Product, AEO, SEO, Dev & Nerdy Things | Helping build brands & products👉Writer
Hi, I'm William (Will) Soprano. I cut my teeth in startups - working with founders and cofounders to start, build and grow their products and companies. I parlayed all of that experience into roles with Fortune 500 companies. Now I'm building for myself - both in product development and helping companies in SEO, brand development and content marketing. I've experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows professionally, personally and emotionally. I've found a solution to life and life's problems professional and personal, learned how to be reliable. I only share my experiences. I don't (and won't) go on about playbooks, secret sauces, etc. My work and life personal today are grounded in a bedrock of principles which work regardless the platform, model, etc.
Everyone is "Ai powered" these days, huh? I've actually built an Ai application as the product manager and helped build two other LLM based products, and countless internal tools. In addition I was researching artificial intelligence all the way back in 2016, writing the paper on cognitive bias in tech (ai).
A brand is not a logo. A brand is the core of a business or product; the thought-work put into deciding what to build, who to build it for, and why it's being built. Let's talk about branding - and brand building - and rebranding :_)
I've built content machines at 3 different organizations and have tried and true methods to scale content marketing regardless of team sizes. Personally I've written content across all platforms - from publications and blogs to on-page website content and company articles.
Having launched 5 products in my career, something I've learned is that the core of a successful GTM strategy comes from the thought-work put into the modeling of the product. When we are successful internally we can be successful in launch.
I've been on 7 product teams - working at the highest and lowest levels, from build to launch and management. Roles I've played on products are strategy, user stories / epics, and developer support.
I've worked on the web for 15 years - driving traffic using SEO the entire time. On-page SEO, technical SEO, programs and content marketing. I started in publications and have since worked in B2B, B2C, and major brands. My expertise is industry agnostic and I've never had a site de-indexed or harmed during the Ai boom.
I've stood at the intersection of technology and communication my entire career - whether that's in product, on the web, or within teams / projects. Making technologies and tools work for the respective needs of the above are something I'm adept in and have done so for 15+ years.
I use Airtables when I have datasets to visualize or move around - Things like structured content from applications / forms / forums. It's also a good partner technology in larger architecture when moving / migrating data.
Google Analytics is a staple in web analytics - every website is touched by the tool. It's evolved into GA4 and with it being a now "new" platform it's still in the infancy stage of a product.
I helped grow the strongest competitor to HackerNews, DZone.com, to its highest visibility and profitability. We used the infusion of cash to improve our IP and CapEx in preparation of an exit which officially began in 2017, culminating in a 12 MM purchase. And later our IP was acquired by private equity
I use SEMrush for both audits and managing SEO for products and services. But how we use the tool is more important than the data it provides... it's especially important to have a keen grasp of foundational web / SEO principles when using tools.
I've built and launched more than 40 websites, both custom code and quicker-to-launch Elementor sites. From dev to content - on thorugh demand generation, SEO, and technical marketing like technical SEO, integrations and automation.
I help companies and brands to increase their awareness and build pipeline. We do this through digital products, internal tools, and SEO. My clients are able to more effective and stable than their competitors because we turn their data into a useable asset and create tools around that asset to better find and acquire new users.
Helping our users find, consume and interact with content externally and within our platform. - Product Manager - Head of SEO - Product Led Growth - Created user support, training and enablement systems + programs.
I created and implemented processes that helped musicians find their tone from the top of the funnel to product development. Product Marketing - Release schedule & GTM Strategy. *beat every KPI* Web Dev - e-commerce, ERP, SEO for all brand needs. Partnerships - Brand, link building, content. Product Management | SEO | Web Dev | Brand Development | Marketing Partnerships Using the web, IT and ERP to help marketing, sales, and manufacturing. Via; Netsuite ERP and CXM GA4 and GSC Content, SEO HTML, CSS
Data Management - full lifecycle; migration, storage, analysis. Google API, CRM API development. Software Development - Managed development of internal and external software applications; web development, data science, Social Business Software. Product and Project Management - IT Services, Web Application, GitHub, database management Tech Marketing - SEO for 4 web properties, the implementation of robots.txt, Site Maps, Clean Code and Rich Code Snippets Languages and Platforms used and taught: Python, JavaScript, Google Cloud, Citrix VM, HTML/CSS, Beautiful Soup, Selenium, Wordpress, NodeBB, Google API (Drive, Sheets)
I'm working with developers internally and externally to grow Qlik's new open source community. We have just launched our first product, Qlik Playground, which is a sandbox environment for developers to use our core APIs to create or prototype data driven applications. I'm responsible for a vast array of roles: Open Source Community Manager Technical Content Developer relations Comm Integrations SEO Messaging House and so so much more If you're a developer and want to learn more, please let me know. We have approached search in ways I've not seen outside of Google and our tech allows you to focus on what you love instead of query writing or data modeling.
The Soprano Group is a group of technology and marketing pros who apply both skill sets (IT and marketing) to help our customers drive traffic and maximize their web 2.0 presence. As a product of The Soprano Group, I created www.Query.City in an effort to bring together the Triangle and provide a vehicle for companies in the area increase their SEO value. We've also created a software engine that we're excited about because of it's ability to assist and improve multiple markets. We call the engine Tetra and the products can be found here: www.GeoSocialRadar.net A new and under construction project is in the data visualizations area. We're working hard to bring something special to the web while maintaining basic and accepted user functions. One of my most important roles here is to encourage our folks to be good teammates and to use their best skills in the most efficient way possible.
When you work as a director of marketing, you usually wear a lot of hats and this is no different. I love having my hands in multiple facets of the company while my main focus is tech marketing. We're a software development, web design, and tech marketing firm. I coordinate all campaigns whether they're for our company or clients, as well as take the lead for social media and company blogs/landing pages. We currently have 35 clients and we're quickly growing (on pace to grow 100% in 2014).
I've taken on a bit of an evangelist role with DZone for developers, DZone, technology, and AnswerHub (Social Business Software created by DZone). I've created and worked within systems that allow us to better understand our community so that we can best communicate with, help, and highlight them. This has lead to a more engaged community, higher social media interaction, and a more accomplished community. One of my key functions as our Community Coordinator is to generate a local presence and awareness around DZone and the great things we’re doing for all technology professionals. I’ve attended, started, and spoke at as many events as possible. DZone is now the sponsor of 3 meetups which we host every month. We host more than 3 meetups per month, including an event that saw more than 70 people for new statups in the area! We are excited to host more, so if you’re in the Raleigh/Durham/Cary area, let me know! Before I took on the above roles, I was a Content Curator for DZone where I learned about all of the highly technical topics that DZone covers. I learned how to effectively communicate with English as a Second Language individuals, as well as how to moderate a large website and grow a content portal. We reached a milestone of 1.5 million unique visits for all of our topical portals, and I personally oversaw the growth of our Windows Phone portal, which went from 15,000 views/month to 80,000 views/month.
I came onto the Best Buy project team as a creative writer to push our project to the finish line. I was hired out of a pool of more than 3,000 applicants and was tasked with fixing an already written script/back story. Once I polished the existing story, I worked with the original authors of the script on the characters so that each character’s purpose was well defined. As we did this, I realized that much more of the script and story needed to be reworked. I implemented a process to which we could all work at the same time but on different aspects of the video game so that we would be more efficient. We broke up the video game by back story, character development, and dialogue into different parts and had each team member work on a different section. I was lead on the creative and editing of the game, so all final edits came through me. I wrote all of the dialogue through what is known as “chat trees”, and deferred to the team for my personal edits. We were a remote team and 4 of the members worked under me.
