Contextual Footprints As Competitive Advantage In AI Marketing | Fei Wu from Feis World Media

Rick: Pathmonk is the AI for website conversions. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show you value proposition and support visitors in the buying journey separates you from the competition online Pathmonk qualifies and conversely on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro experiences like case studies, int videos, and much more.
Stay relevant to you visitors and increase conversions by 50% by adding Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Letting the AI do all the work and increase conversions while you keep doing marketing as usual. Check us out on Pathmonk. Hey everybody. Welcome to today’s episode of Paathmonk Present. Today we’re joined by Fei Wu. She’s the founder of Fei World Media. Fei, welcome to the show.

Fei Wu: Thank you so much, Rick. So good to be here with you.

Rick: Likewise. And, we’re just talking offline and, Prepping, for the episode. But, I’m excited to get into it, Fei, and I just wanna let you drive in a way, just if you can let us know a little bit about phase world Media by yourself.
But more than anything, what’s the big idea behind phase World Media and, if you were to explain this to a friend over coffee, how would you describe what, you do on a day to day?

Fei Wu: Absolutely, really appreciate your intro. So I started Phase World Media back in early 2016. If you counted the, podcast, that would be 2014.
But as I mentioned before the recording, I’ve been transforming and pivoting my business and in the past couple of years, probably to nobody’s surprise, we are now working with very big AI and tech companies to help them build contextual footprint. We can get into. What that is. So specifically we write long form quality blog posts, we’ll produce videos, a lot of tutorials.
If I tell my friends, like my coach at the CrossFit gym, I tell him that I teach everyday people to not be intimidated by AI and I teach ’em how to use it. And more specifically. My audience, for example, on YouTube, target creators and small business owners like ourselves, and that’s what we’re focusing on, and I have a lot of joy and also a lot of flexibility as a result of choosing this path.
I’m really excited to really share and teach and collaborate with other AI companies. I’m realize, just by having your content exists on your website, as that’s not sufficient. Humans need to trust it. You need to help AI understand contextualize who you are. So that’s what we do.

Rick: No, that’s a great point.
I love the bit about video and that just brings me to, what we do at Pathmonk in a way, in a sense that, we use video a lot in, our product. so I’m sure there’s, there’s things we can talk about around that as well. But, going back to, to phase World Media, I want to talk about a little bit, what kind of people do you serve and, Are there any specific businesses? I know you mentioned AI right now. It’s super relevant of course, but, in a way I would love to understand if there’s a key problem that you have these companies or these people solve and, what can they work, what can they expect rather when they work with you?

Fei Wu: For sure. I’m happy to, give out some specific names that, people may recognize. So in the past two years, name, drop it. Name drop. we’ve been working with Adobe, specifically Adobe Express, Adobe Firefly, and, AI companies such as the leading audio end video software 11 Labs. they were originally focused very much on audio, but now they’re actually a full audio, video platform.
We also work with synesthesia, which is all about AI avatar. before we started recording, you mentioned note taking. I am absolutely in love with granola ai, which is an AI notepad. So instead of joining the session, it’s taking notes quietly on the side. And during the conversation you can even, during the recording you can have conversations gr with granola, like, how do I improve this?
What are some of the questions I should be asking, but I’m not yet. Things like that. And. Most recently, there’s also Mitra, AI helps place, phone calls, can accept calls, as well as making calls for caregivers for small business owners. And I get to interact with these founders, which is something that, I really love.
maybe at 11 Labs, Adobe, I don’t get to talk to the CEO, for example, at Mitra I get to speak, with Sai, the founder, and really get down to business, understand what they’re struggling with. And make this interaction as human as possible. So what I help them solve I notice is, for example, there are, Adobe has a lot of influencers out there, and they have incredible big accounts.
We’re talking about half a million, a few million people following those accounts. And when they talk about, a new release, a new feature, people will sign up. But my job is to do. The less sexy work, which is, really teaching people how to use it, relating to real workflows as a business owner, and this is what you do, and let’s also show the imperfections of the software, show them when things don’t work, how to get around it, how to really understand that we should interact with different AI tools.
So there’s a lot of trials and errors, which I’m happy to dive into.

Rick: Of course. it’s super interesting and just, but you, of course, Adobe and, just just that company itself, that’s, that’s impressive. But, just the, also the tools that you’re mentioning already, and this is getting interesting ’cause everyone, I love to geek out on a tech stack, right?
Myself. Personally, I know our audience loves it too. we could keep going on that, but, at the same time, I’m curious, how did these company discover you? are there any, channels that you’re using at the moment? maybe it’s your YouTube channel, like
How does that work for you in terms of acquisition?

