From Phones to SEO: My Career Transition

Thank you for taking the time out your day and coming on the show. So Allison, tell us a little bit about yourself and about your background.

Yeah, so I currently do, like you said, SEO as well as content marketing, which are very intertwined. Um, found— kind of stumbled my way into this career, actually. So in college, I majored in English and psychology, which turned out to be the perfect degree for what I'm doing now. Had no clue this was an option. Thought I wanted to work in publishing. Graduated in 2009 right after the job market crashed. So there were no jobs to be had in publishing or anywhere else. So I ended up answering phones for a few years, found myself between jobs at one point, and my roommate at the time, her dad, who is an attorney, was awesome and offered to give me stuff to do around his office until I got back on my feet. And one of the things he needed was someone to write blog posts for his law firm. And he knew I had a strong writing background, so he offered me the gig. And I was like, what? I can get paid to write? Seriously? Yeah, sign me up. So I jumped at that chance and started writing for him and then for an associate of his and then for some friends of mine. Did eventually get another day job, but I kept writing on the side. And it was one of those where anytime anyone asked what I did for a living, I'd be like, well, you know, by day I'm a— I answer phones, but I'm really a writer. And I would put much more emphasis on the writing that I was doing. So that started growing more and more, and I did more and more of that until I, I just couldn't juggle both anymore. So I was able to finally ditch the day job, take this full time.