Anyone who's seen Wil Reynolds from SEER Interactive give a presentation remembers him. The first time I saw him speak, at SearchFest in 2012, I found myself not just nodding along with what he was saying while checking Twitter -- but actually listening. I was actually thinking about what I was doing as an inbound marketer and how I could make it better.
So when I sat down to interview Wil, I wanted to know more about his inspirations and his belief in the power of YouTube. And of course, Real Company Shit Stuff (#RCS).
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Wil at MozCon 2012. Photo by Rudy Lopez Photography.
What's inspired you lately?
I was most inspired by Lani Lazzari, the 18-year-old who went on the TV show Shark Tank and just killed it. (Fast forward to 22 mins to see her.) It was inspiring to think at that age she had the confidence, poise, ownership of the stage in a way that most people never gain in their entire professional lives. Younger people who do this tend to inspire me.
I don’t throw around the word 'inspiration' often; it's something I don’t say lightly.
I have also recently been reflecting on great client service, and I have been thinking a lot about how to create experiences for our clients that are above and beyond expectations. What got me inspired by that? A recent stay at a 5-star hotel. The attention to detail and the care about me enjoying myself were more than I’ve experienced anywhere.
When you first started pondering #RCS, what kind of hope did you have for the widespread adoption you've seen?
I had no hope. (It's why I didn’t register the domain or anything!) I just started thinking, 'Is my job going to be having a less crappy list of link networks? Do I get excited about sending emails as a female persona because the open rate is higher? NO way!'
My hope for #RCS is the same it's been for every other presentation I’ve ever given. Give people one to two things that will stick with them WELL PAST the day or two after the conference. I want to find the simple things people can do or the mind shift we need to make to make real changes and real successes.
Watch Wil's talk from last year's MozCon on #RCS.
As you've implemented #RCS for SEER and your clients, what's a favorite 'ah ha' moment you've had or seen?
The client response. It's amazing how every so often a lead comes in saying, 'We are looking to do #RCS.' That is always kind of exciting as it means the client and SEER are aligned on what success looks like.
Getting two clients on TV, from an SEO company idea, is hands down one of my proudest moments. I’m glad to have clients who believe and a team who believes that an SEO company is just as able to develop quality marketing ideas as a marketing agency.
I also realize that #RCS should have never had to have been said... If I was at a marketing, branding, or PR conference, it would have been a dud. As that is what they have been practicing all along.
What's #RCS' biggest nemesis?
Google.
If #RCS doesn’t drive rankings, then many SEOs will continue to seek to find shortcuts. If the rewards for their hard work of convincing a client; building quality assets; and promoting it to real news outlets, publications, and bloggers will not get ranking love, that is a major smack in the face.
You also advocate for marketers to help each other to build their careers. What are some of your favorite channels to help others on?
YouTube. Google+ Hangouts. It's funny; right now, there is a massive debate on women at conferences. But, I have yet to see someone say, 'Hey, I’ll be on Google+ doing a hangout to help any of these guys (or gals) get better.' I absolutely love the power of YouTube to help others, even in my sleep. :)
As a company founder, I see a large part of my job being to understand what my team is seeking in their careers. And as long as they are kicking butt for clients, how can I invest my time and network to help them get on that path or get that exposure. I think that is the start.
While we're on the topic of giving back, you've spent some time lately unplugged and in Nicaragua to work for your wife Nora's nonprofit. Tell us a bit about it.
My wife Nora co-founded an organization, Water for Waslala, to help people in very rural Nicaragua get access to clean drinking water. It's funny how, in parts of Waslala, I can get a cell phone signal, but I can’t get clean drinking water. That was eye opening as it was a reminder that there is no money in clean water, and as such, it's not as big of a priority, sadly.
I have been twice, and the trip usually results in several bruises since it is like eight hours travel in the back of a truck. After being there though, it's always all worth it.
I am most concerned with what [my unplugging and traveling to Waslala] says to Nora; I want her to know that me being off the grid never happens, but I place supporting her efforts as highly as she prioritizes supporting mine. I guess it is what makes us work.
Awww. Thanks, Wil, for ending this interview on an awesome note.
For more thoughts on #RCS, Wil will be speaking again at this year's MozCon, July 8th-10th. He'll be giving everyone an update on how #RCS been going and his tips for implementing it in your business. You can also follow Wil at @wilreynolds.
I am the biggest fan of Wil and after his presentation I started to promote #RCS and Guess what with the best of my effort my company does not understand the importance of what I am saying and I just receive a termination letter.
This does not stop me to promote #RCS no matter what, I will try to educate my neighborhood about the importance of #RCS.
Mozers pray for me to get better job where people can understand what inbound or #RCS actually is.
