SEO is dead, long live SEO!
That’s how it feels, at least, as both AI-powered search and user-generated content take hold in our digital lives. Today’s master in marketing knows a thing or two about user-generated content and how brands can make it work for them.
(And read to the end to find out whether she thinks SEO is actually dying.)
Meet the Master
Shelagh Dolan
Content marketing lead, Quora for Business
Lesson 1: Find conversations that are already happening.
Whatever your marketing channels are, don’t reinvent the wheel.
One of the benefits that businesses can find in communities like Quora, Dolan says, is that there are a lot of conversations already happening. Instead of building a campaign anew, businesses can start where the users are, regardless of where that is in the funnel.
Even if it doesn’t make sense for your marketing strategy to target users at every point in the funnel, use existing conversations (on Quora or elsewhere) to meet your users where they’re at.
Think about somebody who wants to learn a language, she says. Maybe it starts with, “I want to go to Italy.” Somebody else has been dreaming of a trip to Italy for months now, and they’re starting their research with an idea of the specific tours they want to go on. And a third person has everything planned and is ready to start learning some Italian.
Dolan says that her most successful clients are the ones that can target all of those people — ”an awareness campaign paired with a retargeting campaign” combined with genuinely helpful content (we’ll get to that in a moment).
Lesson 2: Build authority by being helpful.
Now, about that genuinely helpful content.
Dolan says that brands can build authority and trust on public forums by genuinely answering people’s questions — when they use a trusted individual, not a corporate entity, to do so.
She gives the example of a healthcare company running a marketing campaign on Quora. To answer user questions, they could use a licensed provider — not their CMO — whose expertise will build trust. The goal is to jump into those existing conversations with something that will solve problems, not promote a product.
(But keep it brand relevant. Please don’t answer medical questions if your job is hocking used Crocs. —ed.)
Honestly, it’s a little bit how we think about the Masters in Marketing newsletter — we want to provide genuinely helpful, good advice on marketing. Self-promotion comes second.
Lesson 3: Embrace multichannel, multi-format distribution.
Last year, Dolan started publishing the Quora Ads newsletter natively on LinkedIn.
Existing subscribers to the newsletter already knew about Quora’s ads platform, so Dolan went off in search of an unsaturated audience. She asked herself, “How can we draw in net new people who maybe don’t know that Quora even has ads?”
Let’s bring this full circle.
Part of this strategy stemmed from Dolan’s own advice to find existing conversations and leverage individuality — she’d noted the popularity of LinkedIn influencers who have a steady drumbeat of posts based on their own experience and expertise.
Find those existing conversations, think outside your usual channels, and look for a fresh audience.
Lingering Questions
This Week’s Question
Will SEO be obsolete in three to five years? —Brian Morrissey, Founder, The Rebooting Show podcast
This Week’s Answer
Dolan says: Honestly? Yes.
Traditional, organic SEO has always been a challenge — it required constant research and maintenance with no guaranteed returns, not to mention being beholden to an algorithm that could tank your strategy at any moment.
AI Overviews and zero-click search have made it 10 times harder to drive organic traffic, and in three to five years, there will be no reason for anyone to ever scroll through pages of results to find themselves on a company-sponsored blog post reading a long-winded, H2-clad overview of an industry topic — and I say this as a long-time company blog writer (with a heavy heart)!
I think about how my own information-seeking behavior has completely changed over the last year with AI, from finding quick answers and technical troubleshooting at work to making recipes and getting TV/movie recommendations at home.
I don’t have a technical background, but I get a daily behind-the-scenes look at the AI product the Quora team is building (it’s called Poe, and it’s a central place to access every AI model and create your own customized bots). The biggest shock has been how quickly new models and capabilities roll out — announcements and launches are measured in minutes and hours, not days.
I think marketers — probably especially B2B marketers — are hyper aware of AI’s capabilities and its impact on SEO, among other aspects of marketing, but it won’t be long before the general public catches up and becomes accustomed to the deeply personalized experiences possible through AI.
Soon everyone will gravitate to their preferred method of finding and consuming information, whether it’s scanning an AI Overview, messaging a chat app (which can already do so much more than chat), conversing out loud with AI, or referencing a handful of trusted sources.
In three to five years I think we’ll be far away from scrolling through SERPs and much closer to a Her [the 2013 sci-fi movie in which a man falls in love with his AI] situation.
Editor’s note: Kudos to Dolan and Morrissey for giving us an opening to tackle this very complex issue. If you haven’t already, subscribe to Masters in Marketing, as we’ll be exploring this question from different angles in the future. —Curt del Principe
Next Week’s Lingering Question
Dolan asks: Besides AI, what marketing trends or technologies are you keeping your eye on or planning to try this year?
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