Speaker: Alison Bolen @alisonbolen Content Editor SAS
Presentation: Results-Driven Blogging for B2B Brands

Alison’s presentation focused on corporate blogging and the blog program at SAS (a $2 billion business analytics company).

The history of SAS and social media started in 1976 with the first SAS Global Forum, 2004 internal blog program, 2006 SAS communities launched, 2007 the first external blog launched and in 2011 the transition to the WordPress platform. You can find SAS blogs here: blogs.sas.com

Alison works in the Public Relations organization at SAS along with 8 other corporate journalists.

How to Grow a Corporate Blogging Program

Develop a strategy: Find out where the current corporate strategies are and find a hook into them. For the SAS blogging program, there were 3 main goals: to align with PR, Marketing and Customer Support.

Blogging supports each stage of the funnel:

• Identify the problem / opportunity
• Research solutions
• Evaluate
• Consider
• Purchase

SAS blog efforts are meta data enabled: by persona, by category, by industry. For content to be relevant and valuable it must be persona based and aligned with steps in the buying process.

The next step in corporate blogging strategy development is to find the right content. Ask these important questions: Where do stories live? (Word Docs, PPTs, Videos, Live Events) Where does knowledge live? (Sharepoint, White papers)

Now it’s time to find the right people. Alison gave the example of two SAS bloggers that write for distinct audiences.

Blog Planning with Monthly Assignments. All posts are due on a specific date each month. The most timely posts are published first. Breaking news and fillers are published as relevant. A schedule ensures there is content to work with each month.

Another planning option is to focus on one specific topic. For example, each Quarter, focus on a specific topic for each blogging contributing to that particular blog.

Another angle on corporate blog planning involves themes every week. Example: Monday (Getting Started Articles) Wednesdays (Topics the Blogger is Trying to Learn & Documenting that Process) Friday (Posts in reaction to a particular topic from other blogs)

Tap Internal Subject Matter Experts: If the organizational structure supports it, you can divide blogging assignments by areas of specialization. Example: 16 Think Tank team members for healthcare at SAS that includes authors who specialize in specific areas. They are assigned to blog on their area of expertise at least once a month.

Have a blog that new bloggers can contribute to in order to show their commitment. SAS also has an internal blog network of 700+ bloggers that also acts as a testing ground.

If you have a group blog, you must have an editor. No assignments and nobody in charge = NO CONTENT. A blog editor is a content chaser, people watcher and project manager – not necessarily a corporate communications person.

For events, plan across blogs as needed. Map topics and aspects of the events to be covered by the different blogs in your organization to ensure coverage.

If blogs don’t work out, retire them.

Coach and advise, don’t micromanage. Be patient with different learning styles. Don’t pre-judge and expect too much.

Results: Customer Support – Positive comments and links to your blogs.
Results: Marketing – Bloggers invited to speak at conferences, getting calls from journalists, posts picked up by industry publications and bloggers getting invites to write books
Results: The New PR – Journalists contacting SAS after seeing blog posts. It’s the new PR.
Results: The Blog is the top news source on the sas.com website. In fact. compared to other news pages on the SAS site, the blogging effort is blowing other content out of the water in terms of traffic.

I think Alison gave some really useful ideas for blog content and planning. One of the most common objections I hear from companies that really should be blogging (and not all companies should) is that they have difficulty with creating content on an ongoing basis. It’s a big mind shift and kudos to SAS for having 8 Corporate Journalists on staff.

Comments

Being social on the web isn’t natural for everyone and certainly not for every company. Once people and companies “get it” and develop processes, listening programs and overall strategy, social media policies tend to lighten up and move towards being productive vs limiting.

Some people really shine in their social web participation and companies often see increased social networking and engagement by individuals as an uncertain area. Some see building personal networks and attention as a threat to the brand that prompts questions as to whether individuals are simply building their own brand, (brandividual) on the company’s dime or are they acting as they should on the company’s behalf?

This issue has come to light several times in the past. As an example, there are some interesting arguments surrounding Forrester’s recent policy decision to limit staff blogging to non company topics. Forrester’s product is their IP, so they want to control what IP is released. At the same time, analysts discussing those topics on their own blogs can build more attention and awareness of the products Forrester sells.

The issue of corporate brand and brandividualism will only increase in importance. The real and perceived loss of control for managers has to be dealt with eventually.  Concerns from managers are totally reasonable since not all individuals promoting themselves and growing their networks during business hours are doing so with corporate business goals in mind.

