writing portfolio - james metzger

content, ghost, marketing, research, creative prose and more

A work in progress... but it may as well be live along the way

Content Writing - Spoonflower.com


As the inaugural Content Specialist for this e-commerce disruptor, I was tasked to update and reorganize the Help Center. However, since the same marketplace interface was accessed in different ways by five distinct user groups - professional designers, DIY entrepreneurs, interior designers, creative individuals and everyday consumers - my primary challenge was to find better ways to get engaging content to the right user without it being overwhelming, confusing, or too simplistic. After realizing that the original Help Center only taught about Marketplace features, I devised a solution to organize the HC into distinct user sections instead. While a lack of engineering bandwidth did not allow for the final reorganization, I still published over 50 new articles and scaffolded 20 new topical sections to better guide individual users to the articles they needed.


While initially editing all extant articles, I wrote and applied a Style Guide. Additional success included the integration of distinct SEO solutions that eventually reduced weekly inquiries by over 500 emails YOY.



Mastery of brand voice afforded me opportunities to both edit and ghostwrite content for brand ambassadors on the blog. The former article is a top-10 resource for CS agents, while the latter was the most widely read blog article to date, when originally published.



Though an international brand, when I learned that key educational articles were not available for the three other primary languages of our Marketplace site, I spearheaded translation campaigns for both print and digital publication.


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Ghostwriting: Nonprofit, Blogs, Creative Development & Marketing








​Creative Magazines & Zines


  • Artist Catalogs for It's Still Art Exhibitions: Producer/Creative Director of event, as well as lead manager creating prints programs for event.
    1. Event One
    2. Event Two

 

Theatrical Writing and Script Development


Reviews & Interdisciplinary Research


  • ​Review of Cigar City Stories - originally published in Tampa Bay Times to introduce a new collection of short stories
  • Thoughtful academic writing built around interdisciplinary research
    • ​​One Closet Under All - Historiographic social study that explores the "coming out" of the Gay Rights struggle from 1950 to 1969, a process that worked to define the queer collective as a legitimate oppressed minority within the cultural, political and social dynamics shaping the public consciousness in the United States
    • Watching Postmodernism Watch Itself: TV on TV on The Simpsons on TV - An academic work exploring the theory of Postmodernism from the lens of one of it's greatest practitioners and critics. Written at Dominican University for the West Coast Graduate Liberal Studies Symposium

 

Published Creative Writing

 

 

  • Poetry
    • This Man Is a Wall Unexpected words begin drifting over a slice of pizza, in Beyond Queer Words (2020)

 

  • Children's Literature

 

​One other very punchy, award-winning piece exists, anonymously, somewhere online... I'm still a bit shy.