If you’ve found it hard to work with this week, I’m there, too. It can be hard to think about marketing anything when *gestures emphatically to the smouldering garbage of the world*. Sometimes, our work feels so small compared to problems that feel so monumental.
In 2022, I had an aha moment about the value of our skills as marketers in this world— and maybe it will help you, too.
It was at a conference for founders in Bologna, Italy— jet-lagged and socially anxious. That’s when I met Laval Chichester. Laval has a special set of skills— he’s a Founder and SEO expert with a track record of figuring out how to get his clients to the top of Google’s search engine results page.
In our chat, he casually mentioned a side project he was working on. He called it Defend The Internet.
The goal? Use our knowledge of SEO, content optimization, and persuasive copywriting not to sell products— but to dethrone some of the most hateful content on the internet.
Think about it: we’ve built our careers on understanding algorithms, optimizing content for search, and driving traffic. What if, together, we target the keywords most at risk for radicalizing folks toward hate, racism and misogyny— and write optimized content to outrank it?
What would it look like if the teen who was about to click on content that would take him down a hateful rabbit hole instead found something we wrote?
We’re making it happen. In January, we’re hosting a hackathon to teach SEO skills and write content together. If you’re interested in taking part or volunteering your skills, please sign up here.
You don’t need to be an SEO pro to help. If you’ve got ideas, words, and the desire to do something meaningful, we need you.
Laval’s vision is simple: take what we know and use it for good. And now, it’s go time.
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