On one hand, the employee is paid to promote the company brand. Because of so many opportunities for self promotion with corporate brand promotion, there can be “distractions”.

It’s essential that the company and employees acting on behalf of the company operate with a congruent vision and mutually agreed upon expectations.

Many budding brandividuals have an over-inflated sense of importance because of what they perceive to be end goal successes which are often more like proxies or stepping stones to what’s really important for a business.

For example: attracting friends/fans/followers, being mentioned by influential blogs, networking with other “known” digerati can seem uplifting to an individual that seeks increased visibility and credibility.  Those are important events, but they’re not the end goals that help companies make payroll. They’re a means to an end (revenue, brand, customer acquisition and retention). I think a lot of the folks that get “amped up” by social celebrity confuse notoriety with the ability to generate revenue.

Of course customers might become aware of a company’s services because of their social connection with a brandividual and may even stay with a company due to their relationship with that individual. But that’s not the issue I’m describing.

I did a post about the crack-like addiction to online fame in the SEO industry a while back, observing newer SEOs giving away loopholes and “secret” tactics to gain notoriety. Seeing fame as an end goal vs. a tool to extend brand exposure and shorten sales cycles created a situation in the Search Marketing world where individuals would focus all their efforts on becoming “known”, missing the business objectives entirely. “It’s hard to pay the bills with a pocket full of famous”. 

On the other hand, empowering staff to become better known and influential with which to promote your brand can be a great investment. The employee gets something to take with them when that time comes (and it will eventually) and at the same time, they have more to work with when promoting your brand.

Some managers will look at such activity and try to control it. That’s not the productive move thing to do in my opinion. Others will embrace it and encourage their staff to be all they can be to meet personal goals and company goals at the same time.

It’s critical to set expectations and have a strategic perspective of what the brandividual’s efforts are to achieve. Managers have to talk to these staff members and get involved with what they’re doing more than other types of company marketing. That’s a bit of a rub sometimes because executives hire community managers or digital marketing managers for the purpose of promoting the company because they don’t have time and expertise themselves.

I think in most cases, the best thing to do is keep in perspective that the stronger the brand of the individual that is tasked with promoting a business, the more reach and impact they may have. Getting exposure themselves will indeed benefit them personally, but if they’re doing so as a member of your brand’s “team” then it’s no different than an all star on a sports team drawing more attention to the team franchise.

What do you think? Does “brandividualism” put companies and their brands at risk? If you work at a company and have become a bit of a brandividual yourself, how has the company dealt with it? If your company has some “rock star” social media staff, how do you best empower them? Or does your company prefer to try and control such activity?

Comments

Recently Jason Falls made an insightful comment on his blog about PR professionals being “social media ready”. In that post, he cited the need for specific social media marketing skills to be assessed for companies evaluating the effectiveness of their PR efforts.

The state of the PR industry is in flux with increasing emphasis on the digital and social side of communications. In the context of digital PR, social media savvy is the jelly to SEO (search engine optimization) peanut butter. As PR efforts continue to emphasize content publishing, digital and social communications, the opportunity to keyword optimize content for search is low hanging fruit for those that are in the know.

Forward thinking companies would do well to assess the SEO and social media readiness of their marketing and PR resources. Is the current digital PR effort leveraging improved visibility through search engines? Do current PR and Marketing staff or vendors possess the digital PR tools they need to offer competitive consulting in a “PR 2.0” world?

Consider the following questions to assess the SEO and social media readiness of your digital PR assets:

1. Is social media participation conducted without attention to SEO?

According to the iPressroom Digital Readiness Report, social media adoption outranks organic SEO. Yet more than 82% of Internet users surveyed in “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers” (published by Tom Smith, one of the researchers of the Digital Readiness Report) stated search engines are the tools most frequently used to source information about products, brands and services. That disconnect reinforces the need for search engine optimization as a key digital marketing and PR tactic.

2. Do your social media and SEO efforts work together?

Some companies are indeed implementing social media and SEO programs, albeit separately. SEO and social media have a clear intersection, and if both are in place, they can work together to compound results.

The outcome of many social media interactions and sharing is content. One of the most important concepts to grasp when exploring possibilities with search for PR is that, “If content can be searched on, it can be optimized for better performance.” Therefore, content creation should factor in search optimization whenever relevant.

