Writing & Editorial
Social Media
Video
Burpee
Images via Burpee.com
EatingWell
Images via EatingWell.com
Better Homes & Gardens
Images via BHG.com
Scotts Miracle-Gro
Images via miraclegro.com
Angi (Formerly Angie’s List)
Images via Angi
Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden
Images via Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden
Fun365 (Oriental Trading Company)
Images via fun365.com
Video
It’s virtually impossible to have a well-rounded marketing strategy without video. During my time at Better Homes & Gardens, I developed video topics and scripts, sourced talent and props, assisted on the day of the shoot, and helped with post-production to ensure the final product was on-brand and met objectives. Whether it’s designed to help bring a written piece to life, enhance social, or boost SEO for a particular page, I’m well-versed in creating highly clickable videos that add another layer of service to a brand.
Beauty for BH&G
Gardening for BH&G
Pets for BH&G
Social
Anyone can write a Facebook post and get a few likes and comments. But it takes a deep understanding of a brand and ever-changing social best practices to create meaningful 1:1 conversations and resonate with readers in a crowded field.
And contrary to what Mark Zuckerburg might have you believe, the goal of social media isn’t really how many followers you have—it’s getting readers off of social media and onto a platform you own that’s immune to algorithm changes, such as your website or email list.
Here are just a few of my proudest accomplishments when it comes to social.
Facebook
When I started in May of 2017, the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden’s most recent Facebook post was a poorly lit cellphone photo of a newspaper article. The account had hovered around 3,000 followers for quite some time. I immediately hired someone to oversee social media and implemented a style guide. We more than doubled the number of followers in the first year, and have quintupled the number of followers 3.5 years later.
It’s become a primary vehicle for sharing the Garden’s mission and driving engagement and attendance. With every post, Facebook live, or video, they are called to visit the website, join the email list, sign up for a class or event, or visit the Garden.
In addition, the Garden was mailing expensive paper catalogs for classes to its 2,500 member households. We shifted to posting classes as events on our Facebook page and website, with a net savings of nearly $10,000 per year and an increase in class attendance.
Instagram
During my time at the Garden, we grew our Instagram following from less than 1,000 to nearly 5,500. Through the strategic use of hashtags, we gained a strong following of people interested in the Garden’s unique brand of organic, sustainable, eco-friendly horticulture. This allowed us to extend our mission well beyond the Metro and gain influence on a larger scale.
Pinterest
Finally, I am particularly proud of how I implemented Pinterest to promote not only the Garden’s horticulture but also its wedding and event rental business. When I started at the Garden, there was a Pinterest account with a few disorganized boards that hadn’t been added to in several years. I developed a strategy to share our gorgeous wedding photos using strategic hashtags and captions to help attract interest in Des Moines and beyond. We also created a blog and started sharing service-oriented content via the platform. We also discovered that our audience had high engagement with garden quotes on a photo overlay from the Garden, so we started producing and sharing those frequently. As of now, the Garden has 133,700 monthly viewers.