The first thing I wanted to point out was how technical he was, his technical ability, how cutting edge some of the concepts he brought to the table were, the observations that he had. We were facing a lot of technical challenges at the time, and he was really efficient in diagnosing those problems, pointing those out, and giving us a clear path to remedy those problems.

He was super creative in putting out content that was super shareable, actionable, and clickable. The other thing that I would point out was that he was unabashedly, unapologetically white hat. So many companies I feel like (and ours was no different) try to come up with short-term solutions to complicated problems – he would never let us do that. Everything that he conceived of was very thorough and meant to be sustainable. In terms of ROI, it was a sizable investment for us at the time but absolutely worth every penny. He gave us a roadmap that we were working on for years after that engagement ended and again it was complete. So in summary, I recommend Stephan Spencer wholeheartedly. He’s certainly a thought leader in the industry and that was evident every moment that he worked with us. Absolutely no reservations and would be eager to work with him again in the future.

As a means of raising the profile of The Carter Center and driving traffic to our website, Stephan Spencer suggested that President Carter write a blog. We took that suggestion, developed a strategy around a trip to the West African countries of Togo, Ghana, and Mali, and posted regular blogs from President Carter (with photos, sidebars and news stories, and links to related material on our site) over the course of eight days.

Although he had written reports from the field on previous trips, this was his first experience with the blogging phenomenon and he was eager to participate.

The blogs, which we marketed via press releases, through partner organization websites, and via the Google AdWord program, garnered significant increases in visits to our site, resulting in an average quadruple our normal daily average. We have sustained a significant increase in Web traffic since February 2004, building on the momentum of the blog project, which we intend to repeat both with President Carter and others here at the Center. We are grateful to Stephan for planting the seed for one of the most successful Web projects The Carter Center has undertaken to-date.