I’ve been busy with challenging client projects this summer, but I have also made time to redevelop my website.

That’s because I’m a big believer in the idea that websites shouldn’t be allowed to stagnate. As a business grows and develops, so too must its website.

In the spring, I noticed my current site has some growing pains. I no longer do much teaching and consulting, for instance, yet those services are still prominently highlighted.

I wanted a tighter focus on my three key service lines: book development, crafting press releases, and writing content for blogs, websites, and magazines.

I reached out to Elizabeth and Lennie Appelquist of Cider House Design in Easthampton, Massachusetts, and they listened to my thoughts and had innovative ideas for a site rebuild. Lennie also helped me embrace the fact that I am the center of my business and my site should reflect that.

We met together for a Discovery session in May and have been collaborating and sharing ideas since. I expect the new site will soon be live.

I am very impressed with the work I’ve seen thus far from Cider House. The draft site is graphically powerful, and it has features that make navigation clear and simple.

I also appreciate the photography by Judith Kelliher and Craig Fear and am pleased with the content I developed. I think it tells a stronger story about who I am and what I do.

Follow me on Facebook so you can take a look when the site goes live!

And consider taking a closer look at your own website. Does it feature the services and aspects of your work that you most want to grow? Is it fresh and inviting? Intuitive in terms of navigation?

Studies show that visitors can spend as few as three seconds on a website before navigating away.

Elizabeth, Lennie, and I can help you turn those three seconds into a long, lingering, informative read that could translate into an email in your inbox or a phone call.

The post Putting on a New Web Face appeared first on Beetle Press.

I always thought that I would be a high school English teacher after I finished college.

I’m a senior at Westfield State University, and one semester shy of graduation, I decided that teaching—with the core competency requirements in this day and age—wouldn’t be satisfying. I want to teach people something special, because they want to learn rather than because they have to.

I have always liked to write, and I realized that I can educate through my writing, reaching people of all ages with my words and help them through good times or bad. So, I changed my major to English, rather than education.

As I deepen my journey as a writer, I want to try different writing styles and explore the various careers in which I could use my degree. That’s what led me into my current internship at Beetle Press, where I’ll write press releases and blogs, copy edit client manuscripts, and raise awareness about the company through social media —all while keeping my studies organized and on track.

My favorite genre to write about is creative nonfiction. I’ve written short stories that I could expand into a novel one day and journal entries that could become a memoir.

I am also very passionate about my work in the Westfield State University English honor society, Sigma Tau Delta. My role in the honor society is to help raise money for our annual convention each spring.

Members also like to help others in the wider community in various way. For instance, we are collecting items to donate to refugee families in the Westfield area.

We also use our English skills to assist others; we tutor English majors at the university, helping them with midterm and final papers. In this way, Sigma members develop relationships through their writing skills, and we encourage others to grow as well.

After graduation, I’d like to work for a book publishing company or focus on my own writing project. In my spare time, I’d also like to find a way to continue to be helpful in the community, outside of my honor society group. It’s important to me to be kind, caring and compassionate and to spread goodwill to everyone I meet.

My support system is my family. My mother is always finding new ways to help encourage me, even when I’m uncertain of my direction, and she assures me that I’ll know it when I find the right path.

My two sisters, Samantha, 19, and Cameron, 8, both help me develop as a writer, too. Samantha passes on writing tips from her teachers. (She’s an engineering major and doesn’t realize that I may already know these things.) And Cameron asks me to read my writing to her, even if it is just my homework, after she has curled up with her favorite blanket.

I hope one day, I can read my own book to her, even if she’s already heard all the stories a million times.

The post Teaching with Words appeared first on Beetle Press.

I have loved to write since I was in fourth grade, and my teacher put a picture on the board and asked us to write about it. He said he would display the best pieces, and mine was one of them. He told me privately that I had talent, and he began to allow me 40 minutes of class time to write. Once my stories were completed, my teacher invited me to read them to the class.

I had only recently been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and put on an individual education plan at that time, but my teacher didn’t dismiss me. He helped  me identify my superpower.

I left fourth grade inspired, confident and passionate about writing. So, I never stopped. It is what I know I want to do.

I am a junior at Westfield State University, majoring in English with a concentration in writing. I mostly write creatively—short fiction stories, novels. However, I wanted to branch out of my comfort zone and look at professional writing, so I connected with Janice at Beetle Press to express interest in an internship that will give me experience in PR, blogging and other writing styles.

After graduation in 2018, I see myself living in an apartment in a city, working for a publishing company, editing manuscripts by day, and writing my own novels by night.

In the five months I will spend working with Janice at Beetle Press, I will write press releases for clients, pen blogs for beetlepress.com, help manage Janice’s various social media efforts, and copyedit and provide feedback on several authors’ manuscripts, and perhaps even one of Janice’s own books.

