Social Media Presentations
Most of the work that I do for social media is behind the scenes… in my first 3 years in Imua I focused on refining my photo editing and Adobe Bridge skills, but as the years progressed, I realized that I was most passionate about print writing. To stay engaged with social media, I worked on updating our caption standards, often answering questions on hooks and necessary photo identification. With my social media editors, I created a year-long schedule for potential social media events per the Daily Bulletin. I also encourage my staffers to keep their ears low to the ground, to capture new and exciting posts.
Links here: Creative Posting
Social Media Standards
Links here: Creative Posting
Social Media Standards
Social Media Posts
Social Media Reels and New Roles
While I’ve never been the most active follower of social media, I understand that it’s a necessary part of the journalistic process, especially in this day and age, when most readers get their news from online sources. Last year, our staff struggled to produce social media content outside of sports, due to the pandemic and mask-wearing requirements. Adapting to these requirements was difficult, but I led a training on social media picture taking specific to COVID-era rules, and provided our social media manager with support by appointing and training two new roles: Photo Editor and Photoshop Manager. With photo restrictions lessening this year I’ve encouraged my social media editors to cover a wider variety of events, and I think this shows in our increased following and increased posting schedule.
I encouraged increased social media posts by coordinating with our social media editor to create a monthly list of all the current events happening on campus. This tripled the average amount of posts that we sent out per week, and the posts were much more varied. While we’d previously covered primarily sports events on social media, we now had coverage of Big Brother/Big Sister, Spirit Week, major Keables Speakers, and other campus events. This increased our social media following, as did incorporating Instagram reels, which typically get 6 times the amount of views as a regular post. An example of this is my Ukraine Rally reel, which became the most viewed video on our Imua social media site this year.
Rally For Ukraine Reel
I encouraged increased social media posts by coordinating with our social media editor to create a monthly list of all the current events happening on campus. This tripled the average amount of posts that we sent out per week, and the posts were much more varied. While we’d previously covered primarily sports events on social media, we now had coverage of Big Brother/Big Sister, Spirit Week, major Keables Speakers, and other campus events. This increased our social media following, as did incorporating Instagram reels, which typically get 6 times the amount of views as a regular post. An example of this is my Ukraine Rally reel, which became the most viewed video on our Imua social media site this year.
Rally For Ukraine Reel
Web Improvements
Updating our website to include more engaging content and interactive elements was a challenge… on one hand I adored our traditional site, with its easy navigation and clear, no-frills stories. But on the other hand, I knew that our website needed to appeal to our audience— after a long day of homework and studying and stress, not all of our student body wants to read an article about climate change or the situation in Afghanistan. Knowing this, Devin, our Online Editor-in-Chief, and I came up with the idea of a monthly crossword. Using Crossword Labs, a simple online game maker, we were able to create custom crosswords that tied into articles from our Print edition, as well as articles from our online site. Students were encouraged to read articles to solve the crosswords, while still taking a much-needed brain break.
Other improvements we’ve made to our website this year include polls, as a way to check in with our student body, a constantly updating Instagram Feed on our website to encourage traffic between our two sites and report on breaking news, and better categorical organization using push buttons to tag categories. The push buttons idea came from the 2022 Spring JEA/NSPA convention I attended, when I saw that it could be difficult to navigate between news types when there wasn’t a clear label on what type of story the article was. This could be especially misleading for editorial and hard news pieces, as many students had sent us emails about the “slanted side” our story had taken, when the piece in question was meant to be an editorial. To clarify this, we started including push buttons with “Opinion,” “Showcase,” “News,” “Editorial,” and “Feature” at the top of each article. Staffers categorize their article, and I find the push button or collection thereof that most accurately reflects their piece.
|
