Patrick Rodgers

Patrick Rodgers is an award-winning content strategist, marketer, and occasional DJ.

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B2B SaaS Content Strategy

When I started at Lawyaw, the website only consisted of 4-5 pages. Over the next two years, we built out a repository of audience-specific content across a range of media types in order to grow our engagement with prospective buyers and increase our visibility in organic search for relevant keywords. 

We worked with our website design partner to add the Resources section of the site, which became a hub for different content types, including articles, eBooks, webinar recordings and case studies. To be as efficient as possible with time and production budgets, we invested in high value pieces like eBooks and then remixed and optimized assets for distribution across multiple channels. We also worked with partners in sales and CS to adapt content for different layers of the prospect and customer journeys. 

High-quality content enabled Lawyaw to scale up lead volume 4x in a year without sacrificing workability by engaging a niche B2B buyer with targeted topics. 

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Lawyaw Explainer Video

One of the challenges facing legal document automation adoption among law firms was a lack of clear understanding about how the product would impact the firm and its staff. In early 2021, we worked with Paragon Design to create this animation, which I conceptualized and wrote. 

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Content Strategy and Information Architecture

Between 2018-2020, I was the content lead for the development of the Discover Puerto Rico website, which is the official website of the island’s destination marketing organization. 

Following the devastation of Hurricane Maria, the island needed to relaunch its tourism industry and completely overhauled the organization responsible for marketing the island to visitors. I conducted a content and UX audit of the previous site, which had some serious structural issues, developed a forward-looking strategy, and then worked with internal teams and content creators on the island to develop a robust new library of content housed on a responsive, multimedia site. 

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Content and SEO

Between 2012-2017, Sonoma County Tourism was a client that I worked on regularly, providing quarterly SEO reporting, content strategy recommendations and other digital marketing consultation. 

By creating a clear differentiation between needs of different audiences, we were able to significantly increase organic traffic by executing a multi-faceted content strategy that included timely blog content for locals and drive-market visitors complemented by evergreen articles that provided orientation and inspiration for those travelers coming from fly-markets. 

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The video here is a recruitment video that I scripted for the War on Stupid. It won a Gold Addy for Audio/Visual Sales Promotion from the Savannah Ad Federation in 2013.

Project Background: 

The War on Stupid was conceived as a collaborative project between designer Andrew Davies and myself in early 2010. We believed that the exponential increase in data available to the average person, without a corresponding increase in our brain's ability to process and analyze that volume of data, has left our brains rife for exploitation by the forces of "Stupid." Option paralysis and confirmation bias, along with the flood of information, has lead to symptoms like a loss of civility in policy debate, a rise in punditry and an echo chamber effect caused by the fragmentation of media.

We proposed to solve this by creating collaborations between Sense Makers (journos, scientists, academics) and Creatives (designers, illustrators, animators, etc) to distill vital information into forms that are more readily consumable in the mobile/digital age. 

To demonstrate our theory, we collaborated on a project that distilled a three-part investigative series I'd written about the financing of a nuclear reactor project in Georgia where the utility company circumvented regulatory authority by lobbying the state legislature, including tens of thousands of dollars in "gifts" to influential politicians. Davies then took my research and we worked together to distill it into a 90 second animated video that breaks down the vital components of the original reporting. 

We presented the War on Stupid at conferences including Geekend 2010 (Savannah, GA), DMA 2011 (Boston, MA), and SoCon12 (Atlanta, GA), and worked on developing a web platform that would help facilitate collaboration around the world on information translation projects. 

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I started writing for the music section of Westword in January 2012 and was a regular contributor through 2014. Stayed on top of local arts, music and cultural happenings to pitch timely blogs and features. My work included a journey to a paranormal house party at the Stanley Hotel, a definitive list of the best memoirs written by musicians while in jail, features on local musicians, a look at not-so-great moments in musical plagiarism, and numerous concert reviews,  interviews, etc. 

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I co-founded Vinyl Appreciation with some fellow DJs and record collectors in the spring of 2010 to celebrate vinyl records and the musical peculiarities that've been recorded to wax over the course of the 20th century.

