Question Do you have to be an extrovert to succeed in SEO?

[StuartC]

As someone who has worked in the SEO industry for a long time I find myself getting more disillusioned with the industry as it seems to succeed in the modern digital marketing industry you have to be a public speaker/influencer and attend endless conferences and workshops and generally be an extrovert. When you look at other roles like web development, graphic design or copywriting there seems to be more acceptance of people just being able to get on with doing their jobs but with SEO you seem to be looked down upon if you're not up on stage at a conference. I was wondering what other SEOs on here thought of that and do you think you need to be a confident public speaker to succeed in modern SEO?

 

[Community]

I know where you are coming from, I've often thought my lack of willing to become a key-note speaker and doing local talks ( or any talks due to me hating talking in front of a small crowd ) has held my business back considerably over the years, but at the same time I've evolved around it and adjusted the business model to suit that...the majority of clients couldnt give a monkeys if you are well known in the marketing industry if you are providing results and there is at least some trace of you on a professional level when being searched.

We are certainly heading/are in a time/age where a Marketers influence and reputation has some sway imo, especially when landing the higher value contracts.

That said, we all know that 90% of these "influencers" have 90% of their followers are fake accounts or account that only followed them because they done the same. Makes me skin crawl when I see these accounts with 50k followers but have followed 55k to get them, especially when you look at their tweets and there is next to no interaction from those numbers.

Solider on, keep your head up and focus on the value you are providing. It's easy to get sucked in to thoughts that someone else is doing better, when actually they may not be.

 

[StuartC]

Yea I totally agree, the thing that really frustrates me is that so many digital marketing "gurus" giving talks don't even have a website so they don't even trust in their ability to rank their own websites. You're right, the best thing to do is just to continue providing value to your clients and building a reputation as someone who actually gets results.

It's just annoying where I am as there seems to be a growing scene of SEO snobs who all attend the same conferences and go to the same awards nights (another thing I have no interest in) and then they look down on those who aren't doing those things as not being real SEOs. It's still quite a young industry though so hopefully the public will soon realise that case studies and viable results should be the only thing grabbing their attention when it comes to choosing an SEO.