Melissa specializes in storytelling and copywriting with unique, value-driven perspectives. She is skilled at picking up voices quickly or developing one from scratch that compliments the brand and its marketing goals. Melissa's main focuses are social media content, digital marketing, website copy, and blog writing.
Using what her clients have called "comedy therapy," Melissa is adept at asking engaging, light-bulb-sparking questions that help someone get to the heart of what they want to say--and most importantly, why they are saying it.
Melissa loves all things comedy, especially the way that it brings complete strangers together and helps people subvert and overcome adversity. She enjoys attempting to cook and attempting to go to the gym as much as she'd like to. Having grown up at the Jersey Shore with a chiropractor father, Melissa is passionate about mental health and wellness, enjoys doing yoga, and loves the beach and fishing (and always throws the fish back).
Melissa graduated Summa Cum Laude from Hofstra University's Honors College with a 3.87 GPA. She has a Bachelors in Television Writing and Producing and a Minor in Creative Writing.
Melissa’s greatest passion and professional focus is in comedy, having extensive experience in both creating and consulting on humorous content. She intern for late night with Jimmy Fallon where she learned life comedy production and then intern for Comedy Central where she analyzed Scripps and digital content. When she was Director of operations of STAND UP New York Comedy Club, she then learned how to identify unique comedic voices, promote shows, and successfully pitch comic-created digital content to clients like Reader’s Digest and BarkBox. Today, she uses her comedic writing experience and marketing knowledge to consult clients on stand up material, sketches, and other digital content. Melissa also personally writes stand up comedy and is in process of writing her first comedy pilot.
Melissa has close to a decade of experience within the entertainment industry, having worked in most mediums: independent film, cable tv, streaming services, digital content, and live performance venues.
While in college, she worked on independent film sets assisting producers and talent scouts. She then interned for Comedy Central where she provided in-depth analysis and suggestions for submitted scripts by potential talent as well as for established shows such as Inside Amy Schumer.
After graduating college she worked in air promotions for Sundance TV, a channel under AMC networks, where used demographic research to promote programming. Wanting more creative experience, she moved her way up to the Director Operations of STAND UP New York Comedy Club where she wrote pitch decks for clients and sponsors cop web copy, social media, and produced high profile events.
Melissa then moved over to AMC Networks streaming service Sundance Now, where she managed their Instagram Facebook Twitter and Pinterest. She scripted and live tweeted premieres, created shareable memes, and conducted interviews with talent.
Today, she uses her writing and industry experience to consult performers on their digital content. She has successfully coached clients from launch to over 200k followers on TikTok.
Melissa recently took her creative and voice-driven copywriting over to the healthcare industry, where she’s writing blog pieces, decks, and social media content as well as assisting with press releases and interviews for a health and wellness company. Her projects have included education and thought leadership on topics such as the impact of legislature on transgender youth, the spectrum of suicidal ideation, and the effects of holistic healthcare. These works have been published in Huffington Post and NBC 29, and pieces for INSIDER and Newsweek are pending.
Melissa‘s expertise with mobile content is in social media and digital content, including: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and TikTok content. She develops the concepts, manages editorial calendars, creates the graphics, writes the captions and hashtag strategy, and supervises video production and editing. Examples of her mobile content work include: live tweeting, infographics, memes, gifs, editorialized Instagram posts, sketch and character videos, and Stories.
She’s developed successful mobile content for both small businesses and large media accounts, showing her flexibility and ability adapt to a brand’s workflow, resources, and needs.
Melissa has a background in television and film production, having studied it in college and interned on independent film sets as well as at Comedy Central. Today, she applies that production knowledge by producing and editing social media and narrative promotional video content and consulting clients’ video production. She also has taken various screenwriting courses, participates in writers’ feedback groups, and is in the process of writing her own comedy pilot.
While managing social media for Sundance Now, Melissa live tweeted eight episode premiers of their biggest television show, collaborating with sister brands AMC networks and Shudder. To prepare, she watched episodes in advance, identified moments to turn into gifs to use premiere, scripted tweets in advance, and managed a weekly sweepstakes. During the premiere, she tweeted the scripted messages as well as responded to and engaged in real-time with fans. In addition, she collaborated with talent press teams two engage with each other’s content and increase overall impressions. She was surprised to find that what she enjoyed the most was the relationships she built over the weeks with the fans who tuned in, authentically sharing in their excitement through the brand voice.
Melissa writes SEO optimized blog posts for a health and wellness brand that help drive new business inquiries to the website. Working with a web developer and SEO expert, she uses high ranking key terms and searches to develop the format and topic of each blog post. Since these pieces are about healthcare, she also often collaborates with clinicians: once she has her take based off of the SEO results, she interviews the clinician to gain initial quotes and insight into the topic so that the piece is factually accurate. Her SEO knowledge is also expanding, as she also reviews and updates older blog posts based on new SEO rankings.