Kate Meyers Emery

Digital Communications

At this data-driven nonprofit, I lead the strategic vision and content creation for organic social media (288K+ followers), newsletter (550K+ subscribers), and keynote presentations. I collaborate across teams to create human-centered digital content that engages and educates.

The goal isn’t just getting clicks, it’s about building a community.

Learn more about Candid’s social media with these articles I’ve written about our work.

Organic social media

During the first two years I transformed Candid’s organic presence from being focused on promotion, to being an extension of the organization’s mission, showcasing people who do the work and being authentic in our delivery.

Key accomplishments over my tenure include:

• Boosted engagement 300% on LinkedIn, 826% on Instagram
• 53K new followers
• Increased link clicks 890% on LinkedIn, and 2x on other platforms
• Increased community engagement, 30K+ replies over 3 years

Useful and Shareable

The goal of Candid’s social media is to raise brand awareness, and the way we do this is through useful, shareable, jargon-free content that is easy to skim. The bold new look has resulted in:

• Carousels that deliver 10x more engagement 30x more shares than previous posts, and have contributed to our incredible growth on LinkedIn
• A decision to reduce other types of fact sheets in favor of creating social-first content that shares data
• Recognition as a top nonprofit social media account by Social Media Strategies Summit

Short-Form Video

In 2022, I led a project to determine whether Candid could take on doing short-form video on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. The three-month program resulted in:

• 2x engagement on videos compared to static posts
• 500K views for all videos over 3 months
• An active video program that continues to this day.

Learn more about the experiment here.

Executive Outreach

I use my skills in data-driven storytelling to collaborate with C-suite and senior staff to develop external and internal presentations, decks, keynotes, and talking points.

Additionally, I support their thought leadership on LinkedIn to aid with brand awareness.

Engaging Newsletters

Over the three years that I’ve managed the Candid insights newsletter, we’ve been running dozens of A/B experiments, journeys, and list cleanups to create an experience that is user-focused and engaging.

• Grew email list from 250K to 550K; has led continuous cleanups to ensure usefulness
• Increased open rate from 20% to 40%

Digital Engagement

From 2016 to 2022, I managed all social media, email, website, and onsite digital engagement including mobile tour and other apps for the Eastman Museum, an internationally recognized film and photography museum. During my tenure, key accomplishments include:

• YouTube views raised by 143%
• Social media audience grew 70%
• Social media engagement increased 100%
• Email newsletter opens increased by 137% and clicks by 78%
• Mobile app users increased by 738%

Human and Collaborative

In order to ensure that photographs and films shared for the museum accurately represented the work of the artists, I worked closely with curators and artists to craft the text. This collaborative process led to more compelling content that engaged audiences.

Where possible, I also tried to put humans first, whether it was showing staff working behind the scenes to prepare exhibitions to visitors in the galleries enjoying the art.

Badly Photoshopped Cats

At the start of the pandemic, I crafted a campaign that brought attention to the ongoing work happening behind the scenes at the museum, while also introducing a moment of levity. I badly photoshopped cats into photos of staff working behind the scenes, resulting in over 10K engagements in its first week.

The campaign was so popular that other cultural organizations launched their own ‘Badly Photoshopped Cats’ campaigns in response.

Project Director

I oversaw and led production of content for an NEH CARES grant in 2020 and 2021. We created an impressive lineup of free online programs and experiences for international audiences, including:

• 14 virtual talks and demonstrations
• 8 educational videos & activities
• 7 virtual tours
• 5 audio tours
• 60 film introduction videos

See all the outcomes of these grants.

Film Quest

In 2017, in support of an exhibition on lost movie posters, I created an NES inspired video game where players could search for movie posters in the dark. This was inspired by the museum’s curators, who found this collection in the dark of an abandoned movie theater.

The game had over 10K plays in the gallery space during its six-month run.

Local-Focused Outreach

Over my tenure, I made sure to work with local photography communities, influencers, and artists to make Rochester part of our social media presence.

In a notable campaign in Fall 2020, I worked with six local photographers, videographers, and artists to share their own words and images created during the recent demonstrations for justice and racial equity. The campaign had nearly 8K engagements during its week-long run.

ieldran

The Early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery Mapping Project displayed all burials in England that date from the mid-5th to early 7th centuries CE with relevant information about each location. The project was built by myself using two open source tools: Bootleaf and Leaflet Hash. Primary data was collected in collaboration with Matthew Austin. Project was live 2015-2016.

Bones Don’t Lie

Bones Don’t Lie is an internationally recognized top ranked archaeology blog that shared news and commentary on mortuary archaeology, bioarchaeology and death-related studies. BDL was started by myself in August 2010, and had over 1 million unique views by the end of 2015, with 1K monthly regular viewers. It was retired in 2016.

To visit the blog, head to BonesDontLie.com

GradHacker, LLC

GradHacker was created by Alex Galarza and myself as a way to provide graduate students with an online and in-person community. The project began as a series of day-long bootcamps, and evolved into an online blog and podcast that was syndicated by InsideHigherEd. GradHacker content receives 30,000 to 60,000 unique views every month.

Red Land Black Land

Red Land Black Land is an educational mod of Civilization V, and allows users to play through the history of Ancient Egypt using archaeological knowledge in order to improve their gameplay. During the NEH-ODH funded project, I acted as Lead Game Designer and led a team of programmers in completing the mod. In addition to this, I provided all of the written content, designed the gameplay structure, and provided the educational framework. Project was created in 2012.

Campus Unearthed

Campus Unearthed is a digital museum designed for the MSU Campus Archaeology Program to allow for users to view the artifact collections and our interpretations of campus history. It is based on the Omeka platform and was constructed by myself in 2011.

msu.seum

msu.seum is a mobile app designed in 2011 that allows users to interact with the rich archaeological and archival heritage of Michigan State University’s campus, and understand how current archaeological research is helping to uncover it. It provides a location based experience of campus heritage through your mobile device.