molly esselstrom I writer
Upstream Research™ is a health information company that aggregates, analyzes, and visualizes terabytes of global, federal, state and local data for any location in seconds. Upstream Research was founded in 2015 in Seattle, Washington, by a team of scientists and entrepreneurs on a mission to make health and environmental information more accessible and actionable to the public. Upstream Research empowers individuals and organizations to better understand relationships between environments and health where they live, work and play. Upstream Reports™ and the Upstream Toxicity Index™ are products of Upstream Research.
​
Upstream grew from the concept of Upstream Health Systems (see work).
WEBSITES/SEO:
COPY:
SOCIAL MEDIA:
EARNED MEDIA:
FACEBOOK ADVERTISEMENTS:
ROLE: Marketing and Communications Manager
In my role as Marketing and Communications Manager, I am responsbile for maintaining and creating content for our two websites, boosting SEO, writing copy for our decks, social, website and pitches, creating and scheduling content for our social channels (Twitter and Facebook), reaching out to journalists with relevant pitches and managing relationships with them (as well as scheduling and hosting relevant meetings via Blue Jeans) and creating and monitoring Facebook advertisements. These responsibilities aid in our brand's and product's presence in the public sphere.
Upstream Research hosts two separate websites – UpstreamResearch.com and UpstreamReports.com – with the former dedicated to our mission, an overview of the company, our blog posts and a link to our other website. The latter is dedicated to our Reports product so it explains the product, hosts our Environmental Risk Map, contains our media resources page, a section about us with FAQ and a link to the Reports web-application. This is the website we refer customers to most often. I used Manta and a number of other SEO building sites while working with an SEO professional. We were able to boost both sites to #1 on a Google search.
Navigation Bar: Home, Products, About Us (>Our Team>Careers>Contact), News, Upstream Reports button
Navigation Bar: Home, About (>Who We Are>Facts & Questions>Pricing>Contacts), Risk Map, Blog, News Room (>Media Resources), Get a Report button
Copy for Upstream varies daily. On a regular basis I am adding to our "News" page (i.e. Blog) on the research.com site, but I also write copy for our social channels (see Social Media below) and pitches for our earned media outreach (see Earned Media below). In addition to this, I am responsbile for copywriting and editing monthly updates to our advocates and early users, internal documents and decks.
Media Kit
Marketing Look Book (Fall 2016)
Upstream Brand Deck
Original content for our blog features stories on environmental risk, toxic products/sites, Upstream's update and current news regarding the environment.
Upstream has two social accounts –Twitter and Facebook. Both are used for company updates, partnership and press release announcements, sharing blog posts and other relevant articles and for cultivating followers while simultaneously legitimizing the company in the marketplace.
Twitter – @moveupstream
Facebook – Upstream Research
When I started working at Upstream Research in May 2016, we had about 200 followers on Twitter. As of May 2017, we had 866. This increase was due to slowly growing out our core followers and carefully selecting people to follow who impact the environment, big data, healthcare, real estate, etc. in some way. I frequently schedule articles, info and blog posts on Hootsuite that are relevant to our Twitter base. The goal of our account is to raise awareness and empower others.
Similar to our Twitter account, our Facebook page has grown in the last year to a total of 363 followers and 361 likes as of May 2017. Many of the Hootsuite-scheduled articles and posts are simultaneously published on Twitter and our Facebook pages to reach the maximum amount of followers/consumers. Our Facebook audience is somewhat more targeted and based on consumers/advocates who already know about us.
One avenue of increased brand awareness is through our use of paid Facebook Advertisements. These ads feature original content with images captured from our Risk Map (mostly areas of high lead risk) and copy generated about the environmental issue. In May 2017, we featured 16 cities with lead risk higher than that of Flint, MI (99th percentile). The results of this ad group was a 7-11% click through rate (CTR), which is 3-4 times more than average for ads of this type on Facebook. The goal of these ads is to raise awareness and the conversion rate of users on the Reports web-application. As of August in 2017, our highest CTR was 22% and average is 10%.
One of the most important responsibilities for my role as marketing manager is researching journalists and content that we can then pitch Upstream Reports to for stories. As a team, we search trends, add data as needed, and find areas at greatest environmental risk whose citizens deserve to know what is in their air, water and soil. Since December of 2016, we have had nine media stories published about our company. A full list can be found here, but below are examples of our top pieces.
April 24, 2017 by Cindy Kuzma for USA Today's Green Living Magazine.
January 9, 2017 by Frank Peters for breatheOregon. Article link here.
December 12, 2016 by Clare McGrane Geekwire.
​