Use AI to Kill the SEO agency Pre-Work, Not the Thinking | Erika Braeger, Tenspeed

Erika Braeger is not trying to automate the analysis. She manages organic growth strategy at Tenspeed, a B2B SaaS content agency, and the automation she builds is aimed squarely at the pre-work: pulling numbers out of four systems and lining them up in a spreadsheet before anybody is allowed to think. Key takeaways Automate the pre-work, protect the thinking. The distinction is the whole interview, and it is a better rule than most published AI policies. Her management job is confidence, not answers. A strategist who arrives for a gut check usually already knows, and she coaxes rather than signs off. The brief is where the quality is decided. Subject matter expertise, product research and ideal customer profile go in before a word is written, whoever writes it. Write for humans first, then make it machine readable. In that order, and for a reason she states plainly. Never rush a website migration. Her one red line, and her first question is always what business goal the migration is for. On this page Kill the pre-work, keep the thinking Coaching a team out of the gut check Where the quality is actually decided Never rush a website migration Chapters and timestamps People, ideas and sources mentioned Questions this episode answers Go deeper Kill the pre-work, keep the thinking I don’t want to take away the thinking part. I want to allow the strategist to arrive at the thinking part with more ease, without burning energy, on grabbing data, organizing it out of multiple systems, organizing it in the spreadsheet.— Erika Braeger It is a narrow claim and a much more defensible one than most agencies are making. The analysis, the narrative, the relationship and the decision all stay with the person. What gets automated is the hour of assembly that happens before any of that can start. It’s the pre-work that can burn a lot of time, a lot of energy.— Erika Braeger Her example of a skill in use is deliberately mundane: gathering conversations scattered across several systems and summarising them, instead of a strategist opening four tabs to reconstruct where an account is. Coaching a team out of the gut check A big part of my role is helping people grow, helping them build confidence and trust their instincts.— Erika Braeger She was a teacher before this, and the method transfers directly. A strategist comes to her because a client is overhauling their navigation and they want a second opinion. They are plugged into the client and the industry. They usually already know. I don’t just sign off on the gut check. I keep asking curious questions to coax the answer out of them.— Erika Braeger The point is not the navigation. It is that the same person will not...