#4 This One Superpower Will 🚀 Your Career
I got a late start in SEO —
It wasn’t until my early 30s, two failed Master degrees, and an entire decade spent as a wedding photographer did I make a life-changing course correction.
Unlike many of my peers, I didn’t have decades of experience working in SEO, so I’ve had a lot of catching up to do.
So how did I start from the very bottom of an agency, and within 3 years, become Team Lead, and for the very first time in my life, earn a 6-figure base salary?
I had a very strong why.
And, it helps to have a superpower.
But unlike Superman, I wasn’t born with this ability.
No, I developed this skill and this means that you can too.
So, what is this superpower of mine?
It’s empathy
You see, I can almost always see things from the perspective of someone else. Now, this someone else can be a client, a stakeholder, a colleague (I dislike), my hiring manager, a senior VP etc.
FYI, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. And the reason why empathy is a superpower is because it unlocks the following abilities:
- It allows me to manage up by perceiving the things that matter to my manager and be prepare a simple decision tree for them to choose from.
- Tell a story using data to fit a particular narrative.
- Empathy allows the other person to walk away from a conversation or meeting feeling as though they’ve won (or at least, not lost).
I’ve talked about the topic of empathy previously on the Search with Candour Podcast with Jack Chambers-Ward, and I’m not alone in this approach.
Chima Mmeje, Senior Content Marketing Manager at Moz said the following on a Clearscope Q&A recently:
“Everything that I do as a marketer, empathy rules all of that. It guides how I think about the content I want to create, it guides the strategy — it guides everything. I’m always thinking how is this going to benefit the user and add value to their life.”
I love it and I’m all for it.
But (there’s always a but) many of you choose to be right and this desire to be ‘not wrong’ is oftentimes the enemy of empathy.
You see, you have a choice to make in every meeting and interaction you have with others.
Do you choose to be right?
Or do you choose to work together with others — even if it means getting to your desired outcome a bit later.
Lucas Ng, who heads up marketing at Appliances Online commented recently, “Yes, in enterprise, we’re not always looking for the most technically gifted SEOs. Often we’re looking for SEOs that excel in conflict resolution, for example, can you collaborate with a product manager by providing a clear brief? Coerce a project manager with a compelling business case? Compromise with an engineering team on a halfway solution?”
This is why so many (affiliate) SEOs view in-house SEOs as being ‘boring’.
I, personally, find it exhilarating day-to-day.
The better you are at developing empathic behaviours, the more others are willing to help you — even if it means going out of their way for you.
Here are some ways you can apply empathy.
1. Minimise the surprise
When you work in-house, you’re a glorified ticket writer and SEO evangelist.
Before you submit a ticket, use Slack, Teams or any other internal communications tool to start a conversation with the recipient of said ticket.
Do this to (a) minimise the surprise for the assignee, and (b) get a better scope of the level of effort required.
This is important because what may seem like a simple action for you may be quite complicated and have several dependencies unknown to you.
By having an initial conversation before you push the problem onto someone else, let the know in advance to make sure adequate context is provided.
This will save a lot of back and forth (and frustrating escalations)!
2. Reduce barriers to execution
Ticketing systems are designed to shift your problem to someone else — a corporate game of hot potato. This is one of the reasons why so many people hate Jira.
I see poorly written tickets all the time (I’ve written some myself!).
Poorly written tickets typically share 3 things in common: (i) incomplete details, (ii) vague instructions, and/or (iii) unrealistic demands.
The problem with poorly written tickets is that even if the assignee were motivated to carry out the task, you’ve made it so much more difficult for them to do so.
How?
Well, you’ve introduced an unnecessary barrier for them to do their job. Essentially, you’ve literally made it more difficult for someone else to help you with your task.
Therefore, invest more time providing clear and complete instructions — even if it takes you an extra few hours. Doing so will improve the likelihood the assignee can pick it up and get started.
A saying I’ve come to embrace is, “Go slow in orrder to go fast”. And spending half a day, getting the data clean and formatted, and attaching it to the Jira ticket with very clear instructions, is half a day well spent in my opinion.
