Deedi Brown of Ellevest on a community-driven content strategy - WRITER

Getting money in the hands of women: Deedi Brown of Ellevest on a community-driven content strategy

Deedi Brown

Senior Editor and Content Strategist at Ellevest, among an all-women brand marketing team, including fellow words-leader Kate Gustafson, senior brand copywriter and strategist.

Ellevest’s Headquarters

New York, NY

Industry

Fintech

Department

Marketing

Key features used

Listen to Ellevest’s story or read the edited transcript below

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“The time we spent correcting style guide mistakes has been cut by 50-70%”

Deedi Brown is Senior Editor and Content Strategist at Ellevest, among an all-women brand marketing team. Read or watch the story of how Ellevest built its community-driven content strategy to get more money in the hands of women and others left behind because of their gender identities.

Ellevest’s content strategy team uses WRITER to:

The ellevest.com homepage

How did you come up with the brand attributes for your voice?

Our CEO and founder, Sallie Krawcheck, realized that the financial services industry was built by men for men, and that they were leaving women behind. From the beginning, we knew that the way that we talked about investing, careers, and money had to be different because nobody had cracked this code. We have an intentionally-designed, inclusive, intersectional style guide that has been built with the help of many people. That is what makes our brand and content what it is. Empathy, relatability and something that we like to call internally, ‘fact-based sass’, we tell you like it is, and we are there for you.

The way that we talk about intersectionality and social initiatives that resonate with the world changes moment to moment. Our social media team has their ear to the ground ensuring that we’re putting the most empathetic brand forward. We learn what resonates with people and build that into WRITER, encouraging writers to adopt those best practices, so we’re all united to do our best by our community.

I think we’re all witnessing the end of the #️⃣girlboss era. We have been doing a lot of thinking about that to just make sure that we’re not falling back on phrases that we started out with.

A sample of terms from Ellevest’s style guide in WRITER

How did you help take that style guide to the whole company? How did you train people?

That’s the journey that led me to WRITER. We brought on our first creative project manager who introduced processes that exposed inefficiencies in content creation. We needed to find a way to train more people on the style guide quickly and release bottlenecks. We found that the answer was not to take editing out of the process, but to make it more efficient, empowering others to write copy that represents the brand well.

“When I saw the Chrome extension in action on your homepage, I was like, ‘I need this yesterday.’”

Deedi Brown Senior Editor and Content Strategist

How did you choose tools for your team?

As a startup, we have to be intentional with the tools and resources in our budget. They either help us influence and hit our goal, or they help us use our time more efficiently. Through that lens, I started to explore new tools that would be a sure bet to add to our stack.

How would you go about tying the impact of WRITER to your business outcomes and getting WRITER approved?

I am in a position where the whole company believes in the necessity of content. I was asked, “How are you going to train writers in months and not years?” When I found WRITER, I said, “this is how I am going to do that.”

Being able to present a tool that could literally pay for itself in time saved was a no-brainer.

“Having snippets in the WRITER sidebar has made everything more efficient.”

Deedi Brown Senior Editor and Content Strategist

What were some of the successes in the rollout?

Our biggest success is the WRITER Chrome extension which has allowed us to feel more comfortable in low stakes content. It has made our editorial process more efficient, allowing us to focus on structure and clarity rather than small errors.

The other success is the snippets, vital for compliance in our disclosures practice as a registered investment advisor. Having them accessible while writing has helped us ensure compliance and efficiency.

Using WRITER’s Chrome extension

Who uses the Figma plugin and what’s been the feedback?

The brand copywriting and strategy team who work in Figma have found that WRITER’s style guide features enhance their confidence in their final products.

Using WRITER’s Figma plugin

What’s been the business impact of a unified content strategy across the company?

I’m fortunate to be in a company that believes in content’s power to achieve our mission of getting more money in the hands of women. Ellevest started by women for women. Content and education are foundational across all our channels, driving engagement with our community.

What do you think the discipline of content strategy evolves to over the next few years?

There’s a tension between what the company needs, the audience needs, and what the community needs. We would not be the brand we are without community input. Tools and resources will help build a best-in-class educational team and experience for our community. I want to keep helping women get more money and live their best lives. The more we focus on each other, the more we can change the way things are.