About Me – Professional
Content, community, money, metrics, product, UX, SEO, social anything, strategy, straight talk and getting it done. Me, in a nutshell. Unabridged version below:
WITH WHOM ARE YOU SPEAKING?
Corey McDonald Hartford
EXPLAIN YOURSELF:
Hi, I’m Corey McDonald Hartford (see above), and I’m the Director of Content for Mahalo.com, a Top 200 website located in the heart of sunny Santa Monica. It would take an extensively long lunch break and at least three cups of coffee to really explain what I do, but let’s just say – I love it. I recruit and train all the writers, select and delegate all content assignments, am knee-deep in all things revenue/SEO/traffic-related, sit in on every meeting, fix problems miles out of my jurisdiction, come in early, leave late, use the couch as a bed on Saturdays … and love every second of it.
Before this I served as a Product and Content Manager for Mahalo in their Q&A department. Running on the simple idea of a niche Q&A community commanding a more targeted and thus higher CPM for advertisers, I turned three test sites into a Q&A empire; launching over 500 niche Q&A sites, recruiting and training over 320 remote freelance writers, publishing over 13,000 pieces of content weekly, and generating enough revenue to break even and excel in revenue within the first year of the program. Bam, done … what’s next?
Taking one step further back in time, I served primarily as the Community Manager for Mahalo Answers, a bustling Q&A community covering every conceivable topic and personality possible. I stood as the single point of contact for educating, encouraging, mitigating and pacifying each and every one of the thousands of active users under our online roof. I managed our online store as well as user help forum. I worked with devs to get broken things un-broken as fast as possible, and applied probably 274 changes to the interface each month to make the platform that much more functional or intuitive. I’d devour hundreds of emails, vanquish thousands of spam threads, engage a hundred new users and digest Analytics on 27 domains before most people had taken their second coffee break.
Within three months of taking the position I had effectively watered the seeds of the graphically-flat community, increasing daily Q&A a notable 80+% within the same time frame.
Oh yeah, I was also -and kinda still am- the Community and Content Manager for all of Mahalo’s client Q&A sites – which include names such as Proctor & Gamble, Inc. Magazine and Variety.com, among others. Each site has its own team of specialty writers, its own set of metrics, quotas, SEO and social media tactics, payments, product development tasks and product issues, so I handle all that fun stuff, too.
That’s Just a Summary
Mahalo has over 12 million unique monthly visitors and approximately 25 folks working on the core product. About 20 of those are developers/designers. I’m one of the five others. If it needs to be fixed / improved / de-bugged / promoted / SEO’d / cross-linked / written / handled / upgraded / discussed / hired / fired / promoted / destroyed / rebuilt / optimized — we do it. The phrase, “wears many hats” comes to mind.
SO, WHAT’S YOUR POINT, COREY?
I love people, online communities that welcome them, social media platforms that promote engagement, and anything having to do with social good. I also love to play music – guitar/bass/drums, mostly – and my goal is to someday open a music studio where I will give instruments to, teach, and record under-privileged children and musicians. Then I’d teach them how to promote their music on their own blogs, YouTube channels, Twitter feeds, etc. Of course, all of those platforms will be dead by then, so, I guess we’ll just put them on Mahalo for safe keeping 
WHAT ELSE ARE YOU UP TO?
I’m also the co-founder and current Product/Content Manager for TheDailyRabbi.com – a pluralistic online Jewish magazine (disclaimer: I am not Jewish). This site is but one of the many brainchildren of both myself and Roni Kripper, business partner and fellow graduate students from Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Industry Management Program, TheDailyRabbi was considered a success before it even launched, as we had successfully recruited upwards of ten of the country’s most prominent Jewish minds as contributors to the site – before even a word was published. We built the site ourselves, thanks to our love of all things WordPress, and feature a regular mix of top Jewish rabbis, educators and activists.
A QUICK MESSAGE TO STUPID AND/OR DYING COMPANIES
I keep trying to slap some sense into friends and businesses alike about the importance of social media with respect to their outreach and success with customers and clients. Free yourselves from the boundaries of traditional advertising methods and get, well, not just creative, but passionate. Release control of your product into the public and watch it flourish like never before. Step up and claim accountability for your property – warts and all. Ditch the expensive webmaster, scrap that one-way-communication website of yours and turn your attention to entirely free (and much more efficient) social marketing.
Be honest and available, customers like that, it’s that simple. A good first step is to being honest and available is to hire Community Managers – people that are there to always monitor, engage and communicate with your customers. If you’re a small or personal business, ask your friends (the ones you trust, at least) to help you monitor the Twitter feed. Get your best customer to help you update your Facebook page – throw him a free insert widget here for helping out. Ask your neighbors to write a legimate review for your business on Yelp.
Why are Community Managers important? Because it’s AWESOME to get a response to your question/complaint via a Twitter pop-up on your phone two minutes after you submitted it. Know what you just did? You just gained a customer FOR LIFE. On the flip side, if you make me call customer service … you’re dead to me once something better comes along.
Thanks for letting me introduce myself. I’d be happy to meet you and hear about your interests and passions, as well, so feel free to give me a shout!.
