Are You Good At What You Do?
Does Spring Insight do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) well?
I have to be honest; if you had asked me back in February if we were any good at SEO, I would have said we were probably an 8.5 out of ten. Sure, we aren’t Bo Derek. (Dial it down, young ones! That is an actual, albeit ancient reference.)
But then, we hired an SEO specialist as part of our team, a true professional, and I realized that my purported eight was actually a generously graded two.
Were we doing keyword research? Yes… ish. Did we write great content? Sure, but we weren’t crafting content toward SEO objectives or implementing SEO best practices in our content marketing strategies. Oddly, we were doing the big things well but pooping the bed on the little things. The end result was that we might as well have stayed home.
Taking An Honest Look
Thankfully, we are now the after story. I no longer have the hubris to say that we are an 8.5, but I think we are a SOLID seven. We can totally get a date at a bar way before last call.
Why am I telling this story? Well, it was a humbling experience realizing that we simply weren’t as good at performing a service that we offered as we thought we were.
I know exactly how it happened. As a full-service outsourced digital marketing agency, we are trying to tick a lot of boxes. It is only natural for any organization to be stronger in some skills than in others. The problem here was just that we thought we were better than we were. And, we’re surely not the only ones in such a situation.
Are You Ready To Take An Honest Look?
So, let me ask you… are you as good as you think at all the services you offer?
If your answer isn’t a resounding YES, then what next?
1. Stop Offering It.
The thing about our SEO situation was that it turned out that most of our clients at that time didn’t really care about that service. Instead, they used our blog topics to promote their business on their existing platforms. So, we really could have just stopped talking about our services in the context of SEO and instead focused on what we were great at-providing well-written, compelling and persuasive content in the client’s voice and about technical or niche topics.
2. Get Better.
Just because you don’t have a skill doesn’t mean you can’t acquire it. The great thing about living in this modern era is that everything is learnable (and most of it is learnable for free).
Got an Internet connection? If so, you have what you need to learn how to do almost anything. (Except maybe poach an egg. No matter how many tutorials you take, that seems impossible to learn. Or, maybe that is just me.)
3. Hire Someone To Make You Better.
This is what I did. We hired someone who spoke SEO. Her presence on our team made us better from the first day she started. Her fresh eyes on our processes have fundamentally changed the way we approach… well, everything.
You know what? The process was so beneficial that we recently did it again. We looked at our service offerings to decide if there was another offering that needed a dramatic upgrade. We landed on social media and recently hired a B2B social media specialist to supplement our team.
Our Biggest Takeaway
The biggest lesson for me in this process was realizing that not only is it ok to admit that you aren’t great at something you offer, but it is also cathartic and truly beneficial for your clients. “Fake it until you make it” only works if you are actively working on making it.
Ready to test out our newly revamped SEO and social media services? We would love to chat! Schedule a Free 30 minute strategy session today.