Fei Wu: Yeah, great question. And that’s something I feel like we also share at, breakfast brunches with, other creator, founders. And so I would say our two main drivers are one, our website, which is Feis world.com. we publish a lot under our blog. We also have a specific section that says sponsorship.
We don’t hide it. And we show brands the 35 plus brands that we have worked with in the past number of years, and we show them specific. Case studies, examples, we show them different packages. We have essential, plus, that sort of thing. So give your clients different options to choose from.
recently I got better at asking people when they reach out to me, I always ask them, how did you discover me? Now, some people don’t remember. Most people do. And one of the affiliate manager, I guess she said she was searching on YouTube under videos and she said specifically the keywords, she was using was AI educator, which made me really happy because I think, I didn’t realize I fell into that particular niche and I’m really proud of it.

Rick: Oh, you should be and look. If anything, we’re gonna update the intro here to add that in.

Fei Wu: Nice,
That’s a good

Rick: idea. A founder and AI educator. Now that’s, really cool. now you touched on the website for a second and I just wanna, stay on it for a second just because, of course it’s relevant to, to our audience and, what we do at Path Munk.
So you have the, sponsorship, you have, all the packages and everything, and it’s super cool. In your experience, from your experience, Fei, what does make a website actually convert? And is it, is it the design made a certain way? Is it the messaging? is it SEO, like in your, experience, what are the even tools, right?
We just talked about the tech stack. What are the things that actually move the needle when it comes to getting people to move to the next stage and, do business with you for example?

Fei Wu: For sure. as I mentioned at the very beginning, and this is maybe a, an area, the time to kinda dive in a little bit deeper.
Long story short, we really focus on quality content and you have to build your content strategically, whether it’s written text content or videos. You notice at this point we haven’t even mentioned like just purely social media. that’s an area, founders have to choose. And do you wanna be on all platforms?
Where do you specialize for us? It’s definitely blogs and our YouTube channel. So I would say building contextual footprint, like what does it actually mean? I think when these brands, 11 Labs, Adobe discovered us, it, it wasn’t like they read a super short post that was written by Chad GPT. There was no human touch.
they really want someone to demonstrate how a human being uses it. So from a title perspective, these are not necessarily directly related to tech just yet. From the title perspective, since I’ve been writing also for Cina Zina Live hacker, I am learning a lot from the editorial, their editorial team to say, instead of saying how to do something, the context has shifted to how I do something.
So there is a huge difference. It’s hard for, as chat GPT. How does Fei do this chat? GPT would know, maybe it does know a lot better now because I’ve been publishing so much lately. but I think it’s also important to understand how to structure your content. So there are a lot of examples on Feis World.
We definitely, and that’s our best practices right there, in the open. And, would also recommend people search for, Feis World, how to build a brand in 2026. We completely, open up the curtain and just showing you everything, how we think, how we structure the content. what we tell brands is that, entities are very different than keywords.
So what does that mean? Entities actually exist in context. So in the past 20 years, when it comes to Google, SEO, we just talk about keywords, ranking, SEO, but it’s not that simple anymore. What does Nike mean? For example, in the context of keywords? It’s not just a keyword. We help AI through our articles and videos help AI understand that Nike’s the brand.
That primarily sells shoes to athletes and, everyday people. So that context really matters. And believe it or not, our lived experiences and building trust in our content is absolutely essential in letting a IC what is quality versus what’s not. So how do brands discover us is not necessarily through oh, these fancy different plugins.
Though. With that said, I would love to learn more about Pathmonk because we’ve always been surprised how much we learn from, different companies. We do use things I should mention thirsty, thirsty Affiliates. We use Rank Math, things like that. but not insane amount of plugins, thrown on our WordPress website.
yeah, I should pause there to see there’s, really a lot of like rabbit holes to go down on.

Rick: Yeah. No, that, that was great. I appreciate you sharing that and also touching on, on, on the, on the tech a little bit, that was really good. you also mentioned you’ve been publishing a lot lately, right?
I’m sure you’re busy with that, a lot. maybe you switch gears for a second. Fei Wue talk about you, right? what do you do on a daily basis and, and more about you as a person in general, right? So what’s, what’s a day in the life like for Fei and, What’s your typical workday like?
Also, do you mind sharing that with us?