3. Manage up
This tweet by Wes Kao on the subject of ‘managing up’ resonated so deeply with me because I’ve been practicing this for al most my entire professional life.
In enterprise life, your boss has a boss who has a boss who also has a boss.
Read Wes’ tweet because it details actionable things you can do every single day that will reflect well for you.
Whether it is a weekly round-up email, or sending agenda topics prior to a 1:1, to sending them your presentation deck ahead of time so that they can vet it, these are things I’ve done to make life easier for my managers, and so can you.
4. Ease into the data (with a story)
A mistake I made early on was going straight into the data.
This is because I have always preferred to get straight to the point and skip the chit chat.
But, something most of us will never know is the sheer amount of information that is thrown at senior leadership every single meeting.
Instead of jumping straight into the data and overwhelming senior leadership, tell a story, set the scene, give them context to help them feel like they are in control — in other words, ease into things and don’t go into a meeting guns blazing.
A leader who feels like they grasp the problem and why this has happened is more likely to appreciate you and be more open to your proposal.
From what I’ve seen, the worst thing you can do is show a slide with a table filled with numbers.
Someone recently helped me with this by leaving me the following feedback on a slide deck of mine, “This slide is not self-explanatory.”
Help leaders make sense by removing the noise and giving them the tools necessary to understand the situation.
But it’s not only leaders.
In my day job, I meet with many regional stakeholders from various business units. An early mistake I made was disclosing too much and too soon.
Instead of easing into the data, I derailed the entire meeting with my shocking findings and they were right to be alarmed given the information I had just shared.
What you tell and what you don’t tell is equally important.
Get your story straight first — then, and only then, pair it with the data so that the course of action is clear and everyone feels as though it is their decision to do it.
And here’s a pro-tip.
Give your boss a heads up on your presentation and talk track beforehand (remember, manage up!). It is a fantastic way to get feedback on how to make your delivery better.
5. Bring other stakeholders on a journey together
Remember how I said search marketers like to be right?
When we don’t ever want to be wrong, our actions can cause a lot of friction with other teams.
Here’s the thing about working in a any organisation: relationships matter.
You can easily burn a bridge by doing the ‘right’ thing.
I could have burned a lot of bridges at Optus and Adobe by wanting to implement basic technical SEO recommendations.
I could have easily forced things to happen — I mean, it’s my job to get these things things fixed, right?
Wrong.
Let that sink in.
If you want to thrive in your in-house SEO role, I highly recommend bringing others along with you because not having allies will really suck for you.
A great way to gain allies is to be empathetic.
Sometimes, it’s better to hold your tongue.
Sometimes, not winning lets you win a bigger stake later.
Oftentimes, people will help you when you’ve helped them and in many cases, not being an a-hole and making their job difficult is a good enough reason to help you.
Thanks for making it this far!
If you’re a search marketer wanting to transition to an enterprise role, you’re going to want to subscribe to Journal of an Enterprise SEO.
In the next edition, I’ll share how I did the exact same thing as a freelancer and agency-side.
What exactly is Journal of an Enterprise SEO?
A lot of people think in-house SEO is boring.
They’re not wrong, but they’re not exactly right either.
Hello! I’m Daniel K Cheung, the author of this newsletter. In 2022, I made the jump from a $130,000 salary agency-side to a $149,000 one at Australia’s second-largest telecommunication company before landing a role at Adobe.
Ever since then, I’ve come to respect in-house roles, learned to roll with the challenges, and look forward to the incredible potential of B2B enterprise SEO. I want to share my journey because getting hired was a huge milestone in my career.
Every week, I will be sharing tips, including:
- How to get a job as an SEO at an enterprise
- How to increase your sphere of influence
- How to get the most out of your 1:1s with your manager
- Mistakes to avoid in your performance review
So whether you’re at the beginning of your SEO career, about to apply for an enterprise role, or have just started and are finding it really difficult to get things done, I’m writing this for you.