Fostering Growth Through Mentorship

About This Episode

In this episode, we’re joined by Silvia Martin. Silvia is the founder and SEO consultant at Trebole Marketing. She is a trilingual marketing professional in English, French and Spanish, passionate about helping businesses improve their online presence and organic revenue. Alongside being an avid speaker and a certified mentor collaborating with WYK Digital, Women in Tech SEO, and Santander in their respective mentoring programs, Silvia is also a judge at the EU Search Awards.
 
Silvia specializes in strategy and technical SEO and has more than nine years of experience helping a wide range of leading brands improve their online visibility and organic performance. She has also lived in five different countries: Spain, Canada, France, China, and the UK. She did a marketing master's while living in France and working in the hospitality industry, and has also worked at Oracle and the US and UK. She worked in-house and SEO agency side, and now she's an independent consultant.

| (As a mentor) I'm helping others grow, so it's kind of like having a team or …sharing knowledge… I make time for it because it's really beneficial for me, and also I love helping others grow and giving back to the community. - Silvia Martin

A professional mentor can be an invaluable tool for professional growth when you are on the journey to developing your soft skills.

This episode is perfect for you if you’re curious about:

1. The value of having a mentor.
2. Where to find a mentor and how important finding the “right” mentor is.
3. How to become a mentor yourself.
4. What skills mentoring can help you develop.
5. How mentoring can positively impact your career.

Tune in for an insightful conversation with Silvia Martin!

Connect With Silvia Martin

• Learn about Trebole Marketing
• Connect with Silvia on LinkedIn
• Follow her on Twitter

Resources
Find on episode webpage: https://wostrategies.com/podcast/digital-marketing-victories/silvia-martin/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Digital Marketing Victories and Mentoring Power
• 8:22 Mentoring in Digital Marketing
• 22:58 Importance of Mentoring Programs in Goal Achievement
• 30:43 Benefits of Mentoring and Networking

Transcript

Katherine Watier Ong: 0:42

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Victories podcast, a monthly show where we celebrate and learn from the change makers in digital marketing. Great digital marketers understand that people are the most challenging part of doing their jobs, and this show focuses on the people part of digital marketing wins what tactics or skills the guests use to align people with their marketing strategy. I'm your host, catherine Watzie-Yong, the owner of WO Strategies LLC. We focus on increasing organic discovery for enterprise-sized, science-focused clients. Thank you for joining me. Let's get into it and celebrate our victories. Today we're joined by Silvia Martín.

Katherine Watier Ong: 1:20

Silvia is an independent SEO consultant and founder of Tribalay. She specializes in SEO strategy, technical SEO and has more than nine years of experience helping a wide range of leading brands improve their online visibility and organic performance. She's also lived in five different countries Spain, canada, france, china and the UK. She did a marketing master's while living in France and working in the hospitality industry and has also worked at Oracle In the UK. She worked in house SEO agency side and now she's an independent consultant. She's also a certified mentor and collaborates with WYK, women, tech SEO and the Santander mentoring programs. So this show is going to be perfect for you if you're interested in the value of having a mentor, where to find a mentor, how to become a mentor yourself, and how mentoring can positively impact your career. So, silvia, welcome to the show.

Silvia Martin: 2:16

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

Katherine Watier Ong: 2:19

So can you just tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself, your background, how you got into digital marketing and how you got into mentoring? Yeah, sure.

Silvia Martin: 2:29

So you did a brilliant introduction. Thank you for that. So, as you already said, I'm an independent SEO consultant, I'm based in London and I work remotely with international clients. I did a start my own company around three years and a half ago now. Yeah, time flies and my background is in the travel sector, as you said. So, yeah, I did a study travel and hospitality management and then I did work for different companies in the travel sector, but I always wanted to do marketing. And then, when I was living in France, in Paris, I decided to make the transition, you know like change career and go for the marketing bit. So I did a marketing master's. It was two years and it was great because it was studying like two weeks and then one week working. So it was like both experienced together.

