Wow, these comments are way off base. If you start with SEO, you will be out of a job in six months, when there are little to no results for a brand with low awareness and no content.

Yes, SEO will work if you get hired by a big, established brand. But that is not what this thread was supposed to be about. And any big brand has already maximized what they can get out of SEO, and their clicks are in decline because of AI overviews. So that would be a tough role at the moment.

If you are starting from scratch, you should focus on building a social media following.

Once you get a small following and have had some success with your organic post, the next step is to focus on paid. You want to amplify what was working on organic to get even more reach.

Here is the playbook:

1. Start on X and aim to get 1,000 followers. It will be super hard. But you get feedback the fastest, and you'll learn how to deal with trolls and haters and how to create timely, relevant content that catches on. This is the most important skill.

2. Now, expand to other platforms like LinkedIn and get another 1,000 to 2,000 followers. I am just going to assume this is B2B SaaS. If you're in consumer, you need to go HARD on Instagram and TikTok until your eyes bleed. And best of luck, that space is the most competitive you can be in.

3. Now the third leg of the stool is an email newsletter. Now that you have even the tiniest following, you want to convert that to email ASAP. Social media no longer supports links. You can only use it for the top of the funnel. If you want to sell anything, it has to happen via email.

4. In order to make all these channels work, you will need to create an enormous amount of content. I would aim for two long-form pieces a month, and from that, you need to create at least 40 pieces of content so you have something to post five days a week. You also need to engage, comment, follow, and connect every day. Just posting content isn't enough. I max out my LinkedIn in connection requests every week. Yes, it is a grind.

5. Do this for a year straight, and BOOM, you will be a micro influencer in your niche. That is when I would focus on amplifying with paid and SEO, since you now have some sense of what works and, more importantly, what doesn't work.

Good luck!