Social media marketing efforts that factor in keyword optimization of content can directly influence the discovery of communities and social content via search engines. Additionally, social content can boost links to your website, improving search traffic and Pull PR results. In other words, if you’re going to create it, why not optimize it? Implementing social media and SEO as silos misses a significant opportunity.

3. Is a search and social media friendly website part of the digital PR strategy?

The 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer indicates that companies’ own websites are viewed as more credible sources of information than blogs, social networks or advertising. The positive effects of frequently updated, quality content on search rankings present a strong case for investing in a search and social media friendly content strategy. Whether PR professionals have influence over content creation on an entire web site or limited to an online newsroom, keyword optimization of news content creates entry points to stories through search for journalists, analysts and bloggers researching online.

4. Where does a blog fit within the social media content strategy?

The highest-ranked digital skill for large organizations, according to the iPressroom Digital Readiness Report, is blogging. Blog savvy PR efforts should include the ability to develop a blog content plan that not only publishes news that the company wants to distribute, but information of specific value to target audiences. Such a blog content plan might include a scheduled mix of posts on subjects relevant to an industry niche in formats that are journalist and/or blogger friendly.

Now that every company that is promoting themselves online is in effect, a media company, it’s important to begin to think like one by leveraging an editorial plan and to package information that is useful to customers as well as journalists and other bloggers. Search optimized and social media friendly blog content can extend the reach of company news to search engines as well as social media news and bookmarking sites.

5. Are target audiences profiled and what is the best way to reach them?

Analyzing survey results is a great start to determine best practices, tools and tactics for a digital PR strategy. But it’s just that—a start. Profiling the target audience should be an early and integral part of the process.

Who is the target audience? What are their preferences for types of social content? Which social media sites do they visit, and how often? What type of search do they use for story research? Answers to these questions and more will make a digital PR effort that leverages both search optimization and social media participation more efficient. A good model for understanding social behaviors is the Forrester Technographics report. If consumer social behaviors can be profiled, why not journalists and bloggers?

6. What is your PR firm’s true core competency: traditional or digital PR including social media and SEO?

The demand for traditional PR skills by many accounts is slipping. 18% of respondents in the Digital Readiness Reports said they have no interest whatsoever in traditional PR. For the vast majority of respondents, knowledge of social networks (80%), blogging, podcasting and RSS (87%), and micro-blogging (72%) is either important or very important when it comes to PR and marking hiring.

The big question for companies that want to stay ahead of the digital PR game is, “How do your PR resources (in-house or agency) measure up?
—
Please also read PR Does Not Stand for Press Release

Comments

Having worked as a consultant for well over 10 years in the SEO space with hundreds of companies, large ($100bn) and small (un-funded startup ca 2001), there have been many opportunities to learn the ins and outs of working with companies to effectively provide SEO related services.

The SEO client/vendor relationship must be a win/win or it will go bad/bad.  For some companies it’s not enough to get the results expected (or more) but to receive a certain type of service or support as well. For others, education to bring SEO work in-house is most important.  Some companies want to outsource the whole thing with little or no involvement and others want the agency to justify and build a case for each specific code/content edit or inbound link.

Here are a few tips on finding and engaging SEO consultants for the long term:

1. The first thing is to find a good agency team. On the surface, this looks easy since just about every agency in the interactive-PR-advertising-webdesign-ITconsulting-marketinganything space also happens to “do SEO”.

If you’ve worked in a particular market and industry, chances are you’ve already established relationships with various consultants. Word of mouth referrals are often times the best for all when it comes to search engine optimization or digital marketing work. Personal experience with a company is important, but it’s worth noting that not everyone in a position to hire a vendor is capable of managing them. The same is true for people calling themselves consulants and their abilities to deliver services. Word of mouth referrals deserve some level of qualification.

Getting a new job or project that requires outside expertise often drives the search for new consulting resources.  This is a scenario where it pays to be networked.

As an example, I recently posted questions to my network on Twitter for recommended iPhone app developers and another time for videographer/editing talent. In both cases, I received 5-8 recommendations and passed them on to companies looking to hire.

Being networked in such situations saved me a substantial amount of time pursuing alternative search methods. It also saved the clients, for whom I was helping, a lot of time. On top of that it helped the people making recommendations of others because by doing so, it built up their credibility as a resource to others as well as the individuals they were recommending. Lastly, it benefitted the people that were recommended because they received additional visibility and one got the job.

