Marketing & Audience Engagement

Social media

I utilize Instagram analytics to see traction on posts and which generate the most audience engagement. For example, Instagram allows users to see what days and times followers are more active. With this information, I am best able to see what are the best times for publication. Additionally, I noticed that posts of school dances tend to get a lot of visibility so I always make sure to have extensive social media coverage on those days.

Poll of the week

I worked with the Social Media Manager this year to start instituting poll of the weeks on our social media stories. Polls like these are a great way to promote audience engagement with our media and offer interesting data to our followers / readers.

These are example of Instagram poll of the week Instagram story posts that I helped to brainstorm.

Website analytics

The website analytics help show audience engagement with Eastside Online. It is especially helpful to see which stories are getting the most views (also seen through the trending widget on our website) so we can see which type of content our readership is excited about. For instance, I noticed that local food reviews were getting large viewership so I knew that could be a priority for the community section to focus on since no other local news outlets were focusing on covering the local restaurants.

Community outreach

Best of SNO

  • Best of SNO has a strong readership so I try to work with the online EICs to make sure that stories are getting submitted there and recommending stories I think would do well in publishing.

Community Facebook groups

  • My town has formed a lot of local Facebook groups for community members that are effective outlets for getting readers. I have published new stories on the Facebook and also tried to source new ideas / story suggestions using Facebook. Through Facebook, I am also able to stay informed on issues that people are commenting about to see what is on the minds of community members.

Community surveys

One important way I have stressed getting connected with the Cherry Hill High School East community is through school-wide surveys. Originally, I would try sending surveys out to my friends over text, but I found that it would lead to biased results. Subsequently, I started sending the surveys to my guidance counselor so he could send them to all students and also the English teachers (core class) so they could post it on their Google Classrooms.

Distribution days

Each month when the print issue comes out, I help organize the “Distribution Day.” Editors and I stand at the entrances and hand out issues so students have them in the morning. I have also posted reels of scroll throughs of the issue when the issues come out on Instagram so people can access it digitally too.

This is a reel I asked the media editor to make to generate hype and excitement over our recent distribution day.

This is a scroll-through of a recent print issue that I posted on Instagram to try to get people to visit the stories online.

This is one of the empty newsstands (prior to restock) close to the busiest intersection in my school. Strategic location allows it to be accessible to all who want it.

Eastside Newsstands

My newspaper has created physical newsstands that we have throughout the school building so people who may have been absent during distribution day can still get a copy of the print issue. The newsstands help facilitate audience engagement by being another touchpoint of the Eastside newspaper with Cherry Hill High School East students and faculty.

Giving Tuesday

For Giving Tuesday this year, Eastside did a raffle / incentive prize of free lifetime subscriptions. To help generate hype and excitement while also engaging our audience, I picked the raffle winners in a video to be posted on our social media accounts.

These were the Instagram stories that were posted of me picking the winners for lifetime subscriptions based on the donation raffle for Giving Tuesday.