32 Reasons to Hire My Friend Laura

All 32 Reasons to Hire Laura

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:48:09 -0400

You should talk to Laura if you:

If you want to work someone who’s so good she inspires a site like this, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

#32: Because You're Trying to Sell Something

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:22:34 -0400

Here’s marketing in a nutshell: find ways to sell something to somebody who should like to have it, while finding a nice middle ground between being so low-key they don’t realize you’re selling something and being so aggressive they never want to buy anything from you. You can’t lose sight of the fact that you’re trying to sell something, but you can’t approach your target audience that bluntly.

Laura knows how to create concepts and write copy that sell effectively at the same time they inform and even entertain the people who encounter them. One of the first major projects where I saw Laura excel was a catalog for a large technology client. In the past, the company had produced large catalogs that covered a wide range of products, but this time it wanted a smaller catalog that focused on an emerging approach to technology.

Laura worked with one of our art directors to create an engaging catalog that helped readers figure out how they could find a good entry point into this new realm. The catalog was clearly organized and punctuated by clever, sometimes even funny introductory pieces that made you want to keep reading. The result? You learned even more about the company’s breadth of products and more reasons why you should buy them.

The catalog became a huge success for the company, both in terms of sales and because more of the company’s international business units invested in translating the catalog for other regions—something that had been a stumbling block for the larger catalogs. As a result, it became a model for several future projects.

If you want to sell something—that is, if you want to make meaningful connections with people who should want to buy what you’re selling—check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

"Laura is an exceptional writer and understands how to strategically position a story with the media...."

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:00:00 -0400

“Laura is an exceptional writer and understands how to strategically position a story with the media. I have enormous respect for her professional abilities.”

- Mandy Jordan, Marketing Director, First American Payment Systems

#31: Because You Want to Get the Right Message Out

Be sure to check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

#30: Because You're Not the Headmaster of the School for the Fearful

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:00:00 -0400

You’ve heard the cliche that there are no dumb questions. And yet, there are many people who are so afraid of appearing dumb that they don’t ask questions. Even when not asking keeps them from learning information that’s important to doing their jobs right the first time.

That’s why I love something that Laura wrote once to encourage her colleagues to not be afraid to ask questions:

It’s really not a sign of weakness to say you don’t understand. I say it all the time to my clients when I’m trying to understand what the heck I’m supposed to be writing about. Sometimes it seems like I should know, but in the end, I realize my job is to make sense of the information so I can communicate it.

Don’t get the wrong idea—Laura is extremely smart and the vast majority of the questions she asks are insightful and demonstrate a firm command of the source material that she’s been given. But ultimately, she’s more interested in asking questions that get to the key information she needs than she is in asking questions that demonstrate how smart she is. I really admire that self-confidence and commitment to doing what’s best for the project.

If you want someone who’s not afraid to ask questions to make sure she gets things right, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

#29: Because You Need to Improve a Website

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:00:00 -0400

With such a large percentage of marketing budgets moving to online vehicles, many organizations are looking for writers with strong backgrounds in interactive work. To be sure, there are important considerations like keyword density and intrasite linking that can trip up writers who are not used to organizing complex, multithreaded messages into a coherent marketing piece.

But a writer like Laura who has extensive experience in organizing long-copy collateral and wide-ranging messaging can be extremely effective in the online realm. Recently, I got to watch Laura at work on an overhaul of a relatively small (25-page) website for a custom packaging company. Initially, she developed a new site map, which identified several opportunities for the company to tell a more coherent story about itself before diving down into the specifics of particular product lines.

Later, she wrote compelling content for every page of the site. Laura’s writing, as always, spoke clearly to the needs of potential clients and perfectly balanced the need for important details with the need for brevity. She also created ways to link between the major sections of the site to encourage visitors to read more and have a greater understanding of the company than they might from only the home page and one drill-down page.

If you want to bring clarity to the organization and the content of a website, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

"Laura was a wonderful collaborator. I could always count on her to help and enhance anything we..."

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:00:00 -0400

“Laura was a wonderful collaborator. I could always count on her to help and enhance anything we worked on together.”

