Hey Family,
It's been a fun Summer so far. I've taken a good amount of time off from work (as is my tradition in July when the Church leadership is on vacation so most employees take time off). We've done a "stay-cation" week where we just do fun things around home (swimming, movies, trampoline parks, eating out, hikes, etc.) and we've done a lot with Danielle's family when they were all in town for Danielle's grandma's funeral. It's been nice to spend time together and to work on some home projects.
The latest project for us was a re-do of the front room. We painted the front room a dark green, and then moved the piano to the adjacent wall, and prepped the long wall for 11" "floating" shelves. We had to order our boards special order to get the thickness and the length we wanted. They were so rough when we got them that we had to sand them way down, then stain them. We didn't love the stain so we actually used our sander to rip most of the stain off and then hung them. We're still waiting to do a big area rug and some wall art, but it's coming together. We LOVE home projects and if I didn't need to make money, I'd want to re-model homes with Danielle full-time. If we still have energy in our later years, I hope to do just that. We still have a bunch of projects that we want to get to: built-in bunk beds, stairs - replace carpet with wood and replace wood rail with metal, hardwood on the upstairs hall and master bedroom, build a big deck (this one we keep saying we're going to do and it's just too expensive!) All in time I guess. :)
Mom has been asking me what I do for my job, so I thought I'd write up a quick summary. My title is Director of Online Reputation Management. Lots of big organizations have a reputation management team to monitor the sentiment about them online, what people are saying and attempt to influence it towards the positive where possible. Most organizations are not as controversial as ours. Lots of job security for me. :) My team has three major objectives and lots of ongoing projects. The objectives are: 1) Displace unfavorable and inaccurate search results with positive and truthful content, 2) Ensure people have positive online interactions with the Church through social media, chat, and web results, and 3) Amplify positive content about the Church.
The first is largely a Search-Engine Optimization objective. My team oversees SEO strategy for the Church, and we're focused primarily on YouTube right now. Because of our size and domain authority, the Church does pretty well on Google and Bing and search engines (without really trying -- meaning that if you search key terms like: Mormon, Book of Mormon, What do Mormons Believe, Joseph Smith, etc. you will see a good amount of Church owned, partner-owned or relatively positive results high in the list. But if you search these key terms on YouTube, the results are overwhelmingly negative -- despite there being a lot of positive videos around these topics. This is due to many factors (the YouTube versus Web search algorithm -- but mostly just content type). We're creating a video series that attempts to objectively (not persuasively) explain key topics about Church doctrine and history. It's called the "Now You Know" series and is intended for those not familiar with our beliefs. Here is a link to those videos. They test very well with non-members, and members don't like them quite as much (mostly because they don't feel like they were made by the Church - which was our intent):
We are creating a second series for members who have concerns or questions about certain specific topics and Church History. These topics are things like polygamy, seer stones, treasure hunting, freemasonry, translation of the Book of Mormon, translation of the Book of Abraham, etc. Most of these videos are created, but we are testing them before they launch. We are also creating a strategy to help and to encourage members to create content around these topics in their own words. There will continue to be negative content created daily by those who feel the Church is wrong or bad, or both, but this will at least allow for a balance of video results to transparently speak to different sides. My team also has responsibility for overall SEO strategy for the Church (including language strategies -- working with Area offices). There is a lot to this, and we are currently working on managing our 21,000 + google location pages (and Yelp, Trip Advisor, etc.) and our content and channel SEO strategy (which is impacted heavily by the migration from LDS.org and ComeUntoChrist.org, and MormonNewsroom, to ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Finally, our team is working on several initiatives to help promote the "good" stories about the Church (rather than being to defensive about things we are attacked for). This is my favorite part of the role and we have several really cool things in the works that I can speak more to later. Anyway - I hope that helps. I know people often wonder what people do at work most days. For me, to be honest, it is a LOT of creating presentations for our Executive Councils. Either they ask us to do something specific (rare) and we respond with work product, or more often, we create proposals of what to do (or what not to do), and present them to our councils for approval, then we present updates very frequently along the way. The different Brethren are very different. In my last role I reported to the Presiding Bishopric. They were not very flexible and needed things a certain way. Now, I report to a council chaired by Elders Rasband, Stevenson and Gong -- and they much more open to ideas. It's been a good job change and I'm enjoying it. I currently still work from the Church Office Building (18th floor), but will likely move to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in the next 18 months or so.
I've also been working on some side projects. My childhood BFF Brian Anderson and I built an iOS app called Kefir Connection (to help people learn about, and make water and milk kefir, track their batches, and share their grains with others). It's been a fun little side hustle. I'm also creating a new children's story (for adults - I know that doesn't make sense but it will be clear when I have something to show), and I'm hoping to create a an album of pop songs played in a pretty piano style. I have too many things to do any very effectively and find that I need to focus on fewer things!
We're not ready for Summer to end and, but we also are sort of ready to get back into a routine. The kids get bored pretty easily and school is nice to have something scheduled and planned each day. Hope all of you are doing well!
Love D, and D, and A, and L, and N (and a very old Roxy)
Email sent July 26, 2019
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