Meet the Team with Kirsten Eidsmoe

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Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 1:00pm

Jamilla: Hi, you’re listening to “Meet the Team” and I’m Jamilla Murray. Today, I’m here with Kirsten Eidsmoe, Marketing Director. How are you Kirsten?

Kirsten: I’m fine, thanks Jamilla!

Jamilla: Let’s start with you telling us how you first came to work at Hannon Hill.

Kirsten: Well, my background is actually in literary development and script analysis for theatre, but I also worked in non-profit marketing in New Zealand and when I came back to the states, I really wanted to do something that was a little bit different. So, I worked in IT for education and really enjoyed that, so Hannon Hill was kind of an easy step from there. I had been working with a different content management system at my job and so I had some experience in knowing what I did and didn’t like there. When I came to Hannon Hill, I was actually working as a Technical Writer and I made the transition over to Marketing and became Marketing Director.

Jamilla: So that’s a bit of a jump from Theatre to Technology Marketing, do you use some of the same skills or is it vastly different?

Kirsten: Of course the industries – going from non-profit to corporate – are different, but the actual job is using a lot of the same skills. The things that I was doing for theatre were very analytical.  Basically, my job was to make sure that the writers were communicating what they wanted to communicate to an audience. And that’s very similar to Marketing; I’m here to make sure that the company is communicating what we want to, to our audience, which is potential clients and professionals in the industry.

Jamilla: So, what’s a typical day for you?

Kirsten: Well, of course in Marketing there is no really “typical” day, but it’s a lot of writing, a lot of editing, a lot of reviewing – everything that comes into our office usually comes through me, so maintaining brand consistency is really important. And, of course everything we do is in a state of revision – it’s a fluid market. We recently re-launched our website, but that doesn’t mean that we’re done with it, obviously.  We work really hard to track analytics, continue to review the site, and see what’s working and what’s not. So, a lot of my day is spent maintaining that and seeing what we can improve.

Jamilla: You mentioned the recent re-launch of Hannon Hill’s website, what was the most difficult thing about the re-launch?

Kirsten: Well, of course Cascade Server made the technical side a lot easier. We were able to move a template over into the same content, so we didn’t have to work from scratch – that was really nice. But at the same time we were improving the layout, we were also changing a lot of content and restructuring how things were laid out. So, there was a lot of work that went into it.   It was just a really big project and we’re really proud of it.

Jamilla: Why was it important for Hannon Hill to refresh its website?

Kirsten: Well, I really felt that it was something that we as a company had been neglecting for a while.  We’ve got a lot of really brilliant people here and we’ve got so much talent as far as web management, web architecture goes. But, all of those people are always working on client websites. So, it was sort of the case of the Cobbler’s children having no shoes. I really wanted to get a website that was really slick and really do justice to how we feel about the product – what the product can actually do. So, the new website is taking advantage of more features in Cascade and hopefully showing it off a little bit better.

Jamilla: What do you think visitors will find the most valuable on the new site?

Kirsten: Well, I think that the design makes everything a lot easier; it makes content easier to find on the website. It hopefully communicates a lot better what we’re trying to show off about the product. I would like to think that people, who are searching for a content management system, can find what they need on the website to decide whether Cascade Server is a good fit for them – and also feel comfortable coming to us with any questions. That’s really my goal; and of course we are revising as we go, so we’re looking for feedback. We’ve got the blog, and we encourage any interaction with people that are looking at our site.

Jamilla: Well, I personally love the new layout and we all appreciate your hard work and thanks for being on the show!

Kirsten: Thanks! I appreciate it.

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