Obviously, a company shouldn’t just hire whoever gets recommended to them. There need to be criteria and objectives, which I’ll describe further in tip #3.  Some companies like to use a RFP to describe the nature of the engagement and to define the specific criteria/expectations for vendor selection. RFPs for SEO with the expectation of being able to make apples to apples comparisons are tough since there is no “one right way” to solve every SEO problem. Regardless, the word of mouth referral from a credible source as well as fundamental expecations and goals should be enough to find a good agency in most cases.

2. Remember the Golden Rule.  Consultants should be respectful and honorable to clients/prospective clients and vice versa. There are many reasons why people act abusively or rudely to consultants when they’re trying to outsource.  Sometimes corporate staff carry a bit of “baggage” from a past bad experience or they’re simply annoyed at having to outsource at all. In other situations certain people become used to abusing vendors to look good to their superiors. Regardless, a client/agency relationship needs to be mutually respectful.

In the current economic environment, it’s pretty amazing what some companies will do in negotiations for services. The video below makes a bit of fun of that:

Let’s be clear that agencies are not immune to bad behavior. I’ve heard stories of SEO companies that develop networks of sites to boost client search rankings and then take all those links or microsites away when the client disengages.  Still other situations involve consultants that employ risky tactics without informing the client or never really disclosing what they’re actually doing or reporting on what the company is paying for.

Besides holding one’s own behavior and intentions to a higher standard, the way to ensure equitable treatment is through a structured agreement. A proper scope of work and project plan should be in place defining expectations and roles for both client and agency as well as mutual respect for expertise and meeting/exceeding customer expectations.

3. Think Through Your Objectives and Resources. Many companies don’t have a great understanding of the mechanics or even strategies behind successful SEO or social media programs, which is understandable because that’s why they need to hire an outside consultant. A clear set of internet marketing goals is essential for getting the most out of an agency engagement.

Manydigital marketing agencies are certainly capable of engaging in a discovery process with companies to determine what goals are realistic.  But reacting to the competition, acting on a CEO’s whim (aka “ego search”) or as a result of a well oiled pitch by a consultant are not great reasons to start a search engine optimization effort.

Understanding what business goals are to be reached is critical for a successful search marketing program. This means more than measuring rankings, traffic and sales because holistic SEO can both increase revenue and decrease costs in areas such as Customer Service, Recruiting and Public Relations.  SEO isn’t a “try it and buy it” situation. It takes a commitment in time and resources, especially content creation, promotion and analytics.

When a company can communicate objectives and has an understanding of resources available, a good consultant will have the information they’ll need to leverage analysis for project recommendations. It’s a lot harder to “score” or win the game if you don’t know where the goal is.

4. Honesty Trumps Hiding SEO Skeletons and Abilities . Some companies have been left with bad decisions in the past ranging from hiring a lowball fee SEO consultant that “guarantees” specific search visibility to instances where certain SEOs used questionable tactics to shortcut results only to end up losing the value of those efforts or worse, being penalized.

If a past SEO consultant has been hired and performed questionable tactics, it will save a lot of time for everyone involved, if those efforts are shared up front. Most, if not all, of such tactics will be discovered by the new SEO anyway. Informing a new consultant of past efforts will speed the work it will take to employ any fix efforts and if necessary, steps towards reinclusion.

On the topic of honesty, it’s even more important that internet marketing consultants be up front about their capabilities.  Remnants of software companies selling “vaporware” still exist within many tech and IT focused SEO consultancies. However, saying yes to every project results in “overpromise and underdeliver” sitiuations. Delays, mis-communications and overall dis-satisfaction inevitably result.

It’s better to be fully aware of capabilities and be open about what can and cannot be done at the service levels required. Doing so allows the consultancy to do their best work for clients that expect exactly that.  Internet marketing agencies with a good grasp of their areas of expertise decline many projects that require services outside their specific areas of expertise. In some cases, the situation can be solved by partnering with other agencies. In others, it simply makes more sense to recommend another agency with the specialization the company requires. The goodwill generated pays dividends many times over in the long run.

5. Win or Lose with Implementation. One of the most common issues in the SEO industry involves situations where SEO recommendations are not implemented as intended , not completely or at all.  This is a bit ironic, since, companies pay for the advice but there are many reasons why it happens.  Some companies cannot justify the expense of making major changes to their content management systems or the potential effects do not justify the changes in content creation processes.

In other cases, the nature of the SEO engagement is structured as an audit and delivered as a report of recommendations to the client. Implementation is up to the client’s web development staff or agency, copywriters and other marketing personnel without SEO consultant oversight.  Some companies do this to save money or more often, because they see SEO as a web development/IT project and not as a marketing project. Client side staff can easily get tasked with many other responsibilities and the SEO recommendations may not all get implemented before other projects take priority.

