Content Marketing and PR
What do you specialize in?
I specialize in strategy development, copywriting and working in WordPress (I recently started experimenting with Square Space).
What’s been your favorite type of work?
Writing meaningful content and seeing it help people. I love balancing between the narrative and instructional information that goes into good content.
Your favorite project so far?
Hands down, working on PR copy for Peanuts Worldwide LLC. I grew up on Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, so getting to help promote that brand too is awesome!
What’s the most overlooked PR opportunity in the digital space right now?
Guest appearances on podcasts. I used this approach in the early stages of growing one of my own sites. It took far less time than writing a bunch of guest posts for other sites.
Guest podcasting is a “triple win”: You help an influencer create quality content, build your brand and credibility, and can focus your writing on your own content.
Public Speaking
What’s your expertise in this area?
I’ve been doing public speaking since I was in high school. I competed in speech and debate events in high school and college, and continue to speak in a variety of contexts.
Additionally, I developed public speaking curriculum and teach college courses in public speaking.
What’s been your hardest public speaking moment?
Speaking to a college audience about campus race relations. Emotionally charged environment, potentially divided audience, controversial topic area. The outcome was awesome and encouraging, however.
The best speech you ever gave?
That’s a tough one. In competition, it’s probably the closing speech that won my partner and I a tournament championship.
Instructional Design
What is Instructional Design?
It’s a fancy term used to describe creating the curriculum and/or material for an online course. It can be applied to classes developed for professional, personal, or business purposes.
What kind of classes do you develop?
I’ve mostly done courses for university professors, but I’ve also studied how businesses use course design for employee training and/or professional development. I’m a big fan of Lynda.com!
Are you developing other skills?
Yes, I’m currently working on honing my research and data analysis capabilities. I’m learning STATA and SPSS (statistical software).