So I’m an editor by trade. That means that I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about SEO optimization despite the fact that my job description makes me sound suspiciously like an inbound marketer. And I didn’t even know what an inbound marketer did until I stumbled across a webinar on YouTube a couple of weeks ago.

I write very little in the traditional B2B trade magazine sense. Of course, I edit copy for two magazines. But I post articles to our content management system (we use Joomla) on a near daily basis across two sites. I write SEO meta data and keywords. I manage and generate all of our social media content (that’s two Facebook pages, two LinkedIn groups, two Twitter profiles, a Google+ page, and a Pinterest page–there might be more I’m forgetting, honestly, and I’m always looking for appropriate ways to grow that presence).

The crux of this is that social media drives traffic to our websites (which gets readers to actually read the great content we produce) and also helps our sales people sell ads on our website. I am lucky to work for a company that cares more about content than the typical B2B (who, in my experience, cares a lot more about sales that content). We generate great content for readers in our niche and we want everybody who might care to read it to find it.

And that’s a whole new world.

I’m in a weird hybrid position. I’m not a coder but I need to understand everything Joomla offers to my small company (we’re small enough that we fit around a large dining room table). I’m not exclusively a social media manager but I need to maximize our efforts because we don’t have the luxury of expensive analytics or a team of people to manage it. I need to understand SEO writing and optimization so that I don’t waste my time (or the time of my co-workers) with pointless efforts.

I’m half editor, half inbound marketer. And the problem I’m facing is the gap between those skills.