Link building and content promotion are the most common victims where there is a lack of ongoing SEO consulting.  In fact, many SEO companies are not particularly skilled at ongoing site marketing and link building let alone companies who do not market web sites as a specialty.  On top of implementation issues are training and staying current with SEO best practices. As staff within an organization change, knowledge of SEO goes with them. New staff need to be trained or they will not continue with the ongoing content optimization and link building necessary for maintaining and improving search engine visibility.

Whether you’re a SEO consultant or on the client side, what advice can you offer on getting the most value from SEO engagements?

Comments

Gary Koelling at a MIMA Event

After seeing Gary speak at a MIMA event (pictured right) I thought it would be interesting to get a few of his insights as a social media evangelist within a large company as well as advice for others.

For the uninitiated, can you describe your creative and writing background as well as what you do in your current position as Senior Manager, Social Technology for Best Buy?

I’m a J School grad from the University of Minnesota . Unlike many of my classmates I took the low road and went into advertising. I worked as a copywriter for many years, most recently at Carmichael Lynch. I came to Best Buy in 2003 as a creative director. In the fall of 2006, six months after the launch of BlueShirt Nation, my day job changed. Most days my job involves building and maintaining social technology tools like BlueShirt Nation, Best Buy’s internal social network. And more recently Giftag.com, a universal gift registry slash wish list. With increasing frequency my job involves education, trying to help others understand what social media is and what it means to a corporation.

How would you define “social media” to someone not fluent in interactive or online marketing?

I hesitate a little to use the word education to describe the process of explaining to people what social media is. For one thing, what it is is constantly changing. New technologies and new ways of using them are being introduced all the time and this changes the tone and depth of our online and offline social interactions.

The other reason I hesitate is because it’s not so much education as it is re-education which often means having to unlearn a lot of what they think they know about how to act. A lot of people say to me “I’m completely ignorant about this stuff” or “I’m totally dumb when it comes to this stuff.” What I hear is “This scares me.”

What are some of the common issues large organizations encounter when trying to evaluate and adopt social media technologies? Are you seeing more internal or external facing applications? (ex: building a private social network vs engaging in existing/public social networks)

From about 1994 to about 2005 or 2006 our relationship with interactive media had been pretty much identical to the relationship we’ve had with mass media for about the last hundred years. The few create and the many consume. The how, what and why of the message is controlled and sometimes vetted by journalistic standards. Social Media doesn’t hew to this model because the center of control has been moved from the few to the many. This does not compute with our current math, our current approach of even calling it ‘media.’

As a result I get a lot plaintive if earnest looks from people who have either been sent to me by their bosses to get smart about this thing or who understand that something fundamental is shifting under feet and they’re terrified. In both cases they feel helpless. And there’s the tragedy. The corporation, as a way of organizing group activity, has little room for what is social; trust, thoughtfulness, vulnerability – human. It’s required that we suppress these things and substitute policy, process and ambition.

So when I tell people, “Be human” I get, “What does that mean?” or “Can we do that – who has to approve it?” At that moment I find myself having to help people remember what it was like to interact with real people. Could you get fired for acting human in this context? I suppose you could. The handicap that we’re running up against is that as a person, the corporation, or more specifically the brand that is presented internally and externally, behaves like a sociopath.

The external or customer facing effect (as well internal) is that when in normal conversation brands tend to act paranoid, or narcissistic. “Nice day today” begets “Compared to what?” Or “How’s the weather?” begets “Beautiful day to buy some of my stuff.” To be fair, it’s not easy being social. It takes work. Even as “social” animals we have our struggles so is it really surprising that an abstraction that wants to be human struggles with it? Nah.

What kind of impact has Best Buy’s internal social network, BlueShirtNation.com had and how did you come about creating it?

The impact or value of social technology, like most ubiquitous technology, is hard to measure. You know a phone system has value but it’s hard to even know where to begin to take a measure of that. I truly wish I had a better answer but like any relationship, if you want to keep it healthy, you have to pay attention. You can’t just monitor it. You have to really pay attention. In paying attention the two things I tend to collect are 1) stories from users about how the technology failed them or helped them win and 2) admissions of fear. You can tell a lot by watching those two things.

