After graduation in May 2021, I started freelancing at multiple publications including Canopy Atlanta. During this time, I primarily conducted Community Listening, which requires us to go into communities and speak to residents on the topics and issues they need covered the most. This provides crucial pre-reporting and background research that fuels our future story coverage.
By the end of the year, Canopy Atlanta offered me a full time role as a Community Audience Producer. In this role, I spearheaded a rebranding, helping define CA's look and tone. I also led an initiative to completely redesign the visuals and content of their newsletter, social media, and website. I continue to deliver content through these three avenues across my time at CA.
Now, at the start of 2023, I am shifting roles slightly to continue to do audience work but also to create more time and capacity to report and write more frequently.
Here are some of the projects I've accomplished at Canopy Atlanta.
Reporting:
General Audience Work:
Created a branding guide with colors, fonts, logos and more to guide designs which I continued to develop, refine, and adapt over the course of a year
Published all content on the website, newsletter, and social media since January 2022, including for every story published
Created a monthly internal report that provides data and analytics on newsletter, website, social media, donation and membership — to help us quantifiably track our numbers and progress on a month to month basis
Created a 2022 annual report to summarize the monthly findings, big picture, and areas of focus for 2023 goals
Assisted in tracking impact, measurable change and value as the result of CA’s work
Assisted in the launch of the Atlanta Documenters program, through promotion and publication. Attended a trip to Chicago, to learn more about the nationwide Documenters Network, get tips from more established programs in other cities, and relay my learnings back to the rest of our team. Participated in the program by completing some of our first meeting notes published.
Assisted in collaborating with other publications like Capital B, Atlanta Civic Circle, Center for Civic Innovation, Axios Atlanta, Reckon News, and 285 South, including the ATL Budget and Cost of Living projects
Social Media:
Designed visuals for social media posts and placement on the website and in the newsletter with Canva
Scheduled posts to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter through the platforms themselves and later, through the platform Buffer which I integrated into our process
Created and maintained a Linktree to direct users to our desired CTAs
Built in-house-ads for our regularly promoted content like subscribing to the newsletter or applying for a position
Tested marketing strategies around paid social
Created a vision and compiled visual and audio files for a promotional video project that explains our organization and how we do our work
Newsletter:
Created three newsletter series: CA Voices, Member’s Letter, and For the Record
Created MailChimp templates for the newsletters
Created a welcome series for CA Voices and Member’s Letter
Tested strategies for reaching newsletter subscribers that are “un-openers”
Website:
Made several rounds of revisions to our website to increase accessibility — including implementing language translation services — and improve content, design, and marketing goals around CTAs
Planned the content vision and needs of our website for a complete redesign. The main building of this was done by a hired designer, Brooklyn Valera, but some changes and updates were made myself
Rolled out the launch of the Bankhead Issue, the 2022 Elections project, and the South DeKalb including a landing page and all of the stories published
Established the use of Google Analytics to track website traffic, including by creating goals and email reports to summarize our progress
Marketing:
Participated in the Facebook/Meta Accelerator program to help learn marketing and content strategies around running small newsrooms and nonprofits
Participated in A/B testing across all of our platforms to optimize our system, including send times on newsletters and placement, look, and language of CTAs
Conducted audience surveys for feedback that then was implemented
Fundraising:
Assisted in the launching of our Membership Program — a monthly paid plan to increase donations — and general fundraising strategies and promotion
Participated in fundraising through promotion and conducted campaigns: membership in summer 2022 and Newsmatch in winter 2022
Community Engagement:
Helped with event planning, promotion, (including Eventbrite pages), tracking data like cost and attendance, and hosting at the events themselves, including my own event in Bankhead for litter cleanup
Assisted with community engagement by reaching back out to community contacts and listening respondents to share stories
Designed flyers for events, handouts for community listening, business cards, and “print editions” of the Bankhead Issue
Interal:
Helped with HR related tasks like adding contractors to our payment system or uploading tax documents as needed
Reorganized the Google Drive to divide content by division and create places to easily find documents
Built AirTable resources for internal tracking including a publication schedule and information on contacts within our network
Improved communication about our publication internally, including by implementing social post updates directly to Slack
Maintained donor information through DonorBox
Created and guided an internally collaborative project on establishing processes and procedures for every area of our work from editorial to events
Implemented automation for several processes, including updating MailChimp tags and sending out Tweets about newly published Documenters notes
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