THE DAILY BEAST

At Scouted, the then nascent commerce vertical for The Daily Beast, I served as an Editor responsible for ideating and creating content franchises, managing the publish schedule, and ensuring every article was well-written and fit our voice. While we wrote Gift Guides and Sale Posts as well, this page will explore some of the content franchises that became the backbone of Scouted.

THE CASE FOR

The main product review franchise for Scouted, “The Case For” was our way to tackle reviews on everything from Mosquito Repellant to a Coffee Grinder.

The goal was to create a commerce vertical that could be responsive to consumer behavior, changes in season, and to become an authority on products, without the rigorous testing requirements competitors are known for.

We accomplished this by working with a team of freelancers to source voice-driven product reviews backed by real life experiences and utilized a data driven practice

I’M LOOKING FOR

“I’m Looking For,” was our approach to SEO focused shopping. Essentially “Best of” roundups, these posts focused on items that shoppers frequently searched for.

In order to rank, we conducted rigorous testing on items like Headphones, Cookware, even Hiking Boots. We took a similar approach to Amazon Focused Roundups that would allow The Daily Beast to get revenue from Amazon’s Search Feature as well as our homepage.

Working on this franchise required constant communication with freelancers, publicists, and a focus on project management.

FIVE BOOKS

Our audience loved purchasing books and the challenge was to develop a franchise that would blend in with newsroom content to create more demand.

We came up with 5 Books, a series where we interviewed an author with a new book about five books they absolutely love.

We were able to interview David Chang, Japanese Breakfast, George Saunders, and plenty more along the way in what would become a publicist favorite franchise and one of our reader’s favorites, too.