Content Specialist at Optimal Living Daily (OLD podcast)
2019 – 2021
About the Podcast: Show hosts narrate the best online content on personal development, finance, health, business, and relationships — with author permission.
Podcast Stats:
- 250+ million downloads across 5 shows in the podcast network.
- Recommended in a list of best motivational podcasts by Oprah Daily and Good Housekeeping.
My Role: Technical Writing / Content Strategy / Copywriting / User Research
Tools: WordPress, Analytics, Canva, Trello, HTML / CSS
Project Page: www.oldpodcast.com
About the Role
When I was offered a content role with Optimal Living Daily, I jumped at the chance!
As a content specialist, I worked with a multidisciplinary team, under the podcast co-founders who served as producers and business managers.
I wore multiple hats and worked on content strategy, UX writing to digitally guide listeners, and helped optimize work flows through process documentation and content style guides.
Project Samples
1. Technical + UX Writing
Style Guides and Design
I established content style guides and process documents for internal use. The guides help to maintain consistency with voice and social media design across the different shows.
The original newsletter was a plain text email. I created the following design components to liven up the layout.
The newsletter emphasizes positive language and content that’s aligned with the target audience’s values.
UX Writing
As a team, we realized that listeners were not being clearly directed to show pages. The images on several pages were also taking up too much space, especially on mobile view.
I explored the podcast’s online communities to get a feel for the audience and looked through QnA archives on the shows to understand what listeners were seeking help with. We moved forward with a simplified layout to streamline site navigation.
The updated text is clear and action-oriented, with fewer distractions and secondary CTAs.
Topbar Addition
During a team discussion, a top bar was proposed to direct more traffic to the podcast shows instead of the previous popup with a CTA to sign up for the newsletter.
BEFORE: Topbar text and button
AFTER: Snappier text that includes tagline
Results
Together with a podcast starter pack page, these changes resulted in a marked increase of web traffic to the individual podcast show pages.
2. Content Strategy
a) I followed specific guidelines with vetting and researching new content, to help maintain the quality and relevance of episodes for the podcast’s audience.
b) Using tools like Google Search Console for research, I built content pillars like a minimalism guide and show starter packs to increase the site’s search engine visibility.
Well-optimized posts rank on the first page of search results, with several appearing in Google snippets or position zero.
These are some writing samples that I worked on to direct visitors to specific shows or pages:
- O.L.D. Show Page
- Saving Starter Pack
- Getting Started with Minimalism
- Review of Uncluttered
- First Email in Welcome Sequence (free ecourse)
c) I also created social media graphics to condense and simplify concepts like investing.
3. Copywriting
I followed agency ad copy guidelines to create ad audio scripts for sponsors like BetterHelp, Native, and Calm app. I kept to a strict word count depending on whether it was a midroll or intro ad.
I always found the scripts super fun to write and listen to.
Here’s a script I wrote for BetterHelp and an episode which featured it.
Meeting Up in Orlando, FL
I live in Southwest Florida. We had a great lunch and meetup at Podfest 2019 in Orlando!
I’m grateful every day for having been part of an awesome company and talented remote team.
Jess Chua: Writer 