Every successful business or person has had to take risks to get where they are, but they normally downplay the stress and preparation that are involved in taking those leaps. It is natural to be worried, but with the proper forethought and preparation taking risks doesn’t have to be so scary.
The very nature of taking risks is not knowing if it will pay off, but if you listen for the patterns in others’ stories, you can see what risks are more likely to work out well. There are risks worth taking, and risks not worth taking. While you can plan all you want, sometimes it is best to just take a leap and see how it works out, while minimizing losses if it all goes belly up.
Amanda DiSilvestro has enough history in SEO to be able to make some pretty good guesses on what type of risks will benefit you and which are more likely to burn you. Saying yes to smart risks is the only way to get where you want to be.
One smart risk that worries many is hiring a writer with no SEO experience. Our field is so complex that it is easy to assume a writer without any experience would be able to learn fast enough to be a competent voice in SEO, let alone a writer that can take SEO principles and write about other topics accordingly. While writing for SEO is quite different from journalism or creative writing there is a good chance that any good writer you hire will be able to learn the basics of SEO fast enough to help you out.
Another common hiring fear many have is hiring a social media expert because it is so new, and so many people think they are a social media “expert” because they have a Facebook, and tweet all the time. This doesn’t mean hiring a social media expert is bad for your business, it just means your hiring process will have to take some extra effort to vet out the unqualified applicants. If your applicant doesn’t understand how social media and business function together, they aren’t an “expert” and they are more likely to cause a scandal than promote your brand’s image.
There is no path to success that doesn’t involve risks, but it shouldn’t feel like you are gambling. You should be informed enough to avoid the huge obvious problems, and the small bumps are fixable. Maybe one strategy won’t work, but every company has setbacks.
