Derek Hodges

Background

About Derek Hodges

In no particular order, I am passionate about great storytelling, SEO and website architecture, all things North Carolina, building relationships, intuitive public relations, and using my skills and abilities in service to my community.I create content and strategies that help organizations get their messages out and reach the audiences they need to. I am motivated by a desire to deliver more than expected, and am the person you want to put on a project when you want every detail to get specific focus.As a project manager and a leader I focus on collaboration, inviting and valuing input from all to achieve buy-in. That extra effort helps others find motivation to invest themselves more fully and provides them greater satisfaction from being part of the work. It also yields better results.I have tackled significant challenges, from reversing a crippling talent drain issue to optimizing an ecommerce website of nearly pages. Our efforts on the first led to a retention rate that beats the national average. Our work on the second led to a greater focus on core business and SEO improvements that helped drive companywide sales growth of 471 percent, from $54 million to more than $250 million, over six years and an average SERP position of No. 2 across all primary keywords.In my work and my personal life, my calling is using my skills and abilities to make the lives of others better. That has meant working to create content and communications that help people following dreams in foodservice build their success and covering small-town stories that might never get told if I did not do it.Reach out and let’s connect! Whether you want to talk about communications strategy or the future of community journalism, or you want to test my North Carolina trivia knowledge, I look forward to talking to you.GOOGLE ANALYTICS | GOOGLE ADS | WORDPRESS | HTML | SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT & ANALYTICS | SEO | SEM AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT | BRAND ADVOCACY | PROJECT MANAGEMENT| PUBLIC RELATIONS | AP STYLE | ADOBE SUITE