Hélène Ioannidis: creative industries and SEO-oriented content
This spring 2023, we welcome Hélène Ioannidis to our team! Recruited to bolster our web-editing resources, she was naturally noticed for her keen sense of analysis, her enviable general knowledge and her good-humored sense of humor. To introduce her to you, an interview seemed more than appropriate. You can follow her on Linkedin and Twitter. At the end of August, you will hear her voice in an episode of the Euphonie Podcast, which we produce. You can also meet her soon in Versailles for the SEO Camp'us 2023, as well as in Brighton next September for BrightonSEO!
Who are you and what was your background before joining Assonance?
My name is Hélène Ioannidis, I'm 30 and I've been living in Reims since 2016. I have a Master's degree in communications for the creative industries, and until now I've mainly worked as a community manager. My first experiences were managing digital communications for cultural venues and concert halls. Mains d'Oeuvres in Saint-Ouen, then La Cartonnerie in Reims and its festival La Magnifique Society.
Motivated by the idea of entering sectors other than music, I set up my micro-business in 2018. My projects? In bulk: carry out online sponsorship operations, provide live-tweets, write articles for the city of Reims or manage digital communication strategies. In 2023, I joined the Assonance team with a first challenge: to master the fundamentals of SEO optimization while learning about the agency's tools.
What do you think are the main criteria for successful content?
Content is successful if it appeals to its target audience. That's what it's all about: working to interest and convince a persona with a quality creation. But beyond being successful, content is truly memorable if it's bold.
The perfect cocktail in my opinion:
be innovative (but not too innovative);
stand out (just enough);
and be bold (often).
I'm impressed by the subtle humor of the agency BuzzMan which manages, quite simply, to be in a niche of its own. A typical example is the wink to its main competitor Mcdonald's. Here, originality is the secret to success.
Here's an example of a campaign poster launched by the agency for Burger King:
In my opinion, storytelling is also very important for the user. We're often more convinced when a brand story touches us personally as individuals. Dating sites and apps are particularly good at this... Love touches us all, doesn't it? #okjesuisfleurbleue
What's your take on the role of visuals in online content?
I think it's more than essential. You can be very interested in a piece of content and still be an assiduous reader, but I don't think you should neglect the power of images or video to accompany text on a web page.
Photos aren't just there to illustrate a point, they're also there to structure a text and make it easier to read! The media have cut down the length of their articles to ensure that younger readers will read them in their entirety. They've even added videos, and in some cases it's the image that takes precedence over the words.
Even so, it's important to choose your images carefully 😉. The advantage is that today, visuals are at your fingertips. With Midjourneyyou can even create a customized visual.
Without further ado...
ChatGPT has arrived and is well installed. Do you have 1 favorite way of using it?
It's true that the tool has been present in our lives for quite some time now. Personally, I'm still at the experimental stage.
On the professional side, I've used the tool to synthesize and structure texts, or to find simplified definitions for complicated terms.
But my favorite is certainly finding a stylish recipe in no time at all, with only the words carrot and leek to fall back on...
