I’m thrilled to announce that Amanda Zantal-Wiener, a virtuoso marketer and a veteran of media newsrooms, has been selected as SEJ’s Editor-in-Chief.
This is a newly created position focused heavily on strategy and leadership, and Amanda will oversee our entire editorial team.
Over the past year, SEJ has experienced significant growth in our team, brand, and our content offerings.
“Our team has expanded in both size and diversity in just over a year from 13 to 33 team members, located around the world in 5 countries and 6 time zones,” said Jenise Uehara Henrikson, CEO of Alpha Brand Media, parent company to SEJ.
“Amanda brings deep experience with how content strategy, married with a strong editorial team, can empower and inspire marketers who rely on us for guidance and discovery of what is happening in their world. We’ll look to Amanda to help us elevate and support our writers and editors to produce the best work of their careers.”
As SEJ’s Managing Editor, I’m incredibly proud of what the team has accomplished to date, including how our expert contributors program has evolved.
We’re publishing more expert content than ever before – and we’ve expanded our contributor roster to over 130 industry practitioners, recruiting contributors from Oracle, Autotrader, Adobe, Similarweb, and more.
Our new contributors work and serve clients and audiences in the U.K., Europe, and Latin America. SEJ has made a concerted effort to close the gender gap in our publishing operations.
“Two-thirds of our leadership are women, including our heads of Finance, Project Management, Sales, and Marketing.” Jenise added.
We’ve also introduced a new interview series in order to get innovators and experts to give their take on trending topics that impact your work, campaigns, and careers.
In these exclusive interviews with experts from Amazon, Trader Interactive, BrightEdge, Pinecone, Botify, Invoca, and more, we’ve surfaced tons of actionable insight from working practitioners and industry leaders to help you learn and grow.
I’m thrilled to welcome Amanda to the team and collaborate with her on all these initiatives.
In her most recent role, Amanda served as Senior Deputy Editor and Content Manager for HubSpot’s social media team.
There, she oversaw critical elements of the brand’s social content strategy, managing several cross-functional and cross-departmental projects and initiatives.
Previously, Amanda managed the News and Trends by HubSpot program, where she served as a reporter, editor, and analyst on the tech industry news most relevant to marketers, sales, and service professionals.
“Having worked for a rather sizeable CRM company, Search Engine Journal has often been for me a go-to source of up-to-the-minute information on the industry news and trends impacting B2B professionals the most,” Amanda said.
“SEJ has grown from a traffic perspective, brand perspective, and most importantly a team and operations perspective,” said Loren Baker, our founder and the host of SEJ’s official podcast.
“We’ve blossomed from a one-person blog to the leading publication on search marketing, and that growth brings new opportunities. I’m extremely excited to add Amanda to our team,” Loren added.
I asked Amanda what she has in store for readers?
“As Editor-in-Chief, I hope to uphold the credo of putting the reader first and upholding SEJ’s already high reporting standards to bring timely, relevant information to the SEO and marketing communities – how, where, and when they need it,” she said.
Amanda noted that in the modern business and consumer landscape, the range of topics falling under that umbrella will continue to expand.
“I’m excited to bring perspectives as a marketer, journalist, editor, and manager to what is already a remarkable publishing environment,” she said.
Outside of work, Amanda fancies herself a bit of a ‘Golden Girls’ aficionado but hopes you won’t hold that against her.
On weekends, you can usually find her hiking, trying a new recipe, or getting outside as much as possible with her dog, Tullamore.
You can reach Amanda with media/press requests and news tips at amanda@searchenginejournal.com, or on Twitter @Amanda_ZW.
Featured image: Amanda Zantal-Wiener
