Pay is $40/hr for work as assigned, but open to negotiations dependent on experience/background.

Work is assigned based on contractor availability and client need, not likely to exceed 20 hrs/month initially.

Questions? Email: ericacorderhiring@gmail.com

My background: I run a growing, Los-Angeles-based communications / storytelling / marketing agency, and I’d like to expand with the help of other talented people who care about the details and bring a creative energy to the table. Looking forward to connecting with you!

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Now Hiring: Independent Contractors. Pay: $40 an hour and up. 1) Social media producer. 2) Communications Specialist. 3) Front End Web Designer. 4) Graphic Designer.

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Overall contractor qualifications. Required: Detail-oriented, takes ownership of projects, clear communicator, brings creativity to the work. Ideal: Experience working in the education sector, located in Los Angeles, fluent in Spanish.

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1) Social Media Producer. Responsibilities: Originate content ideas and develop ideas as directed. Work with team to plan and execute content. Produce draft copy for social media posts. Prepare translations for review by translators. Select images for posts from photo library or create a graphic. Pull monthly analytics report.

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2) Communications Specialist. Responsibilities: Draft communications plans and content as assigned. Draft newsletter content. Load newsletter content into Constant Contact. Write first-draft copy of ad, print, and web copy. Assist with special projects. Assist in development of communications trainings.

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3) Front End Web Designer. Responsibilities: Provide expertise on WordPress, Adobe Ensemble, and other content management systems as needed. Upload content as assigned to client websites. Develop visual identity of client websites. Research and provide creative ideas on website architecture, identity, and visuals. Create calendars for content refreshes for clients. Using HTML/CSS as necessary to optimize site viewing experience.

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4) Graphic Designer. Responsibilities: Translate communications and marketing content into visually-appealing imagery and assets. Create branded templates, including email newsletters in Constant Contact, slide decks, social media, flyers, and print materials. Improve existing brand assets and content.

The post Now Hiring: Independent Contractors appeared first on Erica Corder.

When you have three full-time staff in the College (myself, our director of communications, and our web/digital marketing manager), that’s a massive undertaking. But in order to reach an important segment of our alumni population that is more likely to read print than online, we knew that was the direction we needed to move in.

So we got to work.

We are currently in the final rounds of edits on the print version, and have been releasing the digital magazine along the way, starting back in November.

As we await publication of our print publication, I’ve been reflecting on our digital magazine and wanted to share some preliminary analytics.

How our digital magazine stacks up

Our first stories were released on November 7, 2018. These are a few analytics of note as of publication of this post:

• We’ve had nearly 9,000 pageviews across the magazine.
• Pages throughout the magazine have been shared a total of 2,649 times.
• That’s an approximate share rate of 30 percent — an important engagement metric for us considering our goal with the magazine is to reach new audiences (particularly alumni) with an impactful touchpoint.

I pulled out a few stats on my contribution to the magazine to better understand what about my stories works and what doesn’t for our audience. Here are some highlights:

• Of the 8.987 page views across the magazine, my stories have brought in 3,771 views. That means my stories have contributed to approximately 42 percent of our digital magazine’s web traffic. I wrote five of the sixteen stories currently published.
• My five stories have been shared 1,032 times total. That’s approximately 39 percent of our total shares across the 16 stories and the magazine’s index page. This is a 34 percent increase in my stories’ shares from the Winter 2017 edition.
• My feature story and the print magazine cover story, “The future of farming,” is overall the 20th most-viewed page on our entire College of Engineering website since its publication. It’s the most viewed page overall for the magazine, including the index page and the fifteen other stories.
• The average time spent on the page across all magazine stories is 2:40 minutes (up from Winter 2017’s 2:27 minutes). Two of my stories, “The future of farming” and “The transformers,” respectively clocked in at an average view time of 5:13 and 5:14.
• Approximately 56 percent of the views on my story, “The transformers,” led to shares on the story.

Reasons for success

An overall considerably high engagement rate with the magazine is particularly exciting for our team, since it’s a metric that indicates the content resonates with our audience and means our reach is multiplied by our audience sharing it out.

In reflecting on why this season’s digital magazine had more page views, substantially more shares, and a longer average time on the page, I think it boils down to a few key tactics we used for this magazine — and in particular, the following two:

• Incorporation of looping video. We wanted to better utilize the digital space and some of the functionalities we didn’t have a chance to test out in the previous digital magazine, and looping background video was one of them. This helps keep readers interested in the story by breaking up the text, in addition to providing a visual that encourages viewers to continue watching (and stay on the page longer) as the loop plays out.
• Journalistic style reporting. We never want our content to feel promotional — especially when digital natives are constantly being fed marketing and advertising every time they login to their social media accounts. Instead, we want the genuinely incredible work of our faculty and students to simply speak for itself. Our most viewed story (my “The future of farming” story) quoted an expert outside the university to validate our engineers in a way we can’t do ourselves. Plus, I conducted extensive research, interviewing at least 14 people, doing research in the university’s historic archives, and pulling data from the USDA. This story was thorough and authentic and validated in a way that can be difficult in a PR sense, but the payoff is that this story was our most viewed and left a real, lasting impression about the work our researchers are doing — which is crucial for the future of the university.

