Silver Bullets, Swipe Files, Bottom-Up Pitching
Silver Bullets, Swipe Files, Bottom-Up Pitching
Edition #20 - Monday 3-2-1
Hello đ,
Welcome to the Monday morning ideas newsletter âď¸.
Every Monday morning, receive 3 ideas on how to work more effectively in product and dev teams.
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đĄ 3 Short Ideas
Short ideas on how to improve working with devs and product teams.
#1 - There are no silver bullets
Donât try and find silver bullets in the hope that they magically fix everything.
When working at DeepCrawl I was constantly looking for silver bullets:
A forecasting model that gets projections just right
A strategy slide deck template to pitch to the C-suite
A prioritization framework that instantly makes planning easier
What I learned was that these outputs can help but individually theyâre not going to magically get your projects implemented.
Instead, I found that we need to focus our energy on what Ben Horowitz calls âlead bulletsâ:
âThere is no silver bullet, we are going to have to use a lot of lead bullets.â
- Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Focus on those small wins that add up over time. An idea that isnât new in SEO. Barry Adams first introduced me to the concept of the power of marginal gains. If you make a 1% improvement over time it can add up.
Instead of focusing on a magic process, framework or document to do all the heavy lifting. I focused on making small improvements by facilitating meetings, running experiments and writing tickets.
It worked. Focusing on those small changes added up every day.
So, how does this help you work better with development teams?
Simple. Stop copying and pasting frameworks off the internet and thinking they will magically fix the problems with your development team.
It wonât.
Instead, focus on the small wins every day that add up over time. Be part of that regular planning meeting and contribute. Get better at clearly explaining why something matters to the CTO. Ask the development and product team what they are planning to work on in the next 3-6 months. Then reprioritise your roadmap to âslideâ things in.
Just like SEO, itâs the small wins every day that you need to focus on to get your projects implemented. It all adds up.
But where can we start to make small improvements?
I know it can be daunting to start from scratch. So, I've provided a list of the top 5 activities I would recommend improving:
Focus on speaking regularly with your developers (here)
Learn to write specifications using examples (here)
Write clear and concise tickets (here)
Make sure everyone is on the same page (here)
Build good partnerships with your dev team (here).
Here is what I want you to do with this list:
Pick one of the top 5 categories
Open the link, bookmark and give it a read
Write down what you tried to do
Try and improve in that area for 1 month.
Write down what you learned.
Repeat for each activity. Not everything you do will work. But the important thing is you try to find small wins that stick.
P.S. Remember it is about small gains. Don't try too much at once.
P.P.S. I actually did try a lot at once a long time ago. The lead dev on a team walked over to my desk and said, "Cool it with the daily meetings. Nobody is going to show up".
#2 - Keep a Swipe File of SEO Wins
Prove it.
If you work in a product and engineering team then youâll understand you will hear this phrase all the time.
No surprise. Considering the team will be bombarded by requests and ideas all the time. So to cut the fluffy ideas they will ask you to provide evidence of why something should be implemented. After all, development resource is expensive.
But how can you as an SEO gather this evidence?
One simple method that could be useful to maintain is to keep a list of examples of SEO tests, case studies and successful websites. Evidence that your recommendations will drive results for the business.
These lists are known as swipe files.
Copywriters and marketers have been using them for years as inspiration for projects. In fact, there are many public examples of websites using this format as a business model:
So how can SEOs use swipe files to gather evidence?
Easy. Just start creating your own personal swipe file.
Whenever you notice a website that is doing well or implementing best practices just capture it in a note. It could be a website that has rolled out programmatic SEO pages, implemented facet navigation best practices or has a killer landing page template.
You could use Notion, Google Sheets or even Apple Notes. It doesnât matter how you store it. Just keep it somewhere so you can access it later.
For example, I have Notion swipe files for:
SEO Experiments
External Case Studies
Personal Case Studies
Successful Websites
Technical SEO Best Practices
Now I have examples and case studies that I can use to show evidence why the dev team should implement my recommendations.
P.S. By the way if you want to save hours of time trying to find case studies and experiments I have a solution for you. The SEO Case Study Database. Itâs designed to help you identify and validate opportunities in minutes. Pay once, unlimited access.
#3 - Bottom-up Pitching to Developers
When teams pitch to developers this is called bottom-up pitching.
This means product managers will have to pitch their projects to developers. Then developers can choose which projects they want to work on.
However, not all developers have a choice on what projects they work on.
Instead of pitching to developers, a product manager will pitch their ideas to the leadership team. If successful, this means developers will be told what projects they are working on.
This is called top-down pitching.
In reality, when pitching projects youâll need to get both leadership and developers to buy into an idea.
Why?
The leadership team will always ask for the development teamâs opinion. Usually, around the amount of effort and time, it will take a project to be completed. So, even when pitching top-down youâre still in a way pitching to developers.
To quote Heather Kaeowichien from her interview on The SEO Sprint podcast âYou donât want developers working on a project and thinking itâs stupidâ.
How can you pitch to development teams?
The truth is that pitching to developers and getting them bought into an idea is very similar to pitching to a leadership team.
You need to make sure you are prepared, have evidence and are able to answer key questions to get developers invested.
One of the best ways Iâve found to start this process is to:
Write a draft of a product requirement document
Send it to a developer you trust for feedback (the hardest part)
Iterate and improve the document.
The trick is to make sure the document is concise and clear. Feedback from the developer will also help iron out any feasibility blindspots in your idea.
Once youâre happy the idea is solid. You can create a more formal document or pitch deck that can be used to get buy-in from the wider development team.
P.S. Iâve learned that if you speak to developers and better understand their pain points. You might be able to pitch ideas that are already on their roadmap. And help them get buy-in from the leadership team (E.g. Core Web Vitals).
How did I do this week?
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