Why I'm launching the "The Craft" pillar on SolennStories

What does a digital marketing consultant really do? (SEO, GEO, social media, ads, UGC)

Since SolennStories began, the question comes up at every collab and every professional coffee: "wait, what exactly do you do besides the videos?" The answer fits in one sentence: I've been a digital marketing consultant for 8 years (SEO, GEO, social media, ads, UGC), and a content creator for 3 years. This pillar is where I document the first job — the one you don't see in the videos.

Why a “The Craft” pillar separate from the vlog and true crime?

The Vlog shows my life, True Crime builds the audience, the Live drives volume. None of the three explains how I build an SEO strategy for a hotel, or why GEO (optimisation for generative AI answers) is starting to matter as much as classic search optimisation. 94% of B2B buyers use generative AI in their buying process in 2026, up from 89% in 2025 (Forrester, The State of Business Buying 2026) — this profession changes fast, and I'd rather write it down as I go than tell a frozen version of it on a CV.

What will you find in The Craft pillar?

SEO audits, tool comparisons and figure-backed lessons from real assignments

Concretely: detailed audits (SEO, link building, AI visibility), comparisons of tools I genuinely use, figure-backed lessons from my assignments, and the behind-the-scenes of building SolennStories itself. No generic content copied from a guide — every article starts from a real case or a question I was asked.

An expertise blog, not an agency blog selling in every paragraph

This won't be an agency blog selling a service in every paragraph. The Craft pillar aims at credibility (freelance assignments, LinkedIn, portfolio) — not conversion at any cost. If there's a table, a figure or a method, it's because I actually use it, not to tick an SEO box.

Table — SolennStories's 4 pillars at a glance

Why document your craft as a digital marketing consultant, and why now?

Why showing field experience helps you rank (E-E-A-T)

Documenting what I do isn't only an editorial choice. Google's guidance on helpful, reliable content invites you to ask whether a piece of content shows first-hand experience and genuine expertise on the subject (Google Search Central). A blog that tells the story of real assignments, signed by an identifiable author, answers that expectation directly. Documenting my profession here isn't a nice-to-have: it's a professional asset, just like a portfolio or a CV.

Why launch this pillar after 8 years of real assignments

I could have launched this pillar when I started out as a creator. I didn't, and that's a deliberate choice: I first needed to accumulate enough real assignments to have something concrete to document, rather than theorise a job I was barely starting to practise on the agency side. Eight years later, with audits, link building strategies and brand campaigns behind me, I finally have material dense enough for every article to reflect a real case rather than generic advice copied from a guide.

Proof of expertise that clients and recruiters can verify

A blog documenting eight years in the job isn't an aesthetic extra: it's the trace that lets a client or a recruiter check, before the very first conversation, that what's being said matches a real practice. That's also why every article ends with a presentation of its author, with my LinkedIn and YouTube profiles.

The format: every article starts from a real case

Every article in this pillar follows the same constraint: start from a real case — an assignment carried out, an audit delivered, a tool tested on a concrete project — rather than from theoretical advice copied from a generic guide. It's slower to produce, because it means doing the work first before writing a single line about it. But that's precisely what separates, in my view, an expertise blog from one that stacks up definitions already available elsewhere on the internet in ten identical versions. If an article teaches me nothing new to write, it's of no use to whoever reads it.

Keep reading: SEO, GEO and digital marketing

→ SEO for beginners: how you actually get found on Google — the entry point to the SEO topic.

→ What does digital marketing actually mean? — the big picture of the job.

→ SEO, my method and services — the overview page on search optimisation.