Katherine Watier Ong: 3:24

So it was really good.

Silvia Martin: 3:25

Yeah, I did really enjoy it. And then after that, when it finished, I decided to move to England. As you might see my here in this podcast, I did a start from scratch. Different times in my life. I do like changes and challenges. So, yeah, then I moved to England because I really wanted to focus on digital marketing and, you know, start this new career and I thought that it was a great place to be. Because of people that I knew that they were based in England, they said that there was like a lot of opportunities here. So I said, okay, let's give it a try. And now you know everything is going well. It's been almost nine years here in the UK. The same time has been SEO and, yeah, I had a great experience. So now I'm doing this SEO consulting and also mentoring, as you said. Yeah, yeah.

Katherine Watier Ong: 4:20

so I'm kind of curious, especially as you're an independent SEO, right? So it's mostly just you and so as am I, so I know how busy your schedule can be. So why did you decide to squeeze in mentoring? Because it's a time commitment.

Silvia Martin: 4:35

I know it is. But you know, when I discovered mentoring, I felt in love. It's like SEO is the same and and the thing is it gives me so much like it's very fulfilling. I find it very fulfilling Also as an independent, as you said. So it gives me connection to helping others grow, so it's kind of having a team or you know, kind of that kind of experience sharing knowledge and, yeah, I really make time for it because it's really beneficial for me and also I love helping others grow and giving back to the community. That's another thing, because when I started, I did find several people that who helped me out, you know. So now I want to do the same.

Katherine Watier Ong: 5:22

So, yeah, yeah, I completely vibe with that. I've had folks that have helped, and so I like to help other folks out if I can. So do you actually have a mentor yourself?

Silvia Martin: 5:35

Yeah. So back to your question that when I started doing mentoring, so I did started doing mentoring with women in texio. That was the first time when I discovered mentoring. And then, after doing the first cohort as a mentor, then I joined in the following one as a mentee. So that was my first time having a formal mentor and it was really good and it was in a time that I really needed that kind of help and support, because it's when I changed.

Silvia Martin: 6:04

I did this also starting from scratch, kind of, you know, like doing this freelancing, having my own company. So it's a transition, right. So it's a mindset shift and I thought it was very interesting to see, you know, to talk with other people that was in the same situation, what they did it before, and to share the experience. So so, yeah, that's the first thing. And then also I had like a coach, because you know, mentoring and coaching is kind of, you know, blurring lines, kind of similar. So I did have a business coach also at the beginning of my when I set up my business as an independent consultant, which also helped me a lot.

Silvia Martin: 6:43

And then now is when I'm okay, I decided to keep going with the mentoring part and going back to the certification yes, so as part of one of the mentoring that I did with the Santander Bank, they did offer the certification as mentor. So it was the same. It was great because it was the experience of doing, I had a mentee and, at the same time, I did this to follow up these silo booths and these mentoring course to get the exam and also the certification. So it was great that I did it, like in 2022, I think last year.

Katherine Watier Ong: 7:20

Yes, yeah, and so for the listeners. The Women in Tech SEO mentoring program is free for members of the Women in Tech SEO group. I'm assuming your business coach you paid for that service right. Yeah. So out of all your mentoring programs, are they all free? I know that one is free.

Silvia Martin: 7:37

The ones that I do participate. Yes, they're all free. Yeah, and I think that's one of the good things about mentoring. There's also paid mentoring, but most of the programs are free, so that's one of amazing benefit, especially for the mentees. Right For us, you give your time for free, but you give, you have other things back right For that time, but for the mentees it's amazing, it's a great opportunity.

Katherine Watier Ong: 8:03

So what kind of thing can a mentor help you with? Because I think people might have an understanding around what a business coach might help you with a little bit. But with mentorship, what kind of things do you help your mentees with?

Silvia Martin: 8:14

Yeah. So there's a wide range of things that you can help with. So, for example, in my case because it's everything from your experience, right. So what I have experiences is digital marketing, getting into digital marketing. So, for example, the WIC digital program is about helping young people to get their first job in digital. It's not only specific for SEO, it's more like wider.

