Content Strategy

Telling the right stories

Hillary Clinton

As the Director of Content for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, I oversaw the editorial direction of the campaign blog and HillaryClinton.com. This included drafting and updating issue pages based on dense policy language, updating the homepage daily to reflect campaign messaging, crafting candidate bios. I also oversaw additional content projects like: 

Way Back When: A way to highlight Hillary’s long-standing record of public service versus Trump’s complete lack of qualifying experience. This site let users shuffle through time to see what Hillary and Trump were doing each year of their life. The site generated over 7 million views and a wave of press coverage. 

With Her Because: A digital experience that allows you select the reasons you were “with her” and create your own custom voting platform. After selecting your issue, you could share your custom page that succinctly summarized where Hillary and Trump stood on the issues. 

They’re With Her: Custom pages to highlight why three key validators —President Obama, Michelle Obama, and Joe Biden — supported Hillary. The site pulled together their best arguments, quotes, and videos from past speeches and events. 

Role: Director of Content, Hillary for America

Fundraising Programs

thoughtful asks and optimizations

Team USA

Team USA relies on generous small-dollar donors to cultivate America's best athletes, but with the cyclical nature of the Olympic Games, it can be hard to sustain donor's interest over the longer term.

For three years, the Blue State Digital team helped Team USA develop fundraising campaigns that broke out of the boom and bust of the Games cycle, keying in on the impact fans can have on their favorite athletes, and on Team USA's performance on the world's biggest athlete stage.

During End of Year 2015, we developed a creative campaign focused on the unseen moments that make or break an athlete. We also created the Team USA Registry where fans could donate items athletes need most to train and win.  

Over the last few years, the Blue State team was able to steadily increased Team USA's annual revenue and created a more consistent giving patter from a larger donor base.

Role: Creative Director and Communications Strategist, Blue State Digital
 

Graham Windham

Much to their surprise, Graham Windham (a 210-year-old child services agency) recently found itself in the middle of the biggest cultural phenomenons of the time: "Hamilton". Alexander Hamilton's wife Eliza founded Graham Windham in memory of her husband. When Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the orphanage into his musical, he had no idea the organization was still around today.

With Graham Windham receiving more attention than ever, Blue State Digital helped turn that attention into result for the organization. We put together a social and email campaign around the Grammy Awards, plus a contest to win 2 tickets to the show, we helped fans discover this organization and encouraged them to become a part of Eliza's legacy. 

In just a few months, we were able to double the size of their digital community, and tripled their size of their small-dollar donor base.

Role: Creative Director, Blue State Digital

Engagement Campaigns

beyond vanity metrics

Team USA: Women's World Cup

Team USA is always looking for ways to connect with fans outside the boom and bust cycle of the Olympic Games, and to drive their core business objectives: efficiently growing their digital audience and driving TeamUSAShop.com sales. 

The team at Blue State Digital saw the Women's World Cup as a perfect moment to capture fan interest and built a digital campaign that highlighted the strength of our female athletes and that gave fans multiple ways to show off their enthusiasm.

This beautifully designed campaign across paid media, social media and email drove the most cost-effective acquisition campaign for Team USA to do-date, and increased engagement by 152% over the Men's World Cup campaign. Plus, the women of U.S. Soccer added a third World Cup win to their resume.

Role: Creative Director, Blue State Digital

High Museum of Art, Atlanta

When the High Museum of Art in Atlanta found out one of the most famous faces in painting, Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, would be hanging in their gallery, they asked Blue State Digital to help extend the reach of the exhibition, inside and outside the Museum. 

We developed an integrated outbound communications strategy for this campaign, focusing on email marketing and social media as a way to drive more visitors to the Museum, enrich the experience in-Museum experience, and bring the exhibition beyond the walls of the High. The campaign centered on Vermeer's Girl, asking fans to imagine what she was thinking in six words. We also gave fans a way to put themselves inside the painting, and provided visitor guides that explained other pieces in the exhibition. The campaign generated thousands of responses, as well as increased ticket sales. 

Role: Communication Strategist, Blue State Digital

Workshops

solutions to your toughest challenges

Types of Workshops

ideation

Need a big idea for a big moment? Have a fundraising campaign missing a creative spark? Or looking to jump-start creativity at your organization? An ideation session is the solution. I'll tailor the session to meet your goal and walk you through interesting and thoughtful exercises that will push you to think beyond the obvious solutions.

Goal setting & prioritization

You can't do anything if you're trying to do everything.

During this session, I'll help you determine your top priorities. It might feel overwhelming at first, but I promise by the end of the session you'll walk away knowing you're on a new path forward with a set of clearly defined and prioritized goals for your digital programs.

voice and tone

Find your voice — and how to use that voice. We'll partner together in this workshop to determine what your brand is, and what your brand is not. Come out of the session with a clear a guide on your voice across digital channels.

Card Sort

Card sorting is a brilliant method for developing an overarching structure for a website. You can move from total chaos to complete consensus in just a few hours.

In the session, each participant has the opportunity to organize content and topics into categories that make sense to them. Then, we come together to review each person's approach and find the points of consensus. Merging these approaches together will generate electric ideas, and you'll leave the session with cohesion around a website structure and on the road to a solid site map.

Workshop Process

Before a session, I'll work with you to set the objectives for the workshop and determine the right participants list. Based on our conversation, I'll select the right set of ice breakers, prompts, and activities that make up a detailed agenda. 

I'll facilitate the meeting, guiding the group through the different exercises, creating an open environment where creativity is encouraged, boundaries are pushed, and anyone can feel creative.

Following the meeting, I'll capture all the ideas from the session and suggest next steps.

Websites

friction free  

International Center for Missing & Exploited Children

The International Center for Missing and Exploited Children website hadn't been touched since the first design in mid-90's. Content had been added ad-hoc over the years, disrupting the site navigate, and the writing was inconsistent and lacked a coherent message.

The team first took stock of ICMEC's ancient website, auditing content to evaluate the quality, as well as the organization of the site. As we sifted through the old website, we also conducted one-on-one audience interviews to better understand what users were looking from on the website. 

Using these findings, we re-wrote, re-organized, and re-imagined the website content to better match audience needs, developing a robust site map that met the demands of partners, key stakeholders, and internal staff.

With a new website, ICMEC has been better able to share their work with the world, attracting more donors and partners for their essential global mission.

Visit the website at icmec.org.