What’s next

We are still holding one additional digital story for which I am producing a mini-documentary. In the meantime, we’re also finalizing the print version of the magazine. I know I’m beyond excited to track the results of our print publication, especially if the digital magazine is a sign of things to come.

I’m proud of our team and thankful to work alongside the talented writers, photographers, videographers, and designers who put together the Winter 2018/19 edition of Virginia Tech Engineer. Though in the College there were only three full-timers working on this magazine, others in units throughout the university volunteered their time and talent to make this happen, and we couldn’t have done it without them.

Have any questions or feedback? Feel free to tweet at me, email me, or leave a comment below.

The post Behind the Winter 2018/19 edition of Virginia Tech Engineer appeared first on Erica Corder.

This certification allows me to fly drones for commercial videography purposes. In the case of my role in the College of Engineering, this means taking to the sky for unique photos and videos for my multimedia stories.

After earning my license, I had the opportunity to spend three days in intensive training with the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership to further learn about aerial vehicles and to strengthen my flying skills. I’ve flown since in and around Blacksburg, Virginia, and Cicero, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago).

So far, I’ve been able to collect some footage that really ups the quality of my productions — here’s a quick sample:

Taking the Part 107 test was probably one of the best opportunities I had in 2018, thanks to the support of my supervisor and the College of Engineering. My shiny new pilot’s license opens up a world of creative possibilities that I wouldn’t have even dreamed of when the year began.

Have any flying tips or suggestions? Feel free to tweet at me, email me, or leave a comment below.

The post A license to fly appeared first on Erica Corder.

We would attend a full day of training seminars in the morning and afternoons, then those of us registered for the Shoot ‘n Edit (myself included) would produce practice videos, filmed on location. The following day, we would show our final product and be absolutely ripped to shreds by the faculty and their brutally honest feedback.

It was the exact constructive criticism I’d been craving. I first started shooting video in March 2017 with no formal training, and opportunities for feedback and guidance on producing better videos in my current position are limited. The workshop gave me just that, from professionals who’ve been in the game for decades.

I can’t even begin to describe all that I learned at the workshop — but I can show you.

Below is the last video I made before going to the workshop:

It’s decent enough, and at the time I made it, I was somewhat proud of it. I saw plenty of things I wanted to improve on, but at the time, it got the job done for our Giving Day campaign.

Then, I went to the workshop. And while I still appreciate the direction I’d taken with this video at first, now I have some thoughts on how I could’ve approached the video to showcase more about my central character, Bryan — a warm, pleasant personality that I wish shined through more in this video.

And to be clear, this is because I failed to capture the right video — Bryan was brilliant on camera and off. My failure lies in not capturing more of him in his element, on the job. He gave us a tour of the quarry, and I wish I had footage to show just how much passion and pride he carried with him everywhere he went, and to show how loved he is by coworkers. Really just an incredible guy, and I wish I’d done him — and his story — more justice.

I’ll spare you on the details of how I’d approach this video now, but I will say that it’s all about the value proposition to my viewers.

Which brings me to my next point: the post-workshop videos I made.

One of the first videos I made upon my return was of Virginia Tech’s Hyperloop team:

This was certainly not a perfect video, but it’s far more focused on telling a story visually than videos I’ve produced in the past. I tried to use a lot more natural sound in the video as well, as one of the concepts focused on heavily at the workshop was using “nat sound” to build your story.

It’s definitely a quick hitter video, but the value to my viewers is that they’ve (hopefully) been entertained. I had more fun with this video than others, opting to include some of the funnier aspects of this team’s experience detooling a layup, and in turn I hope that my viewers feel their time was not wasted. They learned a little more about this student team (a frequent group featured on our social media), while not being bored by a dry, dull video.

Another video I had the opportunity to make was from our college’s graduation. This was so fun to film — I always love going to these commencement ceremonies and watching so many people celebrating such a massive and important milestone in their lives. Without further ado:

Again, I still see plenty I want to improve within this video, but this is the first video I’ve produced that I feel stirs up some sort of emotion. Despite the length of the video, we had an immense reaction to this on our social media. Scroll through the comments and shares and you’ll see how many people made note of how this video made them tear up or get emotional. That’s exactly what I wanted. (Not that I generally want to make people cry. But for this? 100%, I hope people were that moved.)