Silvia Martin: 8:39

So they are you helping with the interviews, preparing for it, you know, like doing the research, guiding them. Also, like helping them about sometimes they don't know what it's to offer, right, like what kind of different positions they can apply for, or, you know, it's about that, about guidance, showing them the big picture and then helping with the specific challenge that they have. So that's one thing that I do. Another thing is helping people that wants to become freelancer, because I did that.

Silvia Martin: 9:12

So the same is you help with your experience and also offer, as I said again, like a guidance for a specific challenge. Most of the people they ask you, like you know, because it's that is when you do a transition like that, it's scary, so they have a lot of questions. So it's great to have a mentor or someone like that that you can, you know, bounce ideas and they can help you. And of course, you can do it without a mentor, but the mentor is going to add a lot of value and is going to help you avoid maybe some mistakes. Hopefully you know. So, do you think?

Katherine Watier Ong: 9:48

do you think that the questions you get new help with are are they largely like tactical or are they largely in the soft skills bucket of digital marketing?

Silvia Martin: 9:58

Yeah, I think it's mostly soft skills, and then it's a lot of guidance with the technical or tactical, because mentoring is not teaching right, so helping others discover how to do things, but they are the ones that need to do the things. So, for example, if their goal is to learn more about, for example, tech SEO, I can guide them, I can tell them about the resources or if they have specific questions, but I'm not going to teach them Tech SEO as a teacher, you know.

Katherine Watier Ong: 10:27

Yeah. So just I just feel like there might be need. There might need to be some clarity around that. That's why I wanted to ask you that question Is that helpful if you've gotten stuck and it's due to the human part of you trying to get your SEO strategy pushed through, so how do you think mentoring has impacted your career? I mean, clearly you obviously didn't start with three mentoring programs that you were supporting at once, but now you're up to three and so clearly you're seeing benefit from it. Other than just feeling good that you're helping others, what other things have you sort of gotten from the programs?

Silvia Martin: 11:01

Yeah, so it gives you perspective. You know it's a new way of viewing things. You need to stay up to date to help your mentees, to guide them. It makes you think out of the box. Also, this is great for networking too, and I think that, yeah, the perspective thing is great, because sometimes you are just on your side of whatever maybe SEO so seeing things in a different way, in a fresh, new way, or looking at their challenges, it always help with your own ones and your own situations too.

Katherine Watier Ong: 11:36

Yeah, I always feel like I spend a lot of time training new to SEO clients and I always find it really helpful to talk to generally more new to SEO people, because oftentimes we get stuck in wonky language. It's helpful to see how they think about it. So you mentioned one of the certificates. So for that program, the one from the bank did you actually get training to become a mentor?

Silvia Martin: 12:00

Yes, I did, and it was for free also, you know.

Katherine Watier Ong: 12:03

Amazing.

Silvia Martin: 12:04

Yeah, so I got the certification thanks to that program. So I did offer my time and I was doing the mentorship as a mentor and then they gave me the training, so it was like online training learning. You know the basics and the foundations of mentoring, because there's like five different stages of mentoring and at first you need to build a rapport with your mentee, and then you need to have like trust and a connection, right, because that's the same, I guess, for coaches and other people, or, like team members. You cannot help everyone, right. There has to be like something that clicks, or something that you know that you inspire the other person or you have similar goals or values, or you know there has to be something there.

Silvia Martin: 12:59

It's very important for the relationship to work and also, like be very transparent and honest, because that's another of the value, like, of mentorship.

Silvia Martin: 13:07

That is, a one-to-one relationship, you can ask as many questions as you want, is a safe space, and I think that that's the thing that, for example, if you're working in a company, you don't ask these kind of questions to your manager or sometimes even to your peers, because you know there's this, it's not the same. You know you don't want to appear maybe weak or that you don't know the answer or whatever. But with a mentor, you can open up Right, it's very great in this kind of relationship. And then you need to set up the goals together and then help them. The same it's help them knowing what to do next, guiding with the steps, but is there, they need to do their own work. The mentor is like someone that guides you, but you are the one that need to, okay, think about what are the steps, where are you now? What do you want to achieve? And then the mentor gives clarity, perspective and helps also when there's like a bottleneck or things like that. But yeah, it's mainly the mentee that has to do all the hard work.