Fei Wu: Oh, I, would love to, I think, for creators and small business owners, how we live our lives absolutely inform all the creative work we do. And that’s something that I also let all my team members know as well. My head of content, Herman, I love when he travels. He takes time off and be completely, digital detox, like leaving his cell phones behind.
I love when my content creator for my mom’s business Shang the art with all the artworks behind me. Tripti will recently went on a vacation Phoenix in Scottsdale, and I ask her, you know how her trip has been, she loves visiting our museums because everything we do really informs our work and make ourselves better.
For me, I think my mantra for 2026 has been for the past few years, but particularly. Started last year, and more importantly this year, is that I really wanna stay active. As much as I know we’re all being very productive in front of the computer, we can type away, 10,000 words at a time. You record videos from scripting, turning around on my equipment.
So set up here, I ask myself to get up every 45 minutes. I have an Apple watch that reminds me, I’m wearing a. Oral rain that’s being charged right now is actually fully charged. I go to CrossFit pretty much four to five times a week. I, as I mentioned to you, I only started weightlifting six months ago.
I wish I did 10, 15 years ago or more, but I was having too much fun as a martial artist where, you know, when I trained for 20 years, I have a third degree in black belt, but I love moving my body.
35. So I love the fact that I don’t just talk about these things anymore. We’re talking about them in a video write about on the blog post. I want the consistency not nurturing to actually apply to the real me. I love that, and I’ll quickly mention that as we’re recording this, but with Lunar and Chinese lunar New Year coming up in February, I’ve arranged from my mom’s artwork, her Chinese Empresses collection painted on large.
A hundred percent silk panels to be displayed near here at Worcester Art Museum. And then in Boston, which is Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, we also have a private opening and people are happy to, they can RSVP as well in Cambridge at Lab Central on February 26th, there’ll be free food and open bar, to celebrate her art.

Rick: Wow, that, is awesome. Thanks for sharing that, first and foremost. And, I opened the call just asking about the art ’cause it’s so amazing.

Fei Wu: thank you.

Rick: we will find a way to put that in a show notes ’cause, again, I’ll have to ask you more about it. There’s a website we can visit, but aside from that absolute, you know that it is more about you here and I appreciate sharing, about your, CrossFit passion and, your experience in martial arts.
We go back in a way to, what you mentioned just a few minutes ago about going from how to, to how I, Because people connect with people at the end of the day, and this, this is my opinion, but, It’s very much different to reading how, someone does something.
as opposed to, I’ll tell you, I’ll teach you. Because of course you can have that authority and that’s fine. But many times people just want to relate. and understand, how you are as a person, which is sometimes hard to do in a blog post, but depending on what you write about.
But, I think that encompasses really, like even just with your answers now, you are showing you, right? yeah. that’s super cool.

Fei Wu: That’s very important actually. I would encourage people to build that into whatever the content they’re creating, whether it’s written content, or as you’re hosting a podcast.
I think one thing I wanna point out, early in 2014 when I just started producing podcasts, my audience told me that I rarely talked about myself, because I think, especially as a woman and woman of color, I felt like I didn’t wanna talk about myself. I didn’t think people would be interested. I’m the host, I should really shine the light only on my guest.
And I was completely wrong. People are very interested in who the host is because you’re the common denominator. You are there all the time, is the guest. That actually changed. Even one of my, dear colleague, she was teaching me and sharing that they look at the stats. A lot of people even just listened to the beginning, the start of the intro about what she’s been up to, what she’s working on, what she’s interested in, and that was fascinating to me.

Rick: Yeah. I’m sure it is. And, we’ll, take an order to hear a path mon, on how to do that. So thanks for sharing.

Fei Wu: Yeah, let’s do it.

Rick: so Fei, we’re going into towards the end of our episode and our time together here, unfortunately, but, let’s, send you on a fun note. we have a rapid fire segment, right?
so I have just a few questions that I want to run by you and, there’s a couple, surprise ones maybe in there, but,

Fei Wu: let’s

Rick: see. Be ready for it.

Fei Wu: yeah, I’m very flexible. I know, some common questions that tend to come up, so I did write down a few things, but let’s give it a shot.

Rick: Sweet. Let’s do that. So when it comes to content, do you prefer watching, reading or listening?

Fei Wu: Watching.

Rick: Watching. Okay. What’s, yeah.

Fei Wu: Depending on mood, but watching mostly. Okay.

