by Rachel Quinn
My brief, but excellent, time at Insight180 has come to a close as summer winds down and I head back to Philly for the start of my senior year of college. I doubt I can properly express the immense amount of knowledge and skill I gained from working with the team at Insight180, but I’ll attempt to try as a proper thank you and goodbye.
Through being a part of the tight-knit insight180 family I feel as though I was able to learn a variety of aspects under the umbrella of branding, marketing and design consulting that I couldn’t have received anywhere else. Here are some highlights on content development that I’ll take away:
1) The importance of bringing old brochure sites for nonprofits up to date. Most of the summer was spent writing content for the National Family Resiliency Center’s (NFRC) updated website. This organization is lauded as an incredible resource that provides a child-focused roadmap to help families heal, cope and thrive through family transitions like separation, divorce and remarriage. The efficiency of the new website compared to the old is a night-and-day difference, now with information readily available, social-media-friendly and easy to access for their clients.
2) Research. Research. Research. Before, during, and after completing sections of the site’s content I was constantly searching for new information and fact-checking the old. We also had client, staff and stakeholder research from our own surveys and those conducted on behalf of NFRC. Having an abundance of information made it easier for us to pick and choose the most compelling and ultimately concise phrasing for the information being displayed on the new site. Which ties into the next point…
3) Clear, concise writing. The content I was researching for NFRC was entirely foreign to me, which in the end made for better writing. The fact that I had no idea what certain therapies or support groups being offered entailed allowed me to break everything down to its simplest form, hopefully making NFRC’s audiences’ researching easier in the end.
4) Interview Etiquette. Through Wendy’s guidance I was able to interview a few of NFRC’s clients to be featured as success stories on the new website. I wrote up my own interview questions and was able to sit down with many of them and talk through their experiences. Wendy taught me professionalism and good methods for follow-up questioning that took the content to the next level.
5) Collaborative Creativity. When I think about the initial navigation we had intended for NFRC’s website compared to that of the final product it’s so interesting to think about the different aspects that allowed for transition. Because so many different factors were being considered with this new site (i.e. text, rotators, graphics, event calendars), the navigation was changed and improved upon to allow for the best overall result. We had to be patient with our trial-and-error to reach this great outcome.
With the new website soft-launched successfully, it’s such an accomplishment to know that I helped contribute and create this product, but more importantly, I learned the ins-and-outs of enhancing a nonprofit brand with consistency and clarity.
— by Rachel Quinn, content & social media intern
