Scaling Men’s Fitness into a digital audience engine

At Men’s Fitness, the work was about turning a legacy media brand into a modern digital audience engine. The brand already had authority in print and fitness culture, but the opportunity was to build a faster, more scalable content operation across web, search, social, video, email, and branded content.

I helped lead the digital newsroom through that shift. The operation included SEO-driven evergreen content, a trending news desk, social-first content, influencer and trainer-led programming, celebrity cover-story rollouts, video packages, and branded content campaigns sold through the advertising team. Each part of the system had a different job: search content captured demand, trending coverage helped the brand participate in the daily conversation, social and video built audience connection, cover packages created cultural moments, and branded campaigns supported revenue.

My role was part strategist, part operator, and part final editorial filter. I approved concepts, shaped editorial direction, managed editors, writers, freelancers, contributors, and video producers, and helped ensure that the content leaving the newsroom met the brand’s standards. I also partnered with advertising, marketing, PR, and branded content teams to make sure sold campaigns were translated into content plans that could actually be produced, published, and distributed.

The result was a digital content operation that grew with speed and discipline. During my time at the brand, web traffic grew from 3 million to 13.8 million monthly visitors, social following grew from 150,000 to more than 3 million, and the brand expanded from a print-adjacent editorial property into a scaled digital lifestyle platform.