Director of Online Products

RISI, Inc. – 12/08 to present

Responsible for all business decisions related to www.risi.com.

This role did not exist before my arrival. The web site was managed and improved by multiple stakeholders but did not receive anyone’s full attention.

My initial tasks were to assess the state of the web site, recommend changes, fix any issues with existing products, oversee the launch of products that were in the works before my arrival and recommend new products.

After analyzing site metrics, meeting with clients and establishing a realistic view of the site’s audience, traffic patterns, advertiser base, usability and SEO-friendliness, I was able to make some immediate advances.

Work with sales:

• Updated metrics and advertising tracking tools to eliminate internal activity.
• Instituted new methods of communicating site metrics to advertisers and internal clients.
• Educated sales staff and client-base about online standards, best practices, and value of current product set.
• Developed marketing materials to promote product set.
• Set pricing for products to achieve balance between advertiser ROI and internal budget goals.
• Determined which existing products were most valuable and should be pushed hardest by sales.

Work with editorial:

• Educated editorial staff on how to use metrics to determine content placement and to plan production of future content.
• Implemented new rules for adding content to help with SEO.
• Developed new site tools to help give editorial more control over the site – finding a good balance between fine-tuning and automation.
• Worked with production team to redesign the site for better SEO and user interface, based on study of metrics and other user statistics (site launch planned for 07-01-09).
• Established a social media campaign to help drive site traffic, improve SEO and increase brand awareness

Interactive Director of Product Development and Design

The Baltimore Sun – 10/07 to 11/08

Assembled, managed and art directed a team of web professionals including
web designers, web developers, videographers and project managers. This
team was created to be highly flexible and to grow and adapt to any
new business opportunities that arose. We acted as an in-house creative
agency providing marketing solutions, product development and design for clients both
internal and external.

Identified and recommended new business opportunities based on
research and knowledge of web trends. Led development of new products
in conjunction with sales, marketing and editorial departments. These
products were often responsible for significant growth in revenue and
readership.

Worked closely with marketing manager to conceptualize, create and employ campaigns for all Baltimore Sun Media Group online brands.

Conceptualized and directed design strategy, branding and
marketing collateral for baltimoresun.com and the products we create.

Designed for SEO, purchased Google Adwords, scheduled online display campaigns, scheduled admail campaigns, scheduled print ad campaigns and performed other marketing related functions.

Used metrics from Omniture and Google Analytics to track performance and made changes to web sites based on reader usage.

Followed metrics from online campaigns (banner and admail reports) and made adjustments to campaigns midstream to improve ROI.

Built and presented proposals to clients to acquire new business. Built
and presented proposals to senior management to develop new products.

Evaluated third party technology and led implementation. Managed
relationships with vendors. When appropriate, developed internal
solutions to eliminate vendor expense, made processes more efficient
and ensure quality.

Managed and prioritized the needs of multiple customers, never
missing deadlines and always providing the appropriate solution to any
challenge.

Led projects and drove team progress by establishing and maintaining
effective working relationships with managers, employees, external
clients and third party vendors.

Identified opportunities and implemented solutions that increased the
effectiveness and efficiencies of the department, including the
development of tools, processes and reports related to job
responsibilities.

Shared information and learnings in both informal and formal settings throughout the company.

Created and managed department budget.

Examples of work

The explore sites

The Sun is publisher of a number of small circulation community newspapers. These papers overlap to cover the Baltimore metro region at a more microscopic, or hyperlocal, level. Until recently, each of these publications had its own web site created and managed by a vendor. The sites were not monetized and the full potential for traffic was not realized.

We developed the explore sites by combining the newspapers into geographic area by county. We did this in order to allow the audience to find information that was relevant to them but wasn’t constrained to the newspaper circulation area.

Each publication still retains its own site, but exists under a larger umbrella brand that helps not only with audience accessibility of information and SEO, but also gives us a larger single site for ad placement that is easier to sell.

The first site of these sites launched in late May after a four-month development period. Subsequent sites launched in two week intervals thereafter. Traffic has improved and advertising space is selling quickly.

Development for these sites was done quickly using PHP and MySql. The CMS was built in DoJo.

Explorehoward.com
Explorebaltimorecounty.com
Explorecarroll.com

The video project

Two years ago The Sun began to offer video advertising, allowing our clients to run their television commercials in banner positions on our site. These ads were successful as most ads that use animation or motion of some sort attract attention.

As I began to learn more about video by producing my own short film and by watching more of what others were doing online, it occurred to me that what we were doing wasn’t reaching its full potential. The TV ads weren’t meant for online use and didn’t speak to that audience.

I hired a videographer and started to develop online video campaigns for our clients that were more specifically geared to an online audience.

Instead of retrofitting a 4:3 television sized ad into a 300×250 banner ad, we edited our video to fit perfectly into 728×90, 160×600, 300×100 and all other banner ad sizes. The video would speak directly to the online audience suggesting a click through as opposed to making a phone call or visiting a storefront.

The ads linked to micro sites we developed for the advertiser. The sites acted like infomercials but without the over-the-top, tacky sales pitch associated with their TV counterparts. We video a business, or a part of a business, and cut the video into bite-sized chunks that the audience could play on demand based on their interest of a topic. The result is an interactive, information seeking experience that matches the online audience better than the passive viewing associated with television.

These new campaigns have been extremely successful for our clients. Click through rates on the banners are much higher than any of our other products including Flash and other types of rich media.

Visitors find the sites via the banner ads and through search – all sites are optimized for search engines. Once there, users spend an average six minutes of time – a huge increase over the two to four minutes averaged by newspaper sites. More importantly, after watching the videos, about 20% of the sites visitors reach out to contact the advertiser using forms provided on the sites. We have sent patients to hospitals for specific treatments. We have sold homes. We have increased traffic to local museums. We have increased gym memberships. And we have built a new revenue stream where there was none before.

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