Katherine Watier Ong: 14:17

And it's probably super important for SEOs to find a mentor if they can, because you might be an organization where your manager does not have background on how to build your SEO career potentially and mentoring can be for your overall career right. So it could be yes, I'm working at XJob, but I want to be this other role and it's not going to be at this company and obviously you can't have your manager help you with those kind of tricky questions.

Silvia Martin: 15:50

That's the thing. It's transition right. It's something new that you want to do, something that you need guidance with. So that's what mentorship is ideal.

Katherine Watier Ong: 15:59

I also know that the Women in Tech SEO Mentoring Program definitely supports solos. So, for instance, if I'm having challenges and I want a mentee I could apply, which obviously there's nobody else in my life at the moment that would help me with that. I'm a mentee. I don't have a manager. So what soft skills do you think that you've been able to improve personally because you're a mentor?

Silvia Martin: 16:25

I think that communication helps with that, with giving feedback in a positive way also, because it's that mentoring is about helping others, inspiring them in a good way. So that helps with that, with giving feedback in a constructive way. Leadership, too, because the same you need to be there guiding and helping them a lot in a way, but they are the ones that, as I said before, they need to be responsible for all the actions of the mentorship. Clarity, and one thing is I find it like SEO, like finding patterns. So with different mentees, you will see different patterns and then you will help them with this. Clarity also, and active listening. Sometimes they think that their goal is one and maybe for all the things that they say, you can see patterns and it's like okay, maybe that's your goal, but you can identify maybe behaviors or things that are happening that are not helping them to achieve that goal, or maybe it's because they need to change the goal. All of these things is great and mentoring help with it.

Katherine Watier Ong: 17:47

So how do you tactically help your mentees set their goals and work toward them? Do you have a format that you use as part of the mentor program? Are they coming to you already with goals set? Do they come a bit more lost?

Silvia Martin: 18:04

Yeah, so it depends on the program, because some of the programs for example, women in the SEO that we mentioned before is really great because they give you a framework already, so they give you a handout and you can follow it if you want, or you can just get inspiration from there and then see with your mentee what works for both. But that's great. It gives you some kind of guidance for goal setting and for everything, if not in general. I like to go to this framework that is called Grow and I think it's from coaching and it helps because it means goals, reality, options and then the will or the steps that they need to do, and it helps you the same right, because you need to have a clear structure to help them setting their goals. That needs to be realistic, right, and also like they need to do a lot of thinking and research about okay, if I want these, there are the steps, and then you help them along the way they share with you and you both together refine different things, or if they have questions, and also accountability, because that's another thing right, we all can have.

Silvia Martin: 19:16

Like I have this goal, for example, going to the gym. You know that's a goal that everyone has, and then nobody does it. So accountability is also important, right? So the mentor will help with that. We'll say okay, you said that you're going to do X, have you done it? You know in all of these different sessions that you do, so you help with the action, stepping into the action, because sometimes the same there are things that there are only ideas. You would like to do it, you know sometimes, you know what you need to do, but you don't do it still. So you just need some maybe confidence, accountability and help to really move towards achieving your goals.

Katherine Watier Ong: 19:56

How many mentees do you think you've mentored that are goal driven and can hit the goals and what do you think the percentages of times you're sort of helping them figure out how to build good habits to get to their goals and then as a part of that do you suggest any books that they read, like atomic habits or that kind of thing around how to actually get to the goals and get stuff done.

Silvia Martin: 20:19

Yeah, it depends.

Silvia Martin: 20:22

Yeah, I will recommend them books, depending what they need, because the same this is Tyler made for each of the mentees, so it's kind of starting from scratch, a little bit from for each person.

