Adventure Cycling Association Content Director

Adventure Cycling’s marketing team supports and promotes the nonprofit’s development, membership, routes, experiences, and education programs through direct and email marketing campaigns, earned and paid media, social campaigns, and more.

As the organization’s inaugural Content Director, I’ve worked to develop a comprehensive storytelling strategy to amplify the organization's mission and strategic goals. This role leverages diverse content formats, including written articles, photography, design, and digital media to engage and inspire key audiences.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Strategic Content Development: Designed and implemented a content strategy to advance the nonprofit’s mission, leveraging storytelling to connect with diverse stakeholders, including donors, members, and partners.

  • Brand Growth and Awareness: Enhanced the organization’s visibility by crafting a cohesive brand voice across digital and print platforms, leading to increased community engagement and donor support.

  • Analytics and Optimization: Monitored content performance metrics to refine strategies, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives and audience interests.

  • Creativity, strategy, and collaboration: Worked across departments to identify compelling stories from program participants, donors, and community stakeholders.

REI Content Marketing Specialist

As an editor and marketing program specialized at REI, I was tasked with a deceptively simple goal—make our members and the general public aware of the retail co-op’s extensive guided trips and local experiences. This presented two unique challenges that our existing gear content marketing program didn’t face. First, unlike gear, which REI is already famous for, most REI members—much less nonmembers—were not even aware that co-op provides guided, multi-day adventure vacations. Second, where the gear content marketing team’s customer conversion funnel was typically only a day from first touch to purchase, the travel team’s conversion timeline was months long. 

To address both problems, I worked closely with REI’s SEO experts and travel specialists to develop an SEO-optimized customer conversion funnel that met our readers at every point along their lengthy purchase journey, with a special emphasis on removing the barriers that caused such a lengthy conversion funnel in the first place.

Step One: Inspirational Content

These stories served to inspire our audience to travel in the first place through news stories, inspirational narratives, and thought-provoking feature content. Throughout each story are links to each following step in the conversion funnel and call-to-action links.

Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley Receives Gold-Level Recognition for Mountain Biking
International Mountain Bicycling Association designates Colorado’s first Gold-Level Ride Center.

Why So Many Women Are Traveling Alone
Female solo travel is arguably THE travel trend of 2019. We talked to five women who’ve done it to find out why.

Step Two: Location-specific Content

The next step was helping readers decide where to travel. This included guides to specific regions served by REI as well as round-ups of multiple locations nestled under SEO-friendly themes. At this stage, the content would have specific references to REI’s guided trips in each region, other REI travel resources, and, of course, call-to-action links.

Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro: The Best Routes
Summiting Mount Kilimanjaro is a bucket list climb for a reason⁠. The mountain’s 19,341-foot Uhuru Peak is not only the highest point in Africa, making it one of the world’s Seven Summits, it’s also the tallest freestanding mountain in the world.

Best Hikes In Italy
Our 7 favorite treks from one end of the Boot to the other.

Step Three: Remove Barriers

One of the biggest obstacles to conversion was simply the expense and burden of travel. Our how-to content was designed to remove and lessen these barriers while at the same time showing readers how an REI-guided trip is the easiest way to travel.

How to Plan A Trip to Kilimanjaro
The training, gear and logistics you'll need to summit Africa’s tallest mountain.

How to Hike the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim
Cross the Big Ditch like a pro with this do-it-all guide to route planning, campsites, permits, desert skills and more.

Step Four: Hard Sell

The final step of the funnel was the hard sell, content explicitly about REI’s guided trips and how readers could book them. 

Our Favorite Adventure Destinations
REI's travel experts reveal the best hidden gems in some of the world's most iconic locales.