it is always about getting feedback from people who understand what you face on a day by day basis as a business owner and I just launched a brand new version of a Mastermind group experience called Next Level Mastermind Momentum. That's all I'm going to say here, but if I've piqued your curiosity and you want to learn more, link will be in the show. Notes to cliffravenscraft.com Momentum until next time, I encourage you to take everything you do to the Next Level podcast and some man.