Sometimes it is hard to have the best compatible job with your skills where especially co-workers understand the value of #RCS and help you do the real working.
Well, keep searching, make your plans and do the best :-)
Best Wishes!
Great assets add value and do a lot more than build links, were the assets you were building also generating revenue? Usually that gets people on board, but I have also seen my fare share of companies who are so laser focused on links and rankings, that they never get it. Sorry to hear about that buddy. Keep your head up.
Despite of all effort from Google, SEER and Seomoz people are still running behind the ranking instead of assets. SEO Evolve too quickly but business owners doesn’t. My strategy does not start with Google but eventually help to rank in Google as well. My recommendations move around the concept which generates business, links have secondary value. But regardless of my efforts they still want quick rankings instead of business.
I am not disappointed because I know time will come where these people understand what I was saying. Thanks for encouragement wil this will surely boost my confidence.
I agree with you about building "assets" to build more business. So far I am small time. I do a lot of SEO for free or for barter. However, I do have a meeting with a likely to be new client tomorrow (4-19-13). He was insanely impressed with the rankings I did for him for free. Yes, I believe in helping others expecting nothing in return but I also give free SEO as a strategy that is fun to me... I only spent a couple hours just to show off and it worked! He was mesmerized.
Anyway, he will likely just want the rankings, at least at first.
Anyway, I feel ya! And yes, I'll say a little prayer as well. ;)
Sorry to hear that. But best wishes for your future.
Thanks a lot, for all you best wishes.
Wil Reynolds is one of the best Orators in this industry. Can't miss even a single real thing he says!I find RCS on the similar lines of the KISS principle.
SEO begins at Customer level!Focus on the real customer needs and do real company stuff to get them sold.
While working Inhouse and closely interacting with Marketing and Sales department of a Company that did real stuff was an eyeopener.
Thumbs up to the #RCS. Follow this and I bet the SEO will never go wrong!
Wil Reynolds is the best person I ever saw speaking on conferences. Nobody should miss that chance.
He is so inspiring and exudes an atmosphere of change - in combination with real examples everybody can work with - it's just perfect.
Thank you Petra!!
Just saw his presentation, first time to see him speaking in a conference. He is a showman! Wowww...
His preach is still valid and ambicious today, because rcs is, was and will be valid, always! As good content is, as good and real links were and still are, and good onpage seo is also good and necesary. Great job Erica, you´ve just brought a bigshot SEO up to my mind.
rcsmoz.org!
Last year at MozCon, Wil's #RCS presentation literally changed the way we do all work for our clients. Instead of thinking about the links and the rankings, we started thinking about something we could do to promote our clients that actually provided value. The funny thing is, the links and rankings were a result of the RCS we promoted.
The goal here is to think about something that actually makes sense and provides value to your clients or your clients' clients. Create something meaningful and unique that will have long term results and standings in the industry. When you create something with value that impacts your industry, why wouldn't you be the best/top result in Google?
Super pumped that it had an impact!!! I don't believe in the if you build it they will come approach, but I do believe that if you build something that you feel helps people you will push and promote it, again and again and again b/c you believe it helps. Whereas when you drop low quality stuff, its hard to stand by it and keep trying to promote it you know? Quality assets will build links in your sleep. They are not always easy to come by, but if you get it...it is awesome!
Great interview Erica! :) I found it interesting that Wil gets inquiries from people looking for help specifically with RCS! Won't be long before it becomes a standard service offering amongst us SEOs (fingers crossed anyways!)
Another video that's worth a watch is Wil's talk at the Search Church in 2012 during the SEOmoz meetup (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMADOLcArUs). I often share this with clients to help them understand the way things are headed with the transition from link building to link earning post b&w animals.
Keep up the great work Wil - you're very inspiring on many fronts and make it quite easy to throw the word "inspiration" around ;)
Interesting interview Wil! I watched this Mozcon video 2 times now and saved this blog post for passing it to others too :-)
Wil's the man, this presentation was great. He stays totally focused on my 2 biggest obstacles - content development and client buy-in/budget. There's some pretty extreme fake company shit going on at the local/small-time level, so it's really simple to just explain to a business owner that their pages don't have titles, the content is spun, 4 different URL's point to the homepage, or whatever else - and get buy-in for a technical overhaul and other on-page best practices stuff.
Content is another story. It's really difficult to get people to invest resources in consistent quality blogging, even if it's just their own time. Some are afraid of the transparency maybe, which is a shame because they're really smart, talented people that could offer real value to their industry. Some just want a serp-dominating piece of content cranked out in 40 minutes, or to pay a cheap article service. Their heads just aren't in the right place about it, even when you explain the benefit. I can always convince someone to stop paying for fake content and automated links, but most of the time they'll choose to just let their site sit static and consider that savings a win.
Thanks for posting this Erica! Great interview too.
...and I'll give a woot woot for not wanting to see the industry/web go to crap.
Thanks for articulating those 2 areas of value! Thats what I try to do explicitly, so I am glad it comes through. I guess the next thing we have to do is get people realizing its worth investing the savings into RCS.
This is post is really motivational too. I read lani story and saw her website. Great
Thanks so much for this interview Erica. I found this excerpt from the interview especially poignant:
[Willresponds that Google is #RCS' biggest nemesis]
"If #RCS doesn’t drive rankings, then many SEOs will continue to seek to find shortcuts. If the rewards for their hard work of convincing a client; building quality assets; and promoting it to real news outlets, publications, and bloggers will not get ranking love, that is a major smack in the face."
I deal with this challenge every gosh darn day. I have tried so hard over the last year to encourage my company, where I am an in-house SEO and where some excellent #RCS goes on every single day, that they need to stay the course, trust me, and go after things that really matter. Yet, after all the work, their work, my work, we've seen little to no love from Google. It's pretty hard to face a CEO saying #RCS is the way to go when Google keep treating us like we are nobodies.
I am going to be at MozCon in July and, after hearing Wi speak last year, can't wait to hear him have at it again. He was hands down the best speaker of the conference. Also, as a woman, I would like to know more about this debate/discussion about women speaking at conferences. Maybe I should be that woman who speaks at a conference about that topic??? :-)
Dana
Wil was referring to the conversations about how few women speakers there are in tech/SEO and how to encourage more. Hannah wrote this article of State of Search about it, as a jumping off point as there were a ton more.
I have already read a post about Wil Reynolds and I really like him because he's really a talented interent marketer. He knows well on SEO marketing.
That's an awesome presentation. We are sad that we missed it last year, but we totally agree. RCS=the new form of marketing. We can all talk about link building, but the true conversions happen when a company reaches out to a customer with RCS.
He's quite a presenter. I admire people that can get up and maintain your attention for an hour straight. He made a great point there in the beginning. How many of us have paid our bills with link juice? It's really all about revenue for clients at the end of the day.
Wil,As #RCS becomes increasingly very popular idea on the blogosphere I highly recommend to add your copyright to it :-)
Wil is a genius. He can pass on knowledge, that most would find dull, in a very creative and interesting way!
Wow! Such an excellent interview. I had not seen the video at MOZCON, i could not stop watching it. Its really eye and mind opening, specially i love the way it deals with difficult issues at such an easy level.
This is one of the best sources of RCS ive found on the web, excellent job.
Lani was amazing on the shark tank!
I agree!
your pal,
Chenzo
I just saw Wil's presentation for the first time on Slideshare the other day. Definitely a must-see for anyone I know in SEO. Glad to see that you're still innovating and doing more RCS, Wil.
First time when I see this word #RCS I was like this cannot be anyone other than Wil. Erica, I had previously outreached to him for the interview but he was busy with his business so I got rejected (or may be my questions were not as good as yours...)
#RCS is no rocket science, I think it’s all about accepting the fact that people on the internet are the real people so whatever you do in the online world you should keep humans in mind instead of bots and search engine spiders... #howiseeit!
Good Interview Erica!
Very nice interview and it is good too see Will is helping out others too all over the globe and not just in the search world. Also the link from Lani Lazzari does not seem to allow non-US viewers to watch it =( doubt a proxy will get it.
Shoot! Let me see if I can find the clip on something that doesn't require a US IP.
I was searching around for it but could not find it, but that led to me watching like 2 hours of shark tank videos haha
I'm going to bookmark this and watch the talk when I get some time. I know a few of the people at SEER and really admire what I've seen.
Jason, thanks for the kind words. I really honestly believe that creating a culture of giving and helping our community is KEY to long term success - super glad that we are able to be of assistance!
Thanx Will. You inspired me again!
P.S. Here is the link to the RCS video Wil mentioned:
https://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/seomoz-meetup-rapid-fire-link-building-strategies
This idea is exactly what I was thinking of presenting to a meeting with a small business owner I have tomorrow. Guess I'm on the right track!
For what it's worth, I've been told that I am ADHD which is why I have so many great idea's, but also is the reason it is difficult for a writer to get and keep my attention. Well, this article has taken me a long time to go through because it has captivated my attention... when "that" happens, ADHD serves as a plus in that, since a chord has been struck inside me, I'm able to "Hyper-Focus" Like a machine! (Ok, well, saying it that way makes "me" feel better anyway LOL!)
Thanks for such a great super REAL quality post!
"Different Ways Of Thinking" ;)
-Gary