I see a huge difference in my approach to video since the workshop. Without a doubt, I think this workshop changed me for the better. Now all that’s left to do is keep practicing, so here’s to making my second year of producing videos even better than the first.

Have any more constructive feedback for me on video production? I’m all ears. Feel free to tweet at me, email me, or leave a comment below.

The post The difference a video workshop makes appeared first on Erica Corder.

It was no easy feat with a two month timeline, but here’s the behind-the-scenes work that went into it:

PUTTING TOGETHER CONTENT

In total, I wrote eight of the 12 stories for the magazine (including the feature story on the college’s new dean), contributed dozens of photos, and produced five videos (with a sixth created by my video production intern using footage I shot back in March). In total, that adds up to 11,971 words and four separate trips to Abu Dhabi, California, Washington, D.C., and Indianapolis.

I managed a small team and collaborated closely with a colleague who designed the online layout and contributed photos. My supervisor, colleagues in central University Relations, and I edited all 12 stories that appeared in the magazine. I input all of the stories into the university’s CMS, Adobe Ensemble.

Through the five videos I filmed, conducted interviews for, and edited, you can:

• soar in the clouds with the self-proclaimed “liberal Democrat Jewish transsexual” widow of a “conservative Christian Republican 40 years older” who founded one of Virginia Tech’s most popular on-campus labs;
• follow an undergraduate design team to SpaceX in California as they race to invent a fifth mode of transportation;
• meet the alumnus whose recent donation of 16 motion capture suits to Virginia Tech is propelling research all over campus;
• sit in on Rolls-Royce’s first-ever U.S. Ph.D. Day at their Indianapolis campus;
• and step into a brightly colored lab where K-12 students invent roving robot vacuums topped with stuffed animals and “dabbing” lions;

My video production intern edited together a sixth video using my footage from my 10-day March 2017 trip following a team of engineers to the deserts of Abu Dhabi, where they competed in an international competition using cutting-edge technology.

PLANNING AND PROMOTION

The initial planning meeting was held Oct. 18, 2017, and the magazine was published Dec. 18, 2017 — meaning we put this first-ever digital version of the magazine together in exactly two months. It was a tall order and one we couldn’t have done without the help of our central University Relations team, who created our template and modified local assets to create the clean, minimalist look we envisioned and my colleague designed.

Before the magazine launched, our team created promotional teaser images that we featured on our Facebook daily for a week. Once the magazine launched, we promoted the overall magazine to our audiences on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram using a short social video I cut together. Then, over the next few weeks (this is still ongoing as of publication), we posted stories individually and using native video where possible, with Facebook and Twitter being our main promotional avenues in terms of social media. Emails were also distributed to tens of thousands of alumni.

SOME ANALYTICS

As of publication of this post, the front page of the magazine had 298 shares. My stories collectively have seen 270 shares from the webpages themselves so far.

The homepage of the magazine was the second most frequented page on the College of Engineering website from December 18 until the publication of this post, right after the actual homepage of the website. Of the stories, my feature story on Julia Ross was the most viewed, with users staying to read for three minutes and 32 seconds on average.

So far, our combined magazine videos have nearly 16,000 views, with about 60 percent of those views coming from videos I produced, though we have not yet posted all of our videos for the winter edition of the magazine. We did this to help prolong the life of the magazine and try to reach people following the slow holiday season.

From an internal audience, I received many a kind email from my coworkers and colleagues across the university that I’d be remiss not to include here — their feedback is less about numbers and more about the feeling you get when the smart people you work with say genuine, encouraging things about the work you’ve poured your heart and soul into.

WHAT’S NEXT

Naturally, I started mapping out the next magazine in my head before we were even done with this one. I love working on ambitious projects like putting together magazines, but am also hyper-aware of all that goes into the production of them so I like to at least start envisioning a few of the stories coming up. I won’t go into detail on that here, but we’ve got some good stuff lined up so far — I’ve already knocked out one of those stories in the first two days of being back from winter break, so I’m hoping to continue that momentum.

I’d also like to really utilize the digital space more and add on some capabilities we didn’t have a chance to incorporate in this edition. Mainly, we’re inspired by autoplaying video and interactive features, like those built in stories put together by the New York Times graphics desk (one of my personal favorite sources of digital magazine inspiration, especially since seeing Larry Buchanan talk at a conference).

Granted, I know we have a small team to work with, so my main focus for this next magazine is delegation and maximizing the capabilities of the team we do have. I’m hoping to recruit a few more interns and to build on the strengths of my teammates, given what we’ve learned from this first edition of Virginia Tech Engineer.

My sincerest thanks goes out to anyone who contributed to this magazine in any way, shape, or form. I’m proud of the product we put together, and look forward to continuing to improve it.

Have any questions or feedback? Feel free to tweet at me, email me, or leave a comment below.

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