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As the famous Scottish poet said, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley.” American poet turned online entrepreneur, Jennifer van Alystne, would agree with Robbie Burns.
Jennifer van Alstyne received an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University and then went on to get a Masters in literature with a research focus on poetry. She was working in retail by day, writing at night, all while finishing that second Masters, when life took a left turn. The high-end women’s clothing store where she was employed closed down.
Thanks to the experience gained during her graduate studies, Jennifer left retail behind to help academics build their online presence.
Jennifer started offering consulting services and making websites for academics. Once she started doing her market research and talking to people about what they needed, she realized that, in addition to the websites, most academics didn’t know how to manage their online presence.
Another twist: one of Jennifer’s professors opened up an assistantship for professional writing. She was still writing, she was still finishing her Master’s, she’d begun building websites, but this opportunity was too good to pass up. “I laid out all of these different things that I’d done in this kind of realm, like getting my literary journal of my undergrad magazine, a website and getting them an online presence… I thought that it was something that I could do well at and that I might want to do a career out of.”
A week later and the job at the English department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette was hers. She was now part of a professional writing team working on the department’s social media and revamping their website department pages. She spearheaded the project, working on everything from content to strategic planning.
“I spent a lot of time doing professional development training and making sure that I knew best practices. When training wasn’t necessarily available to me, I figured I had these set number of hours. And even though there wasn’t enough to do during those hours, I filled up that time with trying to learn more to improve what I was creating. And that really benefited me in terms of being able to speak about what the return on investment was for what I was doing, being able to understand my worth in terms of how I would eventually package services.”
Jennifer’s assistantship showed her how she could help an organization, department, or person communicate what they do by figuring out what they needed most.
When Jennifer finished graduate school, building an online business wasn’t the next step she’d planned on.
“I honestly thought I was going to consult, maybe build some websites for one or two years,” she says. Her assistantship had sparked a real interest in websites and helping those in academia. What began as building a website for herself and her fiance’s website, grew by simple word of mouth.
Websites are no small project, though, and having a website means keeping it up-to-date and secure. Many academics weren’t sure how to tell others about their site or what content to put on it.
At The Academic Designer, Jennifer helps grad students, faculty and researchers communicate what they do with the world online through social media, websites and strategic communications planning. She blogs advice and interviews to help academics start managing their online business. Jennifer also offers online courses and one-on-one services giving academics the tools they need to get started.
“I would say that the majority of people who actually want a website, a full website where they need to know what to do, they need design and they need actual implementation of content creation, most of those people are senior academics. They are research labs and research centers. People who know that having that online presence is actually going to generate more research funding for them and more awareness of their work.”
Her clients find Jennifer via inbound marketing, because of her presence, because of her personal brand, because of all the things she talks about.
Jennifer is open and very active on social media. She lets her audience know when she’s accepting new clients and shares two blog posts a month. In addition to word of mouth, Jennifer says, “I think that a lot of people are finding me organically through social media, through Google search and becoming aware of my services that way.”
When it comes to content creation, Jennifer suggests first reviewing what you have available. If time is at a premium, and it always is, focus on the type of content that is best for you and the medium that’s best for you to share it. “Maybe it’s video, maybe it’s audio podcasting, maybe you’re great at writing blog posts… You have to work with what you have available and then improve your systems from there.”
Jennifer is also a big fan of creating content that can be reused again and again. She recommends creating posts that can be reshared because they continue to be valuable and helpful for your audience. She also revisits her older content, revising and improving as she learns more and gains experience.
Jennifer begins each client project by determining the needs of each individual center or lab.
Once she understands what her client wants to communicate and to who, Jennifer researches what the client’s audiences might be interested in. This includes SEO keyword research, long-tail keyword research as well as competitor research to see what’s working and not working for similar entities.
“I’m likely to ask them to pull it up on screen share and take me through what they liked or didn’t like about our competitor website. That can often bring up completely new avenues of thinking that I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. And so I feel definitely understanding what my clients needs are and what they like or don’t like about something has been really beneficial for me, kind of being more empathetic in terms of understanding where they’re coming from and why they’re approaching a specific need in their redesign or in their website project.”
Understanding her value became an integral part of growing her online business.
Coming straight from her graduate studies, with her heritage and gender influencing her, Jennifer didn’t always understand how valuable her work was. It wasn’t until she began networking in Facebook groups and interacting with others that she realized how far her prices were from industry rates. “If I didn’t talk to people directly during that time, I think I would have significantly undercharged for my services, not for one year or two years but potentially forever.”
In addition to the financial side, she also began to acknowledge how valuable her skills and experience were. That understanding helped her better communicate the benefits of her services to clients. This, in turn, has positively impacted the calibre of her clientele.
Lastly, she also began to value her own time more. She began to work with complimentary services, such as a bookkeeper to handle her business finances and a lawyer for contract advice. “I think that having their support and the support of those public Facebook groups was the only thing that got me to raise my prices and the only thing that really got me to stick with it for long enough to realize that I was getting better clients, that I was being able to help the people who really needed me the most.”
Despite Jennifer’s best-laid plans for an academic career after graduate school, she’s built a successful online business instead.
Do you have questions for Jennifer or Chris about building an online business? Share your questions in the comments below or submit them to www.GradBlogger.com/ask. You can also reach out to Jennifer on Instagram and on Twitter, @HigherEdPR, or learn more on her website, theacademicdesigner.com. As Jennifer says, “There are so many things that you can do that really where you start is up to you.”