Can you share a few high level tips for companies that are in discovery mode when it comes to tasks such as deciding on social platforms and applications, internal management and success measurement? Or should they take a less evaluative approach and just jump in?

If you’re ready to count more failures than wins and if you can get honest admissions of fear – you’re almost ready to jump in. But first ask yourself “What kind of relationship do I (not We) want to have with my employees or customers? Give yourself an honest answer. If it’s a purely transactional relationship that’s fine. If it’s something else, try to plot it on a line of intimacy somewhere between “Someone I see a couple days a week in the elevator” and “Soul mate.” Hopefully, for their sake, it’s somewhere in the middle. Then practice. Keep it small. Say hi. Get to know each other. Try things. Learn. If a jaded old ad guy like me can figure it out, the rest of you should be fine.

What are some of the resources (sites, blogs, books, events, networks, applications, etc) that you rely on for information on social media best practices?

Here are couple of books that have enlightened me:

• The New Age of Innovation: Driving Cocreated Value Through Global Networks by C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan
• The Future of the Internet-And How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
• Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

And here are a couple of sites I keep up with: readwriteweb.com and techcrunch.com

Comments

There are increasing numbers of resources from which to attract or find candidates whether it’s traditional online job boards like Monster.com, SEO job listings at SEMPO or sites dedicated to SEO recruiting. Making sure actual SEO skills and experience are in alignment with company/client needs is as important as setting accurate expectations for job responsibilities and work environment.

Hiring more experienced internet marketers in the hopes of bringing a knowledgeable outside perspective to a constantly evolving set of processes can seem promising. However, finding experienced SEO professionals who are willing to work for an agency can be challenging. This is especially true if working remotely might not be an option. Also, the fact that there are many opportunities to generate substantial income from building, promoting and monetizing one’s own web sites provides less incentive for some to work for a company.

A few options for finding or attracting experienced SEO talent include those working for agencies where SEO is not the primary marketing offering, sole operators that are tired of wearing all the hats of a small consulting business and search marketers that work in-house for companies.

Many client side search marketers who have been in the same role for 5+ years at another company or companies tend to have become comfortable in certain ways that may not make absorption into a fast moving, ever changing environment productive – either for the employee or the company. This is especially true in larger companies where people can get lost within bureaucracy and the minutiae of process without being holistically accountable for all aspects of the company’s search marketing program.

Solo SEO consultants tend to want to keep their clients while performing SEO work for the agency, which is understandable, but technically working for the competition. Financial and HR managers have a tough time accepting the idea of paying someone while they build their own consulting business with the potential to take clients. You can’t have an effective non-compete in place (at least I haven’t seen one) where SEO consultants work both for themselves and for an agency. For many SEO agencies, intellectual property is the biggest asset and needs to be protected.

Hiring people that have worked a year or three for another agency that offers token SEO services but isn’t a specialist often times brings people who over value their own expertise. Having been a big fish in a small pond, there’s a tendency to become unrealistic in self assessment of skills.

In these cases, everything looks good on paper, but when the rubber hits the road, jaw dropping comments like, “You don’t actually think I’m going to write web page copy, do you? I’m an SEO, not a copywriter. I do keyword research!” make hiring managers white knuckle it all the way to the server room.

Some agencies won’t hire more tenured SEOs due to the perception of “baggage” and some will only hire recent college grads preferring to train them up. What’s important for agencies is to put forth the proper effort to define responsibilities, both anticipated and unanticipated as well performing the due diligence of testing actual skills, checking references and ensuring there is a personality fit with the rest of the organization.

What’s important for SEO candidates is to be honest in their ambitions, self assessment of skills and willingness to focus as much or more on meeting client needs as they are on meeting their own.

Within TopRank we have a mantra that guides the way we do business: Client > Company > Self.

This sequence prioritizes decision making to ensure those paying the bills (clients) are first and foremost in all aspects of consulting/operations. Emphasizing client success makes both the company and the individuals that make up the company successful.

Overall, it’s a mix of hiring experienced professionals as well as individuals with a few years of post University work experience that share a never ending passion for learning, tolerance for ambiguity and a keen interest in both creative and technical problem solving that makes ours an effective team.

Segmenting the process driven tasks of a search engine optimization campaign from pure consulting creates an environment that allows for entry level hiring and an upward mobility path for advancement.

Incidentally, the punch line of this post is of course, that TopRank is hiring. There are two positions currently open for Online Marketing Specialist.

Please contact: hr at toprankresults dot com or visit the TopRank Online Marketing web site.

Comments