Marketing and Audience Engagement
"I didn't know our school had a newspaper."
A legitimate response I received during my sophomore year after I told a peer I was on the staff of The BluePrint. Even just typing the words gives me goosebumps. Since then, I've made it my mission to get our print and web articles even more traction and recognition from those on and off our campus.
Instagram Posts
Our staff began creating Instagram posts this year to boost engagement for some of our spotlighted stories. When I made this post, I used Canva to place text on the dominant image from the story on our website and included the date, title, subheadline, and artist of the image. I also included a brief snippet of the story, and ultimately, these posts have increased the amount of users going to our website. I have my staffers repost the feed post of their story onto our Instagram story with a link so our followers can easily click and read our articles. I also post our front cover every time we have a new issue come out, so our followers are notified that we're passing out papers during our fourth period, or they can read the online version published through Issuu on our website.
Instagram Stories
Our staff uses our Instagram stories to post polls to gain information for our stories. We have also found this to be an effective way to find additional people to interview for our stories. For my story about the digital SAT, I posted a poll to students, gathering their opinions on if they were on board with the change. I also posted an Instagram story for my opinion piece about PragerU, with the dominant image and link so readers could be directed to our website. We also use our Instagram stories to post staff accomplishments (ex. Best of SNOs).
YouTube
I post every video I create on YouTube. This year I also started posting all of our podcasts on Youtube rather than on Soundcloud, as it makes it all the easier for our readers to listen to our podcasts, and I also created playlists for each of our staffers' multimedia recurring content This makes it easy for me to repost video links onto our Instagram story, as well as embed them into a post on our website. This also sends the video to the subscribers of our Hagertyjourn channel.
At the beginning of the year, our website views were way down from the past few school years, so I had to think creatively about how to get more eyes on our website—and the answer was Facebook. I decided that X (formerly known as Twitter) was a dying platform that wasn't getting our stories much traction, and that we could get way more views if we began actively promoting our stories on Facebook through individual posts on our own page and posts in the parent groups. As someone who has a "Facebook Mom" I know that what these parents love the most are pictures and specifically looking to see what pictures their children are in. This is why for our first post in the HHS group, I put an array of five photos for parents to look at, and I directed them to look on our website if they wished to see more. This promotion made our website, and our homecoming week story specifically, absolutely explode, and our website views have been much more consistent since I made this change.
Short-form Content
Something myself and my staffers noticed was that we needed to connect more with our audience using our social media this year. One massive way that we've started doing that is through our short form content, and it's been a massive success. My two favorite recurring segments we have on our social media is On Trend by Faith Walsh, where Faith interviews people on campus about their thoughts on a trendy topic, and DJ Mukbang, which features Delaney Roberts and Jessica Johnson trying new food items from around Oviedo. Their posts have gotten us hundreds of views and interactions (the Crumbl Cookie reel of DJ Mukbang alone got our Instagram seven new followers and Faith's On Trend YouTube shorts get 500+ views per episode, it's crazy!). I am the sole editor for our multimedia content, so I help my staffers who’ve been creating this content with editing using Premiere Pro and Premiere Rush, as well as with setting up cameras, tripods and properly connecting microphones. I also post all of our short-form multimedia content on our social media accounts, as well as on the website, and I help my staffers come up with ideas for their segments (On Trend: Owalas and DJ Mukbang: D’Amico & Sons).
SNO Analytics
I check our SNO analytics daily. This specific snippet shows the impact the creation of our Facebook and promotion through Instagram posts and stories had on our website views (the first post I made was about homecoming and posted on Oct. 28). Before that, our views were way down, with an exception of my story about our school's new attendance policy that was posted on Oct. 2, and we were struggling to get our stories read. I knew that the content or topics weren't the problem—we'd been putting out our best work in years—but rather people didn't know or understand how to find our stuff. Since implementing this use of promotion consistently, there has been a huge uptick in our views and they are consistently higher now, which makes me really happy!
SNO Fundraising
Since we no longer sell or feature advertisements in our print issues or on our website, our staff uses the fundraising tool through Student Newspapers Online. This was implemented into our website three years ago, so that every user sees the donation bar at the end of every article, and has the ability to donate to our publication. This has been an easy and successful way for our publication to earn money as users may read a story they strongly connect with enjoy, inspiring them to donate.
Curriculum Night
Curriculum night is one of my favorite events of the year. I really love talking with families and students about why I specifically love journalism and discussing more about our Academy of Media and Communication, a new program that is in its first year. Last year, Mr. Taylor led the creation of the Academy of Media and Communication (AMC), which encompasses journalism, design and broadcast courses under one umbrella, and made a clear pathway for of course progression depending on the individual student's hobbies. I quickly became a pro in all things AMC, and for the past two years, I was able to direct families on which path their student(s) would like best depending on their interest and what fundamental skills they wanted to develop further. While I did promote newspaper the most to prospective families and students, (we are the best!) I was also able to discuss what the Yearbook and Advanced Digital Design courses entail, as I've been a teaching assistant for both.
Interactive Elements in Print
QR Codes, feedback from FSPA, multimedia content in the paper
After receiving feedback from FSPA judges two years ago and our newspaper resize, I began to implement the use of more interactive QR code elements in our paper. Our staffers really love to write, and some of their stories don't fit on one page, so we will plug the extended web version of their story in our paper, as well as placing QR code elements for our multimedia segments on our entertainment page. I will also make sure to plug two different mediums of similar topics, like our college catastrophe article and Elleigh's installment of "Tell Me More"on college applications, so if a reader is interested in that particular topic, they can see all of the ways we've covered it. This past issue, Issue 3, really shows off how I've implemented this and maximized the use of QR code elements on our pages, to overall boost our engagement and interactivity on our print version and website.