Located in Florence, Murre Creative is a communications and design firm that Maureen has operated for three years. The company is headed by Maureen, who serves as project leader and manages client relations. Her creative team, in addition to herself, includes art director and designer Lilly Pereira. She also, when needed, taps a short list of other colleagues with whom she has built relationships over the years. She calls them her creative “posse.”

Maureen possesses the incredible skill of functioning as well in a partnership or group as she does alone. She says teamwork is an asset because her ego doesn’t get in the way of creating a perfect product.

“I don’t think anyone’s work is strongest when operating in a vacuum,” she says. “And I think that my work is strongest when there is a back-and-forth relationship with other people.”

This is why it is so easy for Janice to work with both Maureen and Ruth Griggs as part of their communications collaboration, The Creative.

Maureen believes the dynamic between the three members is what sets them apart from other firms. “We’re just kind of a mean machine,” she says. “We push each other. We challenge each other, and we support each other.”

Maureen finds that the element of support is what keeps The Creative fun and successful.

Maureen entered the communications field as an illustrator, and while producing illustrations at an educational testing company—doing X number of drawings per hour—she saw something going on that was far more interesting to her: graphic design.

Maureen’s creative work is backed up by her studies. She majored in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design and finished her bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts as an Ada Comstock scholar at Smith College. She attributes her Smith studies to her value placed on writing—words have power. She sees that through in her work in communications design.

Out of the office, Maureen enjoys travelling, hiking and painting. She works in pleine-air style, bringing her sketch book and watercolor kit with her wherever she goes. Even when naming her company, her outdoorsy side shone through; a Murre, for instance, is an off-shore seabird.

Maureen appreciates learning about other cultures and history when she travels. She says her first stops in new regions are restaurants and museums. “I’m a museum junkie,” she says.

Learn more about Maureen and Murre Creative, and also learn more about The Creative.

The post Viewing the World from Different Lenses appeared first on Beetle Press.

Through her company, Ruth has worked with organizations of all types, from new nonprofits to established companies in need of marketing strategies. Ruth has also enjoyed collaborating with both the Greater Northampton and Easthampton Chambers of Commerce here in western Mass.

Ruth has over 30 years of marketing communications experience, which she puts to work for each and every client she meets through RC Communications, the firm she has been operating since 2005. She is expert at listening to clients and developing comprehensive marketing plans for them based on their goals, missions and budgets.

“Working with clients on a daily basis is a very familiar realm to me,” she says.

Ruth believes that it is important to approach a marketing problem from all angles, “I’ll go in and assess a business, looking at it from a 365-degree view,” she says.

She also has an intuition for gathering a variety of perspectives – from clients and their internal and external audiences. This focus on listening is something she brings to her work with Janice and Maureen Scanlon at The Creative.

Ruth says The Creative is a powerful team. “We are three smart, independent-thinking women who each lend perspective in solving a marketing problem,” she says.

The strength of The Creative, she says, is in the experience and knowledge that each member brings from her specific field. “Each of us also has incredible integrity,” she says, which makes it a pleasure to work together with a high degree of trust.”

Ruth graduated from Bennington College in Vermont with a bachelor’s degree in drama and literature, and she earned a master’s in business administration in marketing and finance from New York University.

Her career began in radio in Amherst, which felt like a natural fit for Ruth because of her love of literature, drama, and music, particularly jazz. Not only is Ruth a jazz singer, but she also helps to promote jazz in the Valley, as co-chair of Valley Jazz Voices and marketing lead for the Northampton Jazz Workshop.

Ruth is also very active in her church, Edwards Church in Northampton, and says that volunteering is something that is close to her heart, “I just really believe in community development,” she says, “and the Pioneer Valley is a great place to do it.”

Learn more about Ruth and RC Communications and also learn more about The Creative.

The post This Marketing Strategist Embodies Community, Creativity, Collaboration appeared first on Beetle Press.

This is something I learned this fall semester at Westfield State University when I took a class called Digital Writing.

Professor Beverly Army Williams stressed how new technology has given rise to new modes of communicating through the written word. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs of all types can be used to communicate ideas quickly and succinctly.

Most importantly, these new sites start conversations. Just look at any blog and you will see a dropdown list of comments where readers can share their feelings on a specific point, and the writer can answer them.

The ability to dialogue is what sets traditional writing outlets – like scholarly journals and newspapers – apart from newer outlets like blogs. While you can write a letter to the editor, for instance, there is no forum for comments, questions and response from readers. Those who read and write blogs, though, have a direct line to each other’s work, and they are free to discuss ideas.

