HLM Case Study

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His Love Ministries is a nonprofit organization based out of Savannah, GA. They have been operating on a full-time basis since 2003. They keep their overhead low so that they can impact as many people as possible, and they do so by having only a handful of employees and organizing a large group of volunteers. Running the administrative, legal, and financial side of things, operating a good portion of their services (over 1,000 a year), and managing their volunteer base left their founder with little time to keep their website up to date. More success stories were added to the site, but the older ones never came down. New webpages went up, but repeated information showed overlap in purpose with older pages. Web traffic was down. They recognized the need to change something about the website, but they weren’t sure exactly how to go about it.

HLM came to me with these needs, and I set to work. As a nonprofit, the organization felt strongly about their copy. It had to present plenty of information to let people know exactly what they were doing and how to partner with them, but it also had to stick closely to their core values. To accommodate this, I began working through the copy that was already there.

The first step was reorganizing the whole site. I laid out an outline of their website as it should be, making sure that I included all the information they already had, while filling in the gaps of what people would want to know. Once we talked through what each page should include, what pages we needed to add, and which should be resorbed into another page, the copy itself was the next priority.

Capturing the essence and values of an organization that exists to help others takes careful thought. To maintain the focus on values and purpose, I studied the original copy carefully and selected key phrases to incorporate into the new copy. I put great effort into maintaining the voice of this particular organization while more clearly highlighting their purpose and mission as an organization.

In addition to reflecting who they are, the copy had to reflect what they most cared about in a way that intrigued and excited people to become part of their cause. It had to be more than what they do and the number of people impacted. It had to tell a story. More importantly, it had to tell the stories of those they’ve helped. So, we reached out to those who had stories to tell, and we put them in a prominent place amongst the copy. This aspect of story-telling helped make the informational content of the site more personal. People do respond more to a story than they do to statistics (after all, a story can be both—a statistic with a face).

HLM had around 12,000 words on their website and needed a quick turnaround on this project. I was able to complete this project for them in four days, including one round of edits.

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ZVerse Case Study

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ZVerse is a 3D printing company based out of Columbia, SC. As a startup that has had great success in their short existence, they already had plenty to add to the 3D printing conversation. They realized, though, that having valuable things to say is not the same as being heard.

ZVerse approached me because they had the desire to position themselves as a leading voice in the 3D printing industry. Their focus on their design software, meant to take 2D images to 3D, was already a different focus than others in the industry, but they also stressed to me how much they valued practical3D printing. They wanted their voice to be the one that cut through the impractical examples of 3D printing that most people associate with the industry and bring in rhetoric of what’s reasonable. This is not to say that they wanted to take away the ͞wow͟ factor, because 3D printing still seems like a thing of the future rather than something that is here and now. ZVerse had a clear concept of what they wanted their voice to reflect, but none of their copy reflected that voice. The tone across their various sectors of copy lacked a consistency that they needed as a company bringing products to market. More than that, though, they felt it was bland and technical rather than the story of a fun but professional group.

ZVerse started focusing my attention on the case studies found on their website and asked me to format them in a way that told a story and that would reflect who they were as a company: problem-solvers. Completing this task required reading what ZVerse already had, noting what information was missing to craft information and fact into a story, and working with their marketing team to dig up some additional information that surrounding these projects. These conversations back and forth were essential to obtaining the result that ZVerse desired.

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Line Editing

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Examination of character development, stylistic choices, believability of dialogue, and everything mentioned with heavy copyediting.

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• Pace: 3 pgs./hr.

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Manuscript Evaluation

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This option is for those early on in the process. Specific suggestions will be made about characters, tone, theme, dialogue, style, and general direction of the piece. I will mark up your manuscript, but I won't change anything. This is less editing than direction for revisions and rewrites before a final line edit or copyedit. This option includes an hour discussing these suggestions with me via skype or in person if you're in the area.

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• Pace: 5-7 pgs./hr.

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