Hiring an SEO account manager in the "new world"

[monkeex]

I run a small web design and digital marketing agency but we're growing fast. Since October we've employed 1 web developer and made use of a lot of partnerships to sub contract work out and get it all done.

I'm now ready to employ a person to take on a digital marketing role. I potentially have someone lined up (a strong person) who has a lot of experience with PR & building relationships and she has worked with the two largest local newspaper publishers in our area. Therefore, she has a lot of connections with journalists. She has also run an events company (owned by one of the newspaper publishers) pretty much single handed for the last few years so she has some good experience in that area as far as PR and marketing goes too.

However, the person I am looking for is digital marketing account manager. However, given that SEO is moving away from traditional tactics and more towards content marketing, outreach and PR I though that she might be a good fit after all and then teaching her the digital side. She will be my first employee in the digital marketing team and leading the digital marketing and SEO campaigns.

I'm interested to hear people thoughts on hiring in this way or should I just stick with a traditional SEO person and help them move to the new world? (if they need it).

Thanks.

[Asher]

What I have noticed with clients and others is that traditionalists tend to have a harder time to move over towards digital, where as digitalists have an easier time adapting to changing environments.  However, this is also dependent on the person themselves.  If the traditionalist has a drive to explore the digital side, and they will need to have one otherwise your digital efforts will go to waste, then go ahead and hire that person.  If they do not, i would recommend you hire a traditional SEO and push them along as most traditional SEO's have to deal with change everytime Google does an update (about 500 times a year). Those are my two cents.  I hope that helps.

[monkeex]

Thanks Jason. I guess the reason I am asking is because in my heart I know that she's probably not right in this instance but she does have potential in other marketing capacities. I am sure she could be great at certain aspects of SEO but what I need right now is a good all rounder.Thanks very much for your response, it really helped my thinking.

[DavidKonigsberg]

Sounds like you need her for pr/content and someone else to handle the tradtional seo stuff