Blogs and posts on social media also are not stagnant.  A blog post or a status update is never truly finished. They are ongoing, so the conversation can be ongoing, giving writers the opportunity to modify their opinions and their work.

This may seem like a scary proposition. As I’m sure anyone who has ever written any kind of essay can tell you, there is no better feeling than finishing a work, putting it away and having that feeling of completion. However, the unfinished quality of writing on social media sites leads to constant improvement.

I started a blog for the Digital Writing course, and after every post, I would receive feedback from my professor on how I could make the post better build my voice and connect with readers.

My professor also suggested that I add questions at the end of the post so that readers would have a jumping-off point to start a conversation. Because it is easy and quick to edit a blog, I was able to make the changes she’d suggested, including adding questions at the end of my first few blog posts. I continued asking questions at the end of almost all my posts from that point on.

Posing questions at the end of a blog post is just one of the useful tips that my Digital Writing professor gave me on how to create a blog with dedicated readers. Some other guidelines and tips include keeping a post relatively brief so that the reader isn’t overwhelmed by all the content. Anywhere from 250 to 700 words is a good length for a post. She also suggested diversifying posts to keep the reader interested. These posts can take the shape of series, lists, reviews, editorials and interviews.

A blog can help you keep in constant contact with your clientele and likewise keep you updated on what your audience thinks about your product or service. This dialogue between company and consumer can strengthen your relationships. If an audience is vocal, they are rewarded with an improved product or service that takes their feedback into account. If the company takes into consideration the opinions of its customer base, the company is likely rewarded with improved sales and word-of-mouth advertising.

Remember that part about ending a post with a question? Well, here is one for you: if you are a business owner who doesn’t yet have a blog, what are you waiting for?

The post Blogs Help Organizations Grow appeared first on Beetle Press.

At the start of the internship with Beetle Press, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my future or what career paths might best suit me. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to be writing on a daily basis, and I was open to every opportunity and was willing to try my hand at all that Beetle Press could offer.

Janice and her company more than delivered on teaching me skills that I could put to use in a professional environment that valued writing.

Under Janice’s tutelage, I learned how to craft press releases to promote events and businesses. I wrote articles for Westfield State University’s alumni magazine, Focus; I created blogs for the Beetle Press website as well as JaniceBeetle.com, on which Janice blogs about writing; I wrote about the work of community leaders and business owners in the area, and I also reviewed a book and wrote about several classroom learning.

I was most proud of writing an article about the Cancer Connection that was published in the Health section of the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

These are all accomplishments that I am glad to call my own. However, possibly more important than the finished products themselves are the skills I learned in completing them.

The Beetle Press internship afforded me the opportunity to test out multiple career fields – PR and journalism, for instance – as well as different writing styles, all at once. I was able to get a feel for what being a journalist might entail as I worked on the story for the Daily Hampshire Gazette and the articles for Focus. The press releases and blogs I worked on allowed me the chance to see what a career in public relations might be like, and they also challenged me to convey similar messages in different writing styles; press releases being formal and professional, whereas writing blogs is more relaxed.

I learned the most about how to conduct an interview. When I first started the interview process for my Health page story, I admit I was a little nervous and hesitant to meet with the four people I was to interview; instead of meeting live, I preferred to just converse over the phone.

The sources for the story were all touched in some way by cancer, and they were volunteers in a new Cancer Connection program. Janice helped me to overcome the nerves that come with talking to a complete stranger about such a sensitive topic. She helped me to practice my interview skills and showed me what questions to ask and in what order the questions should come.

We ran a role-playing exercise, in which Janice acted as the interviewee and I the interviewer. This practice helped me to get comfortable with asking sensitive questions and allowed me to ease into the real interviews for the story. I still learn more and more about interview skills and techniques every time I’m at my internship, especially when I am privy to hearing Janice conduct a phone interview. I learn how to phrase questions, how to ask follow-up questions and how to get the most out of a short conversation.

My nervousness and anticipation while conducting interviews has slowly melted away. I’ve realized that there is nothing to be anxious about. An interview is really just a conversation.

I enjoyed all the writing that I did this semester during my internship. Beetle Press is advertised as a public relations and communications firm with heart, and after spending a semester in the middle of the company I find that the phrase is one that is hard to argue with.

The post Being a Beetle Press Intern appeared first on Beetle Press.