Rick: No, that’s, fair. And it, and I see, there’s, Typically it’s a, mix, right? Because you can watch and listen to a podcast.
So it’s true. Yeah. No, I get it. I was gonna say, what’s the latest piece of content that you watched then? And, was there anything that really stuck with you?

Fei Wu: it did because, so I actually don’t remember this gentleman’s name, but, he’s a gym owner. If you look up. It, he basically lost an eye, when he was a child. But he’s this super jacked guy. He runs this incredible gym in Iowa with, his fiance. And it really struck with me in terms of human resilience, and it’s beyond inspirational.
And that’s also because as a result of a project I worked on years ago called Enabled Disabled. So I think that, Creators and, what we can do. It really has no boundaries. Anyway, there’s a longer answer. I’ll stop there.

Rick: No worries. That’s beautiful. Thanks. if you had a magic wand, Fei, and could fix one frustrating thing in your marketing life with tech, what would you pick?

Fei Wu: So I wanna really teach people and drill in contextual footprint is so important, and especially for creators and businesses who wanna maybe work with some of the brands I work with. I think they need to understand that as an essential part for them to be seen and to be recognized.

Rick: That’s beautiful.
What’s one repetitive task that you love to put on autopilot forever.

Fei Wu: There are several. I think AI is great with drafting, structuring and, helping me review endless brand contracts. I still read every, all, every word, but, AI can help me kinda summarize immediately pinpoint things that could be troublesome.
I really hope everybody could just start doing that.

Rick: Yeah. Just to help with personal productivity in a way.

Fei Wu: Yeah. And repurposing content repurposing, which is something I really wanted to of, maybe you guys are already doing that already, but with these podcasts, like repurposing with shorter clips and, some shorter posts and articles are really important too.

Rick: Yeah. That’s brilliant. last one, if you could go back and give your past self a quick pep talk at the start of your journey
Marketing, in your career in general, what kind of advice would you drop?

Fei Wu: I think even 10 years ago, I was in my early thirties. I was so excited about everything like everyone else is, but really having a level of focus is so important, knowing who you are, where you’re good at.
The setup you have, the resources you have, focus on the thing that you’re working. That doesn’t have to be one thing for the next three years, but I would say generally two to three things is okay. just explore, but don’t be tricked by shiny objects. Virality, those things actually don’t last.
So having surrounding yourself with a trusted community and circle really essential because I think we’re in an age where we need to, we need less persuasion and more trust.

Rick: That’s a, yeah, I, agree with that. And, you touched on something that’s the shiny object syndrome. I, think many of us, myself included Would suffer from it. and you get to a point in life where, you get, hopefully you get to pick your focus and that, it’s a completely different world. You know what I mean? Yeah. It’s, it’s, liberating in a way.

Fei Wu: Very much Yeah. And you make so much more progress too.

Rick: exactly.
Fei, thanks a lot for being on the show with us today. I wanna give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about an interview today, which I, doubt. Okay. What is the one thing that you should remember about the work you guys are doing?

Fei Wu: I think contextual footprint, what does that mean exactly?
I think in this day and age, think about where people are searching for you or your services, your company, they’re on chatt, BT perplexity, clawed. If you can rank in, on those LLMs, you’re going to transform your business, but focus on authenticity. Focusing on how you and your services can be understood by AI and by human beings.
And, I do wanna give a shout out. I thought you were gonna ask me about a book that I encouraged people to, to read and learn. There’s a great AI book by Fei Lee, not me the other Fe And it’s an incredible book. And, my friend Tripti bought it for me and I started reading it. I do highly recommend I even wrote down the full name.
It’s. The world’s I see, curiosity, exploration, and Discovery at the dawn of AI by Fe Lee. So check it out.

Rick: Alright, that’s an interesting one. Relevant for every one of us really involved in this conversation or listening to it, so thanks for sharing that. Yeah, that was really

Fei Wu: absolutely my pleasure.

Rick: Hey, if someone wants to check you guys out and, see what your role about and maybe, understand more about your services even, how can they do that?

Fei Wu: Yeah, very simple. Go visit our website Feis World. That’s F as in Frank, EIS world.com. And we have a blog, we have a sponsorship page. you send us an email, it’s me who’s reading it. We also, of course, have a YouTube channel also under Feis World, Feis World Media, but we’re pretty consistent everywhere on social media, YouTube, blog.
So hope to hear from you guys.

Rick: Beautiful. fa thanks again for sharing your insights. I wish you a wonderful day.