Hastings Hart
Business Analyst, San Francisco Bay Area

(510) 457-5383

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For a brand new Web 2.0 site on technology for small business, I brought the content to life.

The California Small Business Education Fund hired Hinchcliffe & Company to create a new site to serve the needs of small business owners who need help understanding, using, and purchasing technology. My role was to manage the content for launch.

To understand the audience, I absorbed the research the CSBEF had done on the needs of small business owners, and I supplemented that with research of my own, both on the web and in the library. I also researched existing sites on technology for small business. I wrote a 14-page Content Plan that covered audience demographics, information architecture, corporate voice, and requirements for writers.

I had ads for writers posted in several cities and reviewed about 300 sets of clips. In my research of existing sites on technology for small business, I noticed that most writers weren't professional journalists but were technology consultants. Although they knew technology well, many of them didn't do a good job of explaining technical subjects for a non-technical audience, which was the very mission of our site. Having been a journalist, I knew very well that an inquisitive mind combined with great writing skills can go much further than expert knowledge with mediocre writing skills, so I chose an initial set of about 40 writers who had written for some of the most well-known newspapers and magazines in the country.

For these talented writers, I wrote a detailed five-page Article Plan on how the site came to be, the information architecture, the schedule, the audience, my vision for the writing, and initial story ideas. It was so good it prompted these comments:

• "I got so much pleasure out of reading your plan—really well done"
• "Thanks for the great detailed explanation of your site's concept, intention, and audience"
• "Thanks for your note and comprehensive backgrounder"

We were on a very tight deadline, so my thorough Article Plan helped save a lot of time because it enabled writers to hit the ground running. After evaluating the writers' story ideas, I assigned six articles and worked with the writers on a very tight deadline to produce a set of original, well-researched stories whose quality was head and shoulders above that of other sites on the same subject. My manager for the project said that I have "a unique background; a deep blend of publishing, editorial, and technology expertise. This combination generated fantastic results on our project."

Unfortunately, the site is no longer live, so there's no URL to link to.