My First Mentoring Experience - An Inspiring Story of Helping a Talented SEO
Women in Tech SEO launched their new mentoring cohort last Summer, and I was honoured to be a mentor for 2 months to the fantastic Sonja Marinkovic, a talented SEO based in Serbia.
What is the mentorship program?
The mentorship program by Women in Tech SEO is an initiative that aims at helping mentees and their mentors feel empowered through conversations and shared experiences. It’s all about women mentoring women. The program is focused on helping mentees reach their goals and find their own unique way of doing things.
I applied to be a mentor so I could share my experience as a freelancing SEO consultant with someone who might just be starting out. I wanted to share the struggles and make sure that my mentee would feel supported in their entrepreneurial skills. The goal wasn’t to provide a training course on how to be an independent SEO consultant, but rather to have conversations around client relationship management, business development and strategy.
I was paired with the fantastic Sonja Marinkovic, the founder and SEO consultant at Digital Search Hero. I strived to listen and foster an open conversation between us so that Sonja could gain confidence and the experience needed to take control of her own decisions. We talked about things like goal setting and time management, and how to handle difficult clients and tricky situations. We also discussed the importance of self-care and how to balance work and life. Overall, the mentorship experience was incredibly rewarding and it was a pleasure to watch Sonja's progress over the course of the Summer.
A bit more about Sonja
Sonja Marinkovic
Sonja Marinkovic is a freelance SEO consultant and webmaster. She’s passionate about SEO strategy, fixing technical bugs on the site, and managing multiple SEO projects at once. When she’s not working, she reads, rides a bike, does yoga, prepares healthy (sugar-free) cookies, and cuddles with her bunny pet Pirga.
Sonja is the head of Digital Search Hero, a boutique consultancy serving tech, consulting, and service businesses worldwide by providing fully customized SEO services.
She was also interviewed by Women in Tech SEO about her work in SEO.
What we worked on together during the mentorship
Over the course of the Summer, we took the time to dive deep into different topics.
We discussed the importance of goal setting and time management, and how to handle difficult clients and tricky situations. We also discussed the importance of self-care and how to balance work and life. We worked on topics such as showing up on social media, getting regular revenue, gaining confidence, and improving the website.
I encouraged Sonja to make sure she was taking care of herself, and gave her some tips on how to do that. By the end of the mentorship, Sonja had gained a lot of valuable experience and knowledge that she could apply to her work. She also found value in learning to be gentle with herself and to take control of her own decisions.
Sonja’s thoughts about the SEO mentorship
“How I am feeling regarding this: in general, this was a super-positive experience and I gained so much more than I thought it’s possible. We both created a kind of bond and were summer buddies. It was easy to see that you were genuinely interested in mentoring me. Also, you possess wonderful skills in motivating other people. I learned how to be more gentle with myself, to avoid being a bad boss to myself sometimes. 🙂
Our brainstorming meetings were a blast, I got so much value! 🙂”