- Laura Coppedge, Success Magazine Web Manager, VideoPlus

#28: Because You Want People in Your Organization to Help Each Other

Learn more about Laura’s collaborative skills, check out her LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

Week 5 Update

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:00:00 -0400

Since the last update, 39 new visitors visted the site, 20 of them coming directly from In This Economy. That brings us up to 98 visitors who have made 158 visits since June 17 (when I installed Google Analytics). On Facebook, since June 1 we’ve had 254 visitors.

The vast majority of visitors come from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as you would expect. But we have also had visitors from Rio de Janeiro, Dublin, London, and Perth.

Only a handful of reasons left in our experiment to see if we can find Laura a job before I get through 32 reasons to hire her. Thanks spreading the word about Laura—don’t forget all the ways you can help.

#27: Because You Need to Hold Onto Business

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:18:09 -0400

There are any number of reasons that you may need to justify why your organization should hold onto business that you feel you’ve done a perfectly good job with. For example, your client may be consolidating the number of vendors it uses. Or someone may have heard about a flashy new competitor.

When a major client sent us an RFP for the kind of work we’d been doing for them for 10 years, Laura was the primary coordinator in putting together our response. In addition to writing more than a third of the 60,000-word proposal, she kept tabs on at least nine people who contributed to the three-week effort.

The resulting proposal not only demonstrated the full range of our capabilities to our client; Laura’s work also helped the agency articulate for itself the strength of our approach. That helped us in subsequent conversations with the client and with future prospects.

After the client reviewed all proposals from existing and new agencies, ours was one that made the list of approved vendors. Because fewer agencies were approved, we actually had a better opportunity to earn future business as a result of the process.

If you want to turn questions about your work into strong proof of your value, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

#26: Because You Need to Fill in the Blanks

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:47:40 -0400

(click image to play an online version of Mad Libs; if you come up with a funny one, e-mail it to me and I’ll share the best ones)

Sometimes one of your marketing efforts is missing a little something—a key insight, a creative spark, an organizing mind to pull the disparate parts and team members together. Laura’s great at filling in those blanks to help your organization achieve excellence.

But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

I’m here to talk about a birthday card.

One of our clients sends out birthday cards to regular customers. Every year, they invite us to submit ideas for the card. One time, Laura and one of our art directors developed a wonderful concept that had a set of die-cut rectangles on the front. The card invites you to fill in the blanks with words from certain parts of speech. When you open the card, you can read a personalized, funny birthday greeting that you helped craft.

It’s one of my favorite pieces of Laura’s because it invites participation and gets the recipient even more engaged with the client’s brand. But it does it in a fairly low-tech way that is charming and straightforward. The card goes out to people of all ages, and this concept has broad appeal.

If you want to someone who can help you fill in the blanks—and help you have fun doing it—check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

#25: Because You Work With People Who Don't Understand Marketing

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:44:46 -0400

No matter how sophisticated your marketing organization, you will necessarily work closely with some people who just don’t get marketing. It’s not what they do for a living and their brains think in ways that are better suited for their jobs.

And yet to be successful, you’ll need to draw information out of product experts. Walk a sales team through every step of creating a brochure when they only do it once every couple of years. Obtain the buy-in of business executives who don’t necessarily believe in the value of a highly creative concept.

Laura makes marketing easier for people who don’t understand marketing. She can explain the process in plain language and help people get involved. A few years ago, she came up with the idea of creating a series of “Things to Consider” documents to help subject-matter experts at a large IT company understand how to work with their collateral agency. Each document she wrote was a two-page, easy-to-read overview for a particular deliverable type (data sheet, solution brief, and white paper).

The documents help people who work on marketing projects infrequently understand how to prepare for the questions the writer will likely ask on the kickoff call. Distributing one of Laura’s documents before the kickoff call increased the consistency of the company’s marketing materials, made the kickoff calls more productive, and helped everyone involved in the project have clear expectations and understand their roles in the overall project.