Silvia Martin: 20:36

But I will say that most of the people they are already goal oriented, because someone that signs for the program, because most of this is formal mentoring, what I'm talking about right, because there's formal mentoring and there's informal mentoring If someone already takes the step in to go to the formal mentoring is because they're really interested and they can achieve goals, that they are goal oriented. And then maybe they need the specific help in some of the parts of it. Right, because if not, they will have done it alone. Right, it's just a little sometimes, it's just a little push that they need, or is that accountability or just a little something. And then some of the people for example, there's one of the programs that is also is free, right, and some people they sign up and maybe they don't go through, they don't keep either the goals either the mentorship. But that's up to them. If they don't feel like, actually they can commit the time and the actions, because that's what it really matters.

Katherine Watier Ong: 21:41

Well, you can't do much, you can't.

Silvia Martin: 21:44

They're not motivated.

Katherine Watier Ong: 21:45

I don't know what you do if they're not motivated.

Silvia Martin: 21:47

And the thing is, some of the times this mentoring is for free and also is kind of mandatory, For example, in the week program is part of their what they need to do to achieve and get the certificate and everything. So some people they're not really that motivated to do it. It's like, okay, I have to tick a box. But honestly, I only had one case like that and the race it was very, very motivated. So yeah, so far, so good. I've been lucky.

Katherine Watier Ong: 22:15

So what advice would you give somebody who's interested in being, that's interested in being a mentee, that's looking for a mentor?

Silvia Martin: 22:25

Yeah, so the main thing is to reflect about why is the? What is the main thing that they want to achieve? You know, what is the main goal is that it's a transition, it's a they want to do a career change or a different role. So, identify the need, right, like why they want to mentor. And then, once they know that and what they want to achieve with that is look online.

Silvia Martin: 22:51

There's so many different programs out there and, as we were saying before, they are mostly free and this this a lot of amazing people that they give, for free, the time to help others to achieve these goals or to already get them. You know, in the right direction. Right, because usually mentorship is like two, three months it depends on the program, but usually it's something like that. So, yeah, first step will be that clarity on what they want. Then look for the right program, because different programs they have different objectives. Right, like, for example, gumen and Teguccio is very well also organized, because when you sign up as a mentor or mentee, they tell you okay, what do you need help with? And they give you like three or four options, and I know one of them is about this you want to be like a freelance. Another is career. You want to advance your career, so that's going to help you to matching with the right mentor for your needs.

Silvia Martin: 23:56

So that's another thing. And then other thing that they can do is the informal mentoring. So if they don't have the time to commit for it because it's time commitment, especially for the mentee, as I was saying, because they need to do a lot of work and a lot of actions and reflections, and the informal mentoring is also like a great way of starting so these they can do it like in different ways. So you know, we learn from each other. So you can learn from podcasts like this one or other podcasts. You can learn from books, as you were saying also.

Silvia Martin: 24:33

We were mentioning books and, for example, regarding the books, there's two of them that I really highly recommend.

Silvia Martin: 24:41

So one is Tree, both Mentors by Tim Ferriss, and it's great because there's like different people. I don't know if it's 15 or 30 right now there's like a lot of different people and it's like the same five or six questions for all of them, and it gives you so much thought like how the same question, different people, they're doing it in different ways and I mean this thing about mentoring is also about learning from others, but you need to try if it works for you, because that's the thing right. I know everyone have the same kind of drivers and motivations or way of thinking or living, but it's good to know as much as you can in different ways of doing things and then try them and find what works for you. So this is really good. And there's another master mentors. This one is 30 people and the same is like different questions and they give you a lot of insights and things that make you think and then reflect on what you're doing, how to change or do things. So those are really really great books.

