Clients: Everspring and NelNet Campus Commerce
Challenge: turning webinars into articles/downloadable PDFs
Everspring is a leading provider of higher education technology and service solutions. Nelnet Campus Commerce provides integrated payment solutions for more than 1,300 institutions. Both wanted to turn the contents of webinars they’d organized into sponsor-content articles to be published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. I started with transcripts of the events, pulling out the most salient points and engaging quotes. But even edited transcripts of free-flowing discussions are not conducive to easy reading, so I reorganized the information into lists of actionable suggestions that would be useful to readers even if they don’t watch the webinar. The NelNet article is here. Everspring later turned its article into a downloadable PDF.
Events are content, and most content can be repurposed if you’re mindful of the demands and limitations of the new format.
Client: InCrowd
Challenge: Turn raw survey data into compelling narrative
Boston-based InCrowd offers real-time physician market research. In 2016, they conducted two surveys of emergency room and primary care doctors on the topic of burnout. More than 500 responded to the multiple choice and essay-style questions. The latter yielded a wide range of replies, many of them deeply emotional, and InCrowd wanted a narrative to accompany the charts and graphs.
I started by reading through the Excel spreadsheets containing all responses, weeding out the least useful, one- and two-word replies. I then read through the remaining replies several times, organizing them according to recurring themes (such as frustration with insurance companies and time-consuming electronic records systems, and pressure from health systems to see more and more patients per day). These themes provided a basic structure for the report, which InCrowd turned into a 15-page downloadable white paper.
Client: OhioGuidestone
Challenge: promoting a complex set of ideas
OhioGuidestone is the largest community mental health provider in the state. Dr. Ben Kearney, chief clinical officer, developed an eight-point plan for building resilience in families and, by extension, entire communities, that are struggling with trauma and toxic stress. The plan is relatively easy to grasp, but Dr. Kearney wanted to show the evidence behind it and the feasibility of implementing policies that would promote it. To that end, he wanted a book that made complex neuroscience and therapy topics accessible for non-professional readers.
I began by watching videos of Dr. Kearney’s presentations for professionals. This revealed both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge related to structure. The original plan was to write a chapter on each of the eight points, but it quickly became clear that this would not make for a compelling read. The opportunity, however, was to use Dr. Kearney’s presentations as a guide. They are conversational and engaging, with lots of anecdotes that provide real-world examples of abstract concepts. That style became the voice of the book.
Later, I sat in on other presentations and interviewed Dr. Kearney, to get him to elaborate on topics that weren’t clear to me. I also conducted my own research, and found many relevant studies, essays, book passages and news reports to weave into the narrative. The resulting book — Building Together: How Relationships Make Families and Communities More Resilient — draws on evidence from biology, psychology, anthropology and other disciplines to make the case that we can counter the effects of trauma and toxic stress with stronger bonds between people. You can read the introduction here.
Client: Institute of Family & Community Impact
Challenge: building awareness about issues related to mental health
IFCI is an initiative of OhioGuidestone. Its mission — “to enhance lives and build stronger communities for individuals at all stages of life through innovation, research and evaluation, professional training and development, and advocacy” — grew out of the Building Together concept and book described above. My role is to write about issues related to the mental health and general well being of the families that OhioGuidestone serves. Some articles are intended to be backgrounders on the hows and whys of human behavior: emotional processes that affect relationships; the destructive power of shame; and the myriad effects of stress. Other articles are more timely: treating racism as a public health crisis; children’s declining mental health; the stress of poverty; and the importance of trees.
Client: Nottingham Spirk
Challenge: thought leadership in a hard-to-define field
Nottingham Spirk is a world-class business innovation firm that develops consumer products and medical technology. Fittingly, the company is thoughtful and ambitious in its publishing. In addition to case studies, I work with NS on essays and white papers on complex topics like empathy in leadership; biomimicry; the long-term benefits of high school “shop” classes; the overlapping roles that hiring, culture and setting play in an organization’s capacity to innovate; and what all companies can learn from Marvel Comics, the launch of NHL mascot Gritty and the unlikely success of The Office. NS’s commitment to quality content and willingness to stray from standard business topics allows me to treat innovation like a beat.
Client: Ashton Technology Solutions
Challenge: Help firm stand out in crowded field with refreshed web copy
Ashton’s core values are not just for show — the owner and managers are quite serious about the importance of empathy in customer service, even in IT. “We hire for attitude as well as aptitude,” as the owner put it — and that line now appears on the About page. He and others who have been with the company a long time have thought a lot about not just what they do, but how and why. My job, then, was to listen carefully to how they describe these things, and use the recurring words, phrases and themes to craft copy for a redesigned web site.
Client: Candidate for Ohio State House
Challenge: write a script for a short get-out-the-vote video
Phil Robinson was a first-time candidate, running against a well-known opponent. I’d already written a few emails and an op/ed for him when his team asked for copy for a short video to be released just before election day, to motivate supporters. That was the extent of the instructions. I wrote two versions: a general, pro-voting message (in the video shown here) and a recap of Phil’s priorities and pledges (here). The campaign used both. Phil went on to win, and I was asked to write several more scripts for the 2020 re-election campaign.