Influencer Profile: Paula Keller
July 21st, 2011 by
New Orleans born and raised, SI’s own Account Manager Paula Keller was thrilled to get connected with a growing company in a growing industry after graduating from Louisiana State University with a degree in Marketing. With a strong interest economic development and a goal of being a part of the revival of big business in the city she’s always loved, she realized during this very interview that she’s fulfilling that goal by working at Search Influence. Not only does Paula work with an expansive variety of clients across the county, she also has the opportunity to work with some great local companies, including Audubon Nature Institute and Archon Information Systems.
Paula bringing the party as always!
Let’s start with the important stuff: if you were a pastry, what kind of pastry would you be?
A chocolate glazed donught from Dorignac’s. It’s an old fashioned classic that’s always in style.
What is it that you do around here? What kind of skills do you find yourself using throughout the average workday?
While my new business card doesn’t list a title, I’m officially an Account Manager. You could also call me a Keywordsmith, Google Place Page Perfectionist, and Package Crafter. I do a little bit of everything. I think that is pretty typical of an Account Manager in any organization – we do everything and anything necessary to serve our clients the best work product. I manage not only some stellar direct clients, but also some fantastic white label relationships.
There’s a few responsibilities / projects that stand out when I think about what I do exactly. Shortly after I started with Search Influence, I dived into Google Place Page creation, claiming and optimization for all of our existing clients, which led to hands-on creation of far over 100 Google Place Pages during my time here. Secondly, over the past 6 months, I’ve worked with Will and crew to totally revamp our SEO packages and some additional a la carte offerings, which was a great learning experience and a lot of fun.
The average workday requires a wide range of skills, from time management, organizational, personal, and the ever important: “where are we eating lunch today?” skills.
Is there anything you’d like to be doing more or less of around the SI offices? In the perfect world, what would you be doing all day?
In a perfect world, I’d be cooking (and eating) all day. I was secretly hoping for a stove in our kitchen at the new office, but its probably a good thing that we don’t have one, or else I would be bringing batches of ingredients to whip up deliciousness in the kitchen at lunch time.
As some of our readers know, you used to be the blog manager, cajoling, bribing and occasionally extorting entries out of everyone at the company. Be honest: do you miss it a little?
Every day! Blogger-in-chief was one of my favorite hats I’ve worn around here. I’ve always loved to write (even research papers), and friends often asked me to review their papers as I was honest and would often edit it as much as I would if I was putting my name on it. WIth SI’s blog, not only did I love editing the posts, I was privileged to be the first to read SI’s take on breaking SEO news!
Is there anything that excites you about coming to work every day?
Is this a Yelp review or an interview? I love working with our clients. The best thing about what we do is that we get to help increase and improve the bottom line for small and large businesses. I love the whole process of selecting keywords, putting the strategy to work, and then watching the rankings climb, traffic go up, and customers come to the business.
Does keeping track of so much information from the people in production and directly interfacing with clients every day get to be a lot of pressure? Any tips for handling it?
Pressure? Nah. It’s a joy. That’s what the coffee is for. And To Do Lists. My #1 tip for handling any situation: Just write it down. Even if you think “oh, I’ll remember that” – write it down (and remember where you wrote it).
Thanks so much for everything you do around here, Paula K! For the new readers, you can check out the wide variety of informative and insightful blog posts Paula has written for us, and stay tuned for more Influencer profiles in weeks to come!
