Sorry I’ve been gone for a while- but let’s talk about PowerPoint.
Right after my last post, my social life went a bit pear-shaped due to the strains of a social life on a moderate-extreme introvert (I know, it’s hard having friends). I prioritized the essentials and bore through and survived the holiday season, I think. We’ll see.
However, one of the biggest occurrences in my digital absence here has been an opportunity in my 9-5 gig. I’ve referenced my Coursera SEO Specialization work before, and it re-surfaced in a conversation with my manager.
PowerPoint: The outcome?
A five minute PowerPoint presentation, fancy transitions and all, to my team on basic search engine optimization. The slides caused a comment in a manager’s meeting. Voila! The vice-president of my department is now in the process of coordinating a concentrated review of how search-friendly our content is.
Seeing the results of a small conversation garner such rapid attention and traction is not only empowering, but professionally significant. A potential project with my name attached could span across my department and content pipeline. If the data supports action, lead on the project has already been promised to me.
This is my first real opportunity to take on actual SEO work, and I’m fortunate that if things come to pass, I’ll have support from not just my management team, but our specialized web content team to implement front-end SEO directly. Obviously, I’m very excited, but a task this large can be daunting, and my current experience level may prove to be insufficient to the task. Even so, I stand to learn a lot and generate some great resume bullet points.
Once I hear back, I’ll be sure to share more about the resources (free) that I used to demonstrate basics with my team and manager, and how I was able to interpret that for web users who aren’t as well-versed in the terminology.
One of the reasons I want to share this experience with you is because I’ve noticed the sphere of web content lacks medium-low competence content or adjacent content for those who use it casually. The resources available for SEO vacillate between severe entry-level and advanced, and while I’m more on the entry-level side of things, I think seeing an active analysis and game plan for data (with proprietary/sensitive information redacted of course) could be helpful for anyone else in a state of moderate knowledge. I know a major struggle for myself has been obtaining practical experience in the field while maintaining a full-time job sans SEO mentor, and I doubt the situation is unique to me.
I’ll have an update later this week regardless of whether I hear back or not from management, but to be fair, the update could easily be my “Friendsgiving” menu from early November instead, rather than web-content creation or editing. No promises on either, just that an update is happening.
Either way, it’s a winner- The Barefoot Contessa and Williams Sonoma kept me on the righteous path.