Social Media
I began working in social media in the digital dinosaur year of 2009. The print publication I was working for at that time wanted to dip its toes into Twitter and I volunteered to take it on. Since then I have worked on all the major platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, and Youtube) managing social media programs for large non-profit organizations, federal agencies, and small local organizations. Although I can run paid campaigns, my heart is in the organic messaging that delivers the right message far and wide. I love how the platforms are always evolving, providing new ways to tell an organization’s story and spread its mission.
ASHFoundation Social Media Program
ASHFoundation Social Media Impact: Growing Engagement and Expanding Reach
Since 2023, I’ve focused on building the ASHFoundation’s social media presence on LinkedIn and Instagram, creating direct channels to connect with professionals, students, and young scholars. LinkedIn highlights award recipients' achievements, while Instagram engages a younger audience through dynamic content and stories.
Our audience grew by 53.6% within 12 months, reflecting rising interest in the ASHFoundation’s mission. Key successes include spotlighting award recipients, recognizing disability-related observances, creating a digital toolkit for incoming award recipients, and hosting a joint Instagram Live event with ASHA, which further broadened our reach.
I’m proud of how these efforts have strengthened the ASHFoundation’s online presence, building a vibrant and engaged community.
Allyship Well Podcast Series
The Allyship Well Podcast series was launched in September 2022 and highlighted 10 men describing their professional and personal journeys to becoming allies. The series was a limited series and featured 1-on-1 conversations with a male ally to explore how men can be allies to women in the workplace and broader public spaces. Because the focus was building allyship in professional settings, the marketing for the podcast was primarily on LinkedIn, including paid and organic messaging. Over the course of 11 weeks we featured three posts per week for each episode, including pull quotes and polls to generate engagement. Future plans include creating more podcasts and repurposing those of the original series.
American Speech-Language Hearing Association
From 2014 to 2021, I served as the social media manager for the American-Speech-Language Hearing Association and managed a social media program, which included Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn and had more than 300,000 collective followers. During my tenure I worked with internal departments wrote copy, created graphics and videos, and directed live videos (Facebook and Instagram) to promote the association to a variety of audiences. Additionally, I covered association events through social media and tracked and reported analytics for all messaging to hone our ever-evolving social media strategy.
Inspector General’s Office, Department of Homeland Security 2021
During 2021 I was hired into a temporary position with the federal government to help promote COVID-related reports and other messaging as needed for the Inspector General’s office at the Department of Homeland Security. Although the office had Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, they were not being used to promote the IG’s work at that time. Using the department’s style guide and Adobe Creative platforms, I created branded templates as the basis for images and videos to go with social posts highlighting the various COVID-related reports. These videos were structured to be quick overviews and include direct, attributable quotes from the IG. Although the social accounts were public (and therefore viewable by the public) the intended audiences for these posts were members of Congress and media outlets (Twitter). A secondary audience was potential employees (LinkedIn).
As a result of this new strategy, there was an overall 40% increase in engagement, 53% increase in reach, and 20% increase in website traffic over the course of seven months.
