I help develop and roll out digital strategies at The Denver Post for daily coverage, breaking news, special projects, and opening day of Colorado’s ski season. (Trust me, it’s a big deal.)
Daily coverage
I work closely with the entertainment, features and outdoors team at every step of the process. I help reporters and editors fine-tune their pitches so they will perform well online. I also identify news, trending and evergreen stories, occasionally writing them myself if reporters are tied up.
I produce copy to make sure stories perform well, doing everything from customizing separate display, search and social headlines to setting up strong SEO.
I promote stories, working hard to make sure our work gets in front of the audiences we want. It can be as basic as finding the right time to publish a story to capitalize on search traffic while waiting to social it for peak Facebook, Instagram and Twitter audiences. Or, it could mean writing social copy, crafting push alerts and sending email alerts and/or newsletters.
I am constantly analyzing our audience and performance, using that knowledge to inform how we choose stories, what angle we approach them from, and deciding how we promote them. I’m constantly asking myself: “Is this a search play?” “Will this perform on social?” “Will this lead to new readers?” “Will this convert subscribers?” “How can we make this stronger?”
Some examples:
- Halloween will have its first full moon in nearly two decades (BCC: Werewolves)
- When Colorado ski resorts plan to open this season
- Where has Denver’s soul food gone? In a historically black neighborhood, the last restaurant of its kind turns 20
Special Project Planning
I like to get involved with projects early on to ensure we have the strongest digital presence possible and to make sure we capitalize on audience engagement opportunities. This can look different depending on the project. For example, with a bi-annual travel magazine, I work with the editor to come up with story ideas and manage freelancers. But for a series about teen suicide, I helped create a teen essay contest and worked with a small team to host a series of community conversations across the state.
Having worked on projects that are in-front of a paywall, behind a partial paywall and hard-walled, I have experience crafting a digital plan to meet the end goal of each project, whether it’s garnering pageviews or converting subscribers.
When working on a project’s audience plan, my goal is to create hype before a project is released, launch it with a heavy push and follow with continued promotion to keep readers coming back to the project. I take into account everything, including:
- Attention-grabbing headlines
- Strong SEO
- Social teases
- Push languages
- Email campaigns
- Promotional gifs
- Special subscription deals
- Events
Some examples:
- A more than year-long investigation into youth suicide
- An award-winning food video series
- A teen columnist series ahead of the 2020 elections
- Regular tentpole travel magazines for the summer and winter seasons
Large news events
From elections to ski season’s opening day, I have experience prepping and executing large news events for my audience.
Before the event, I meet with editors and reporters to go over what stories and photos we need and when we need them. I’ll then create an audience engagement plan that covers everything from headlines and SEO to social teases and push languages. This early prep helps us account for all possibilities when the big day arrives — including when a ski area tipped us off that it would be opening in only three hours (instead of the next day as initially planned) just so it could beat a rival.
When it’s go time, I make sure to be in communication with reporters in the field, editors in the newsroom and fellow strategists to make sure we pull everything off perfectly.
Some examples:
