Helping NYC Residents Keep the Heat On

Volunteering to help a non-profit start-up's content reach its audiences.

Role: Content Strategist, on a volunteer basis

Client: Heat Seek

The Challenge

Heat Seek works with community organizations, tenants, and city government to help people whose NYC homes are not adequately heated in the winter. But, the website didn’t easily provide the content each group needs.

Heat Seek’s Executive Director, Noelle Francois presented the start-up’s challenges at Building Better Digital Citizens with the Obama Foundation. I was in the audience and realized I could help by volunteering to review the website and provide feedback about the content. 

The Solution

Noelle and I had a call a few days after the panel and she outlined goals for the website. I dug into the site. Before I got too far into page-level content, I found structural issues that would be helpful to address.

Improving Findability

Metadata needs to help tenants searching for help with their heating problems find them on the first page of Google search engine results.

While Heat Seek has a positive mission, its audience starts searching because they are in a negative situation. To bring Heat Seek and its audience together, I:

1. Researched keywords and trends

2. Wrote metadata for all primary site pages

3. Created an introduction to metadata and SEO so other volunteers could have a quick overview and carry out future content work

Explaining How at-Risk Tenants Could Get a free Sensor

While the metadata was added to the CMS, I began working on page-level content for Heat Seek's primary audience: residents of NYC apartments who are considered at-risk because of income levels, and their housing situations.

On the former site content was in multiple locations and contained less-relevant content that could slow users down or distract them.

Creating New content

Besides optimizing and reorganizing existing Heat Seek content to help tenants find help with their heat issues, new content needed to be created to assist community partners and reach tenants interested to purchase a temperature sensor.

An Escalation Kit for Community Partners

I drafted an Escalation Kit for community partner organizations. This resource page would allow community organizations to understand steps they could help residents with without having to call Heat Seek each time and connect with a staff member to receive guidance.

Creating Installation Instructions

Heat Seek installs each sensor for tenants who qualify for free sensors. However, this is not a workable model for tenants who purchase the sensors. Heat Seek needed to create instructions that could accompany sensors to purchasers.

To write installation instructions, I interviewed Noelle as she walked through a sample installation.

I beta tested the instructions by installing a sensor in my apartment. (I revised the instructions after I attached the sensor upside down.)

Communicating with Sensor Customers

Once tenants purchase sensors, they need communications from Heat Seek to keep them up-to-date about their purchase. Noelle and I brainstormed emails we would expect to support a purchase sensor. Then, I planned a cadence and drafted messaging priorities for each email.

The Results

Heat Seek’s full-time staff of three is working overtime to help tenants and install sensors. As spring approaches, more work on the site and email CRM program will continue.