Organic search is vital to digital marketing, as it helps bring about brand awareness and creates opportunities. Here are some uncommon approaches to becoming a better SEO that really work! You can follow these ideas to encourage creativity and encourage out-of-the-box thinking among your team mates, allowing space to grow and respond positively to constructive feedback.

Harness the positive effect of vulnerability

Dr. Brene Brown, Research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, has done groundbreaking work on the power of vulnerability to transform the ways in which we live and work. She theorises that vulnerability leads to creativity, and that’s at the core of all marketing campaigns…so it is invaluable to digital marketing as well. By fostering a culture of vulnerability, we can learn to step forward and take risks, and we can go from being ashamed of mistakes to learning from them. When we share insights with team members, we can deliver top results to our clients. All this starts with being vulnerable.

Here’s how to create a culture of vulnerability in your team.

• Ask team members to critique each other’s work. Constructive feedback from more experienced colleagues will help you to improve your work before sending it on to the client.
• Make internal QA mandatory for all projects. You can make it in the form of a role play, where you present your work to your team as though they are the clients.
• Create a culture where team members feel safe to ask for help. When others reach out to you, you should always be ready to give them the right feedback as well!
• Brainstorming together will be a safe and fun team working experience.
• This will increase the quality of service to the client.

Build strategies through brainstorming

Many heads together are better than one, and it can be a very productive experience to sit together and build strategies for websites or marketing campaigns. When a team sits together and encourages out-of-the-box lateral thinking, great things can happen…having fun is a by-product! Schedule a strategy brainstorm meeting at regular intervals, where each team member gets some time to bring up any issues and solicits help from the team. Working together, some brilliant thinking can be fostered and the team can solve issues right then and there.

Here’s how to go about this:

• Before the meeting, give each analyst a brief to fill out that describes the issue in detail.
• This brief is shared to other team members a couple of days prior to the strategy meeting, so that everyone gets some time to think and ideate.
• During the meeting, everyone gets a chance to talk. Ideas are discussed, productive suggestions are made and issues are solved.
• Team sizes should ideally not be greater than 5 each.
• Everyone gives and receives feedback, and improves and grows in their work capabilities.

Team leaders must solicit feedback from the team

The team leader needs to take constructive criticism as well! This is often not an easy step. Leaders should be available to communicate and interact with others, offer support and guidance when required, and lay out the company vision or goals. They should also be able to listen to feedback on themselves and take it in the positive spirit, learn from their own mistakes and be open to self-improvement. This is a great step forward as it makes your leaders more approachable; making them part of the team and ensuring that no one works in silos.

Here’s the best way to make this happen:

• The team leaders should call for the meeting, explain what it’s all about and then- very importantly- LEAVE THE ROOM.
• This gives the team the chance to be open about any issues they may be facing.
• The feedback needs to be anonymous, so that no one feels unsafe or targeted.
• Feedback can be under three labels: Start Doing, Stop Doing, Keep Doing.
• Once the feedback is collated, the leader can come back and listen to what the team collectively has to say.
• The leader can give only two responses: Thank you, or ask for more clarity. He or she must accept what is being said and must not argue.

Team meetings to discuss new experiences or insights

It’s also very important to network and connect to discuss any experiences you have had and talk about the insights gleaned from these experiences. By sharing what you have learned, you can maintain a culture of creativity. This collaboration will help produce the best work that your team has put out. Anything that you read on industry news can also be discussed so that others can learn from this knowledge sharing as well.

Try to get answers to these questions:

• Discuss something interesting that you have read in industry-related news
• Talk about something that you are working on right now that excites you, and explain why
• Are there any issues you were able to resolve, and how did you do it?
• Share any feedback or insights given by your clients on how your product worked for them.

All SEOs need to build their work on a cornerstone of creativity and collaboration. By creating a culture where we encourage each other to perform to our best potential, we can turn out some truly marvellous results for each of our projects, and grow together as a team while doing so!