If you want to make marketing easier for the people you work with who aren’t marketing experts, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

5 new and creative ways to get your resume out there | In This Economy

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:50:59 -0400

5 new and creative ways to get your resume out there | In This Economy:

Funny article includes a couple of serious links to 32 Reasons, for which we are grateful. I know the toilet paper thing is a joke but the idea that you’ve only got about one square to catch the attention of a prospective employer is probably true.

"As a team leader, Laura is highly organized and responsive, never too busy to chase down information..."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:35:51 -0400

“As a team leader, Laura is highly organized and responsive, never too busy to chase down information she feels will help her teammates or clients. On top of all her other responsibilities, Laura is a top-notch writer who churns out high volumes of work in a style that’s engaging, concise and direct.”

- Cindy Turner, Owner, The Write Strategies, Inc.

#24: Because You Want a Writer’s Writer

Be sure to check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

Week 4 Update

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:22:44 -0400

Fewer than 10 reasons left in our experiment to see if we can find Laura a job before I get through 32 reasons to hire her. So it’s time for an update on how well we’re getting the word out.

I mentioned about a week ago that that I had installed Google Analytics on 32 Reasons. Since I didn’t do that at the time the site launched on June 1, I don’t have complete information about traffic. But from June 17-28, 59 visitors (not including me) made 93 visits to the site and looked at 169 pages—spending an average of nearly 2 minutes per visit on the site.

The most popular referring site is, not surprisingly, Facebook. But even that accounts for only half (49.46%) of the traffic. Speaking of Facebook, 47 new people looked there in the last week and a half, bringing the total to 226. We’re also up to 40 fans there.

Of the four people who have come to 32 Reasons from organic search results on Google, my favorite keywords that led them here are “reasons why your my friend” (sic).

Once again, thanks for everything you have been doing to spread the word about Laura. Let’s make one big last push over the next couple of weeks! See all the ways you can help.

#23: Because You Want to Communicate in Words Your Audience Understands

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:59:48 -0400

Whether you’re sitting down to create a marketing piece, some kind of internal communication, an e-mail to a client or stakeholder, or even to make a phone call, there are a lot of ways you can screw it up. High on the list is focusing so much on you and what you have to say that you forget to make sure it means something to the person you’re trying to communicate with.

Laura is a master of using language that is appropriate to a target audience. Her skill is most obviously evident in long-form pieces that take the features and functions of highly technical products and solutions and turn them into plain(er) language descriptions of the benefits for the audiences the pieces target.

But she’s also adept at communicating the value of a change in benefits to a group of employees. At crafting e-mails to clients and coworkers that help them understand why they should be invested in joining with Laura to solve a problem. And at talking with people on the phone in ways that are collegial—without ever pussy-footing around tough challenges.

If you want to be able to reach out effectively to a wide variety of internal and external audiences, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

#22: Because You Want to Exceed Expectations Dan Patrick used...

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:25:00 -0400

#22: Because You Want to Exceed Expectations

Dan Patrick used to say, “You can’t stop Michael Jordan—you can only hope to contain him.” (Well actually, he might have been more likely to say that about B.J. Armstrong on a good night because that would’ve been funnier, but I digress.) I think one thing that almost everyone hiring a writer or marketing communications director would love to get is someone whose passion and drive exceed any preconceived limitations or obstacles that might constrain them.

Laura once described herself to me as “not limiting myself to what’s in my job description.” And we saw her live up to that in the way that she improved agency processes, strengthened relationships with freelance writers, and generated tools to help our clients work smarter. Her enthusiasm for finding ways to do more is infectious.

If you want to meet expectations, hire someone who can do everything in the job description. If you want to achieve more as an organization, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

(song: Alan Parsons Project, “Sirius” from sneakmove; photo from myBCTnow.com)

#21: Because You Want to Make Human Connections with Your Targets

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:04:56 -0400

We can debate whether there are fundamental differences between B2B and B2C communication, but one key thing they have in common is that there’s always a human at both ends. The question is whether you keep that in mind in the midst of people who focus on increasing sales and bulleted lists of product features.

Laura knows how to draw on the full range of human emotions to build high-impact communications. One campaign she worked on that I particularly admire was for a manufacturer of eyeglass lenses. The company wanted to tout a line of lightweight materials to the eyecare professionals who recommend glasses options to their customers.

Laura led a collaborative effort that resulted in a very clever campaign: presenting the dents you get on either side of your nose when you wear heavy glasses as if they were a medical condition. The manufacturer’s products enabled the eyecare professionals to offer the cure. The campaign was a B2B play but emphasized two genuine human emotions: humor and the desire to take care of others.

If you need someone who knows the value of emotion in marketing communications, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

#20: Because You Want to Leverage the Collective Experience of...

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:56:33 -0400

#20: Because You Want to Leverage the Collective Experience of Your Writers

Whether you have a team of in-house writers, you rely on freelancers, or both, there’s probably a wide range of knowledge among them. But if each writer focuses only on the individual projects he’s assigned, then your organization will seldom be able to take advantage of that collective knowledge.

A few years ago, Laura had the idea to survey our in-house and freelance writers. She developed the survey, which asked questions about how long it took each of us to do certain types of projects that we were regularly assigned. And it asked questions about the biggest challenges we faced, as well as about opportunities for the agency to improve.

Then Laura collected and analyzed the results, and presented a set of insights and recommendations to the agency. She uncovered discrepancies (both positive and negative) between the ways we estimated projects and the time it took to do the work, and she identified common challenges that we could address quite easily.

After obtaining approval for her recommendations, she shared the changes in our procedures and processes with our writers. So in addition to the benefits that came out of the information Laura obtained, she made the writers feel like their concerns were being listened to—and acted on.

If you need someone who can manage writers in ways that benefit both the writers and your organization, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

(photo from The B@man)

#19: Because You Can't Afford to Waste Any Touchpoint

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:12:58 -0400

When you’re trying to build a brand experience—for your customers or for your employees—individual pieces of communication are important. But what ultimately reinforces your brand is the cumulative effect of several touchpoints.

While Laura excels at high-profile projects, she may be even more valuable to an organization as someone who is committed to consistently delivering a brand experience, even through the “smallest” of touchpoints. I’ve always been impressed with her dedication to excellence in everything she works on.

No matter the size of the assignment or the size of the potential audience, Laura always makes sure that the end result directly addresses the needs and concerns of the target reader. And she works hard to make each piece communicate the core messages of the overall brand.

If you need a writer or communications manager who never wastes any opportunity to reinforce your brand with your target audiences, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

#18: Because You Have a High-Profile Project

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:34:28 -0400

When you’re responsible for a high-profile project, the selection of the writer can feel far more important than normal. Obviously, you need someone who can get the right words on the page to achieve the aims of the project. But you probably also need a writer who can win the confidence of anyone she has to interview or present to. You might even need someone who can defend her work without seeming defensive.

Laura wouldn’t have become the lead writer on our largest account unless she were able to handle the pressures of high-profile projects. At least once or twice a year, we would need to create a brochure, thought-leadership white paper, or executive brief that was designed to sum up our client’s approach to a major section of business. Every time, Laura not only delivered the right copy, she also used meetings with the client to obtain consensus and build greater support for the final product. She repays the trust that clients put in her because she asks smart questions, knows how to listen, and can gently nudge senior executives in new directions when necessary.

If you need a writer that you can trust with both the writing and the interpersonal responsibilities of a high-profile project, check out Laura’s LinkedIn profile, download her portfolio (PDF) and e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.

Week 3 Update

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:00:00 -0400

This week, I installed Google Analytics on the Tumblr site (yeah, should’ve thought of that *before* I set up the site). So it’ll be a little while before I have meaningful data about traffic here. But using the insights for the Facebook page tells us that 179 people have looked there. Thanks for all the sharing you’ve done—and please keep spreading the word about Laura!

We’re just over halfway through the experiment to see if we can get Laura a job before I get through 32 reasons to hire her. If you have any suggestions about how to let more people know, please e-mail 32reasons@gmail.com.