I am excited with the opportunity to grow as a writer, and I think it’s incredible that I will have my hands in work produced for business people and nonprofit organizations as well as for creative writers. That is a broad scope of real-world knowledge to glean in one semester, and I can take it with me.

When I am not working with Janice, I am the fiction editor for Westfield State’s literary magazine, Persona. I have been on the staff since freshman year, helping to produce the creative publication. I’m originally from Mansfield, a small town 40 minutes from Boston.

I have an interesting family. My dad, Rick, works as a certified mental health counselor at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge and has his own private practice in Watertown. My mom, Devon, is a nutritionist and will soon work in my dad’s practice. My older sister, Jenna, is going for her PhD in microbiology at University of California Berkeley. I also have two cats and a black lab at home.

A fun fact about me: I wrote a 100-plus-page novel with a local published author in my senior year of high school for my senior project and only had six months to write it. I designed a cover for the piece, and put it together in a binder. I am currently working on getting my short stories published and then maybe I’ll go back to that novel and edit it!

The post Growth of a Writer appeared first on Beetle Press.

If you ask Merriam-Webster, you’ll learn that a blog is a website that contains online personal reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer, and you’ll read that the word is short for “Web log.” We agree. But we also see blogs as something with more oomph: They provide organizations with the perfect platform for storytelling to raise awareness, fuel inspiration, and encourage participation.

We use our blog to keep our readers informed about our work and that of our community partners, and we reflect on our areas of expertise. Other organizations use blogs to share the success stories behind their programs and services, and we think that is just plain smart.

One of our clients who uses blogging to the organization’s advantage is Sports Travel and Tours of Hatfield, Massachusetts. This firm, founded in 1996, has a mission to offer hassle-free trips to sports fans so they can attend sporting events across the United States and Canada. They have fulfilled dreams and “bucket lists” worldwide.

They use their blogs to tell all about it, and we help them to do this.

In the past year, we’ve written blogs for Sports Travel and Tours about people like Sally Ryen, who went on a baseball trip this summer as one way to help her recover from the loss of her husband, Doug.

We’ve written about the Laughlin and Williams families, who each took the family patriarch on a trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame for its annual induction ceremonies in Cooperstown, New York. These stories will give you goosebumps, and may also prompt you to buy a package for your father for next year’s induction in Cooperstown.

That’s the idea behind storytelling.

Jay Smith, president of Sports Travel and Tours (shown in photo); Teresa Weybrew, director of sales and marketing; and Christopher Switzer, creative director, all have a hand in brainstorming the blog ideas with us. They tell us the heartwarming, unique, and amusing stories about the joy and camaraderie that people experience on their trips. They tell us about their tour hosts and partners and what makes them special, and we help them select the stories that have the most appeal. Then, we interview their partners, hosts, and clients, and tell their tales.

Jay says in this first year of blogging, he has heard positive feedback from clients who have noticed the increased efforts at communication and are learning more about Sports Travel and Tours as a result. Jay wants to continue on with these blogging efforts and grow the goodwill—and grow the return on the investment.

We wholeheartedly agree. And we can’t wait to tell more sports travel stories in 2016, as the organization celebrates its 20^th anniversary.

The post Blogging—a Perfect Platform for Storytelling appeared first on Beetle Press.

Currently a senior at Westfield State University, Michael is majoring in English with a focus on writing. He grew up in Natick, Massachusetts, watching and playing football, lacrosse and baseball. His family has been a constant support and has shared his interests. “My dad is crazy about sports,” he says. As he got older, Michael says he did more watching than playing. “I was always better at watching than playing.”

At Beetle Press, Michael will be a player, helping Janice with PR for a client that’s focused around sports travel opportunities, and he will also write blogs and press releases.

After growing up in New England , Michael wanted a change of scenery and decided to attend the University of Tampa in Florida for his freshman year of college. However, it proved to be too expensive to continue attending. “The process of coming home every break was a big hassle, with distance and financially,” he says.

One good thing that came out of Michael’s University of Tampa experience was a journalism class that he found inspirational. “The professor was really great,” he says, noting it prompted him to change his original major from education to English. When he returned to Massachusetts, Michael attended a semester at a community college before joining Westfield State in the spring of 2013.

During his time at Westfield State, Michael has had a role on the campus sports radio show and has written sports articles for the campus paper, Westfield Voice. This year, he continues to write and edit articles for the paper.

Michael’s goal is to eventually be involved with sports journalism and possibly public relations. He is especially interested in online journalism. “It’s not so stuffy,” he says. “There are so many sports blogs out there: Grantland, Uproxx, SB Nation, Barstool Sports. I like them because they sound like they’re actually talking to you. That’s how I want to write.”

Outside of school and his internship, Michael still plays various sports when he can. He is also really interested in music and learning the guitar.

The post Michael Barry has a Passion for Sportswriting appeared first on Beetle Press.