I worked with a variety of local designers to create posters and other marketing collateral, managed digital marketing, promotions and partnerships. The initial event was a fundraiser for the Savannah Urban Arts Festival, but the response was so overwhelmingly positive that V.A. went on to become a regular monthly event drawing dozens of DJs, record collectors and special guests to spin eclectic sets for an appreciative audience of music geeks, audiophiles and artists. The event ran for almost three years in total. 

V.A. partnered with other community organizations for numerous special events, including an art show using records as the medium, and providing vinyl-only DJ sets at Savannah's Fashion Night Out 2011 (satellite event sponsored by Vogue), The 2010 Savannah Stopover Festival (Long-running SXSW warm-up), and the Creative Coast’s tech conference Geekend, among others. 

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I wrote the cover feature on Katy Perry in 2008 for the NYC-based lifestyle magazine YRB. I wrote for YRB for 2 1/2 years, including profiles of Mark Ronson, Flying Lotus, The Saturday Knights and Kat Von D, as well as topics such as International mustache competitions, drug smuggling submarines and holiday movies with unhappy endings. 

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The Savannah Urban Arts Festival was created in 2009; an 8-day event series celebrating music, film, art, poetry and dance in the Southeast. The festival  featured prominent artists and thinkers from across the country, and regularly drew thousands of attendees from across the region each year. 

I was responsible for marketing and public relations duties, including copywriting, press release distribution, securing hi-res artwork for print publications, coordinating media requests and some production management as needed. I also hosted the annual beat battle and DJ’ed at an event or two. 

The concept behind the "SUAF lingo" series was to create an ever-growing vocabulary of festival-specific words and phrases, often leveraging common phrases or regional imagery. The concepts were spread across marketing collateral, merchandise and advertising. Examples include "Get SUAFy", "I See SUAF People", and perhaps the most popular "SUAFfle House" (a play on the iconic Waffle House logo). We worked with local air brush artists to customize shirts during the festival as well. 

The festival was active from 2009-2013, but ultimately wasn’t financially sustainable for the host organization, All Walks of Life, Inc. 

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I was the Community Editor of Connect Savannah, a weekly paper in Savannah, GA, from June 2009 until July 2011. During that time I wrote 3-5 articles per week, took photos and managed social media for the paper. I covered state and local government, community news and some entertainment. 

My work included an investigative series exposing corrupt financing practices at a local utility, threats to the region's largest source of freshwater by local industry, the anonymous funding of a cultural heritage museum in Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's hometown of Pin Point, and a profile of legendary local psych-metal band GAM (who play once per year at an infamous Halloween concert that involved blood wrestling, costumes and pyrotechnics). 

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I wrote the 2nd edition and co-wrote the 3rd edition of the Fodor's InFocus Guide to Savannah & the Lowcountry, including hotel and restaurant write-ups, travel tips and local history, among other subjects.

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I started with The South magazine in 2006 as a freelance writer, and quickly rose to Music Editor, and then Contributing editor. During my three years with the magazine, it won numerous awards for editorial excellence from the Magazine Association of the Southeast. I wrote features, managed freelance contributors and assisted with copy editing. 

Among notable pieces I wrote for the magazine were a 2008 feature on Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis (who was executed in 2011) and some questionable elements of the investigation that lead to his conviction; and a travel piece about the infamous roadside attraction “South of the Border” in South Carolina, and the life of its founder. 

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An edu-marketing video that I scripted for the non-profit organization All Walks of Life Inc. The promo is part of the 2kStrong campaign, which will support their arts and technology education programming for youth. The campaign has raised more than $75,000 for the organization. 

The video explains why cuts to state-funded agencies have drastically reduced preventative services for youth, highlighting why it's more important than ever to donate to an org like AWOL. 

www.awolinc.org

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A promo spot for the 2011 Savannah Urban Arts Festival that I scripted. The spot appeared on the web, radio and local television. The festival draws thousands of people to Savannah every April for eight days of events, including live music, film screenings, poetry readings, workshops and more. 

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A short profile about the Heliocentrics, a jazz-fusion group headed up by drummer Malcom Catto. Appeared in Waxpoetics issue 25 (Oct-Nov 2007).