Experience

Senior social media specialist, Society for Science & the Public (Science News & Science News for Kids) — 02/2011–current

Built custom social media strategies for each of SSP's core audiences: Science News, Science News for Kids and the Society for Science and the Public, focusing on engaging and interacting with fans/followers to build a more loyal and valuable social media community. Authored social media handbook for employees to educate employees when and how to use social media.

• Increased Science News's Facebook engagement 200-300% in first month
• Increased Google Ad Words for non-profits daily grant to maximum of $329 a day with better, more targeted ads and improved keyword management

Community and social media manager, Rare — 11/2009–09/2011

Crafted Rare’s social media strategy from the ground up and managed Rare’s online communities, including Facebook, Twitter and Rare’s own online community, RarePlanet.org, which led to significant growth in online traffic. Provided training (in person and via screencasts, live remote training sessions and written documents) for Rare staffers on Web tools, social media, blogging, photo and video capturing and more. Produced most of Rare’s online content, including managing blog, and updated Rare’s homepage regularly.

• Increased traffic to Rare’s blog by about 300 percent in one year
• Designed photo storage system and tagging procedure, which resulted in more than 25,000 company photos being uploaded, tagged and searchable by staff members anywhere in the world
• Organically increased Rare’s Twitter followers from 32 to more than 6,000 in about 18 months
• Created social media strategy with goals, best practices and metrics to track progress (Excel, Hootsuite, Google Analytics) and engaged the leadership team and board members in strategy
• Oversaw the translation of training screencasts from English into Chinese, Spanish and Bahasa Indonesian
• Managed and encouraged the community on RarePlanet, helping to more than double pageviews and the number of users on the site
• Increased value of free nonprofit advertising provided by Google AdWords from about $10 per day to the maximum $329 per day by optimizing ads and keywords

Editor/lead writer, New York University, Beatblogging.org — 06/2008–09/2009

Managed all editorial and technical aspects of website, studying and reporting on how journalists use social media, blogs and other Web tools to innovate. Managed a team of NYU students, assigned stories and edited all copy. Assisted journalists in making the transition to using the Web and social media as journalism tools. BeatBlogging.org still receives thousands of pageviews a month in its current archived state.

• Increased traffic to BeatBlogging.org by more than 400 percent in a year
• Recommended online and social networking tools to help journalists connect with users on the Web and promoted two-way communication between beat reporters and users
• Designed, coded and implemented new features for BeatBlogging.org
• Monitored site analytics and provided reports for funders
• Used social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, delicious, Digg, etc. to help report stories, interact with sources and generate traffic to our site
• Produced a weekly podcast in which I interviewed journalists about how social media was changing their jobs and helping them to be better journalists
• Created screencasts to help journalists learn how to use social media and other Web tools

Web content editor, Stars and Stripes — 01/2007–06/2008

Brainstormed, designed, coded and implemented special features using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Photoshop. Updated homepage and section pages and created the lead homepage graphic daily.

• Provided recommendations to our team of bloggers to improve content
• Created photo galleries, audio slideshows, videos and other multimedia content
• Provided multimedia and online training

Sports writer, Chagrin Valley Times — 06/2006–01/2007

Wrote news and features stories on high school sports.

Freelance projects

Editor and co-founder, Interchange project — 2011–present

Co-founded project with journalism professor Jeremy Littau to study and report on the intersection of technology, journalism, information, usability, design and the social sciences.

• Co-host and edit weekly podcast
• Generated thousands of pageviews in first month
• Handle all technical aspects of website, including design, code, hosting, content management system and content delivery network

Contributor, Poynter.org — 2009–present

Research and report on the media industry, focusing on how journalists and news organizations are using the Internet, with an emphasis on online journalism, online communities and social media.

• Built a network of sources of journalists, academics and experts
• Create screencasts and other visual content to help tell stories and educate journalists

Social media researcher and consultant — 2009–present

Create social media strategies to help clients achieve strategic goals.

• Managed best-selling author Joseph Finder’s social media for his book Vanished (debuted at No. 13 on the New York Times Best Seller list)