Katherine Watier Ong: 25:48

Well, and I've personally found so. I only recently became a mentor with the Women at Tech SEO not this cohort but a previous one, but I'm also pretty senior in my career. When I was more junior and I needed a mentor, I actually really clicked with a consultant who was my boss inside a nonprofit I was working at and then I left but she was doing her own thing as a consultant and stuff and I just really vibed with her and I would occasionally just drop her note, be like can we have coffee? And it was amazing, like she's and she's on the show, by the way Dana Theis, who's she's talked about her coaching business on the show but super helpful. And yeah, she did help me when I had moments of transition for free, just because I'm assuming she connected with me too.

Katherine Watier Ong: 26:36

But that's the other way that you could find an informal mentors If you particularly like a boss or a consultant you meet, you know, in real life, just ask them if you could take a little bit of their time to ask them some questions. But yeah, very valuable. So have you had any mentee success stories that you could share? Have you had those breakthrough moments where, like I don't know, they started at a real crisis moment and you got them into a better place?

Silvia Martin: 27:05

For example, I have some people that they got the jobs in digital. So that's a really good win. And this is for the week program and they help young people that they have like difficult kind of background, so it's maybe they don't have a career, they don't have like a university degree or something like that, so they give them like an accelerator of digital marketing and then like a course is like 11 weeks is something very intense, and then with all these mentors and they train them, then guide them, and it's great to be part of that success and help them achieving. You know, having the first digital job is really really great. So I had a few of them like that, um, another is from other programs that they wanted to be a freelancer and it's like, oh, I'm doubting yes or no, and then you guide them, you're helping them and then when you see them that they achieve what they want, it's really amazing. You know, like share the win with them and, yeah, that's really great.

Katherine Watier Ong: 28:22

Are any of your programs accepting mentors or mentees?

Silvia Martin: 28:27

Oh yes, all of them, okay. For example, women in Tegesio. They just did one right now, I don't know if you weren't in time to say yeah, I didn't have time to be a mentor this time. But yes, but yeah, it just happened right now. I'm going to be a mentor again with them. It's going to start now, end of September, and it's like two months of mentoring, but they do it like twice a year, so there's like different opportunities for people if they want to join as a mentor or mentee.

Katherine Watier Ong: 28:54

They usually have too many mentees right, it was an application process and I think they're always looking for more mentors on that side of the coin.

Silvia Martin: 29:03

Yeah, yeah, so that's one. And then WIC digital also. They always look for mentors and they can apply online. So I think I will share the links with you if people they want to have more information. And there's another that is the freelance coalition for BIPOC freelancers. They're the same, they're looking for mentors always. So, so, yeah, and the same.

Silvia Martin: 29:30

My advice is find what you can be helpful. You know what is your, what, what is the value that you can give as a mentor, because we all will have something that you can share and, you know, help others with. And then try to find the program that matches it. Sometimes you can find it just by chance. For example, this WIC digital program. I found it because I was on LinkedIn and one of my contacts posted oh there's, this program is new, they're looking for mentors and you know, I just saw it and I said you know, it looks great, I want to try it.

Silvia Martin: 30:06

So, yeah, I would like to tell people a lot Don't be afraid. You know, try different things, maybe you will like it and and you can help other people. So, as you said, like usually, mentors is more difficult to find because you give your time for free, but I know, so there's. This is not only about that. It's also about people saying like oh, I don't know if I'm going to be a good mentor. You know, like self doubt, a lot of imposter syndrome, we all have that. But I will say to people like, don't think about that, just go and try it, because you never know, if you don't try, you need to give it a try, and how can people learn more about you?

Silvia Martin: 30:48

So I'm part of LinkedIn like everyone, so they can find me there as Sylvia Martin SEO, with my company Trevoli.

Katherine Watier Ong: 30:57

Great. Well, it was awesome having you on the show. I hope that everybody who's listening thinks about becoming a mentor or mentee, if you have not already, because we both believe it's a great way to improve your soft skills. So thanks for having me. Thanks for being on the show. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening to find out more about the podcast and what we're up to. Go to digital marketing victoriescom and, if you like what you heard, subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, and comment and share the podcast, please. I'm always looking for new ideas, topics and guests. Email us at digital marketing victories at gmailcom or DM us on Twitter at DM victories. Thanks for listening.