spoil yourself
TimeOut NY meets BuzzFeed. That was the easy pitch for the site.
Everything to eat, drink, see and do in NYC + millennial lifestyle content and listicles.
For the first year, I edited and published content, grew our editorial team of freelance and full-time writers, developed an intern and editorial apprentice program, grew our social pages on Instagram and Facebook by more than 750%, and did some really dope shit.
Then we got into branded content.
The Stoop
Let's talk about newsletters.
I got really tired of the linked thumbnail layout, so in 2016, I redesigned the whole thing — branded it, tested it, published it, monitored reporting, and showed some effing dope results.
Boosted open rate from 12% to 24%
Boosted CTR from 0.4% to 2.2%
Those numbers held consistently until I left in November of 2017.
spoiled Media
2016 we started getting pretty serious about scaling this strategy into holistic branded content programs — sponsored articles, branded giveaways, branded events, sponsored editorial series, Facebook ads, sponsored newsletter inclusions & dedicated email blasts.
That's when I went from Editor-in-Chief to Chief Content Officer in charge of learning how to create briefs, proposals, and execute on all of the content pieces for more than a handful of different clients all at once.
It required wearing a lot of hats, none of which I wore comfortably.
CONTENT PROGRAMS
Sponsored Articles
FoodKick
SpareRoom
Seaters
G Adventures
Burrow
spoiled NYC
I edited and published hundreds of articles, I wrote a crapton of my own, and at the end of it, I realized (as you will regardless of how many of these you read) that editors who write still need editors.
For the most part, I didn't have an editor. And I think that shows.
But hey, I got to interview people I wouldn't have had the opportunity to otherwise, I got to write about TV shows I like, and I made one, really, really good list (Top 10 movies of 2015 is pretty unassailable tbh).