Frequently Asked Questions
Whether you want to know more about what I do, how it all works, or why it matters for what you want to accomplish, I’ve got answers.
About Amanda
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I offer guidance and support on using websites and social media as content marketing tools for small creative businesses and solopreneurs who want to establish a branded presence without feeling overwhelmed or out of their depth.
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Not at all. I happily work with people who want to market their creative services (like commissioned pet portraits) and those who want a hub for their creative brand and portfolio (like an author website).
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I do not, but I can help you craft a content strategy plan. If you decide to outsource, this plan will give your social media manager important guidelines on branding and content to ensure their work is in alignment with your goals.
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I do not offer blog writing as part of my mentorship packages. I will help you come up with a content idea bank and outlines for your posts.
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All you need is basic proficiency with using a computer and the internet.
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My mentorship packages are designed to meet you where you are. Whether you know a little or not much at all, I’ll help fill those knowledge gaps with a combination of teaching and offering additional resources to further your understanding.
About Content Marketing
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Content marketing is a type of digital marketing focused on sharing online material, such as blogs, social media posts, and videos. While it can include content to promote sales, the primary focus is on generating interest in a brand, product, or service.
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Content marketing helps your future fans find you and start following you. This is especially helpful if you want to start building an audience before you have completed works ready to market. You’ll then have a following primed and ready to buy when you’re ready to sell.
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Content marketing is all about maintaining a steady, sustainable pace over time with clear results usually showing around 3-6 months. That might feel like a long time to wait, but you’re actually putting in the least amount of effort needed to get those results. That means you have more time for creating and working on your craft!
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An effective content strategy begins by finding the overlaps between what your brand offers and what your ideal audience wants. Then comes the technical stuff, like keyword research and optimizing your site for user experience and search engines. Last comes content creation. Once your content is out there, search engines and algorithms get to work putting your stuff in front of the right people.
About SEO and Semantic Search
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Semantic search is the computational logic search engines use to a) understand what a person is looking for based on what they type in a search bar and b) categorize search results as relevant to that search query. (You don’t actually have to know anything about how this works, but I find it super exciting and will happily nerd out if you’re curious to know more.)
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More than a marketing buzzword, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It’s a technical practice that helps search engines understand your content and relate it to what people are searching for.
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The problem with the most popular keywords (like the ones that get millions of searches per month) is there’s a lot of competition among websites to be ranked as the most relevant to those keywords. An effective SEO strategy requires more critical thinking and understanding of your audience.
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This is an unnecessarily intimidating name for a very easy concept: it refers to phrases people type into a search bar to get more specific results than searching a single term. For example, “paintings by POC artists in North Carolina” is a long-tail keyword.
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Nope! Every social media platform with a search bar uses its own semantic search engine. In fact, using SEO best practices in your social media captions ensures your content still reaches who it’s supposed to no matter how many times the algorithms change. (Your analytics may fluctuate during those changes, but SEO is about helping the machine brain figure out who to show your content to.)