Editor’s Note:
Members of Terakeet’s content department facilitate client success through their wide range of skills and experiences. Working alongside writers and strategists, digital copy editors are some of our most detail-oriented, diligent, and collaborative team members. They work closely with account teams to ensure content deliverables meet the quality standards of Fortune 1000 clients.
This week, we’re highlighting Digital Copy Editor, Ashley Maready, to show what a typical work day looks like for her. Read on to learn more about Ashley and how she approaches her day-to-day schedule!
About Ashley Maready: Digital Copy Editor
Hi there! I am a Digital Copy Editor assigned to one of Terakeet’s biggest enterprise clients. My main job is to work with our content specialists and writers to ensure the material we produce for the client is written well, is factually accurate, and conforms to the client-approved style guide.
I started at Terakeet a little over a year ago, in Summer 2021. Prior to coming here, I spent more than a decade working for nonprofit history, art, and STEM-focused museums, in Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Kansas, and New York. My educational background (undergraduate and graduate) is in history, and I like that I still get to learn so much at work even after changing careers.
A few fun facts about me:
- I’ve lived in eight different states, but since coming to Upstate New York in 2016, it’s been my intention to stay put (what can I say, I love it here).
- I have three ridiculous cats (Ferrous, Cleo, and Seymour) who make frequent appearances on both my Zoom calls and in the #teracat Slack channel.
- I do the NYT Crossword every single day.
- I appeared on a nationally syndicated PBS show in 2018 (10 Modern Marvels That Changed America), speaking as a noted authority on the construction of New York’s Erie Canal. We filmed for 10 hours on board a canal boat to create the segment…which was about 5 minutes long.
Why do you like working at Terakeet?
The people are the best thing about working at Terakeet. There must be a prerequisite from HR to only hire friendly and interesting people! Slack is also a great feature of working at Terakeet, I had never used it before (Terakeet is also my first-ever remote full-time job). We have people all over the country, and it’s been wonderful to get to know my colleagues on a more personal level even with the physical distance.
What’s your morning routine?
I’m an early riser, and my morning routine is extremely important to me. I’m up before the sunrise, and I like to have a long leisurely breakfast before doing some cleaning and either going for a walk around my neighborhood or doing an indoor workout (I have a treadmill, a stationary bike, and a rowing machine in my apartment). Then I’ll shower and get ready for the work day.
When I turn on my computer in the morning (often before I’m ready to get to work; I like to know what’s coming up on any given day), I’ll check my email and see if I have any assignments waiting on me. I also check my meeting schedule for the day and put together any notes I might need for those meetings. My motto is “be prepared.”
Daily tasks for a Digital Copy Editor
I’m part of the Content Department at Terakeet, and my work falls into the chain that our client deliverables go through. On my client team, work is assigned to a writer or content specialist, they write new content or rewrite existing content, or generate an outline for a future article. Then the piece goes to one of our capable quality assurance folks, who check that it meets the technical SEO requirements of the client.
Then it comes to me, and I make sure it reads well, makes sense, and reflects the right tone and style. Sometimes a writer will have questions during the writing process, and they reach out to me over Slack so I can give them a hand. It’s a really nice back and forth among our team; we all win together.
I love watching our writers get better over time, and learning about a variety of subjects in the course of reading and editing the work. The most challenging part of the role is often when we go back to revise/edit/optimize an older piece of content; sometimes they require a lot of careful work to ensure that we don’t impact Google ranking!
What tools do you use on a weekly basis?
My client team has a lot of documents we’ve created and use to keep ourselves in line, so I keep several of them open in my browser when I work on deliverables. My most frequently used tool is our ever-evolving 30+ page style guide! I also use the AP Stylebook website nearly every day.
How do you achieve work-life balance on a weekly basis?
Terakeet is a great company for work-life balance! It’s convenient to fit things like vet appointments for my cats into my schedule. Everyone I work with is great at keeping their colleagues abreast of when we need to be away from our desks, and being able to sometimes put up very detailed Slack statuses means that anyone can see at a glance what I have going on any given day!
Changing careers to be able to work remotely has been one of the best professional moves I’ve ever made, and I’m so glad that Terakeet has leaned in on hiring so many amazing people located all over the country. I truly can’t see myself working in person at an office ever again.
This is a continuation of our “Day in the Life” series, which previously featured members of other departments, including tech SEO, engineering, and project management. Read those posts here:
A Day in the Life of a Tech Lead
A Day in the Life of a Software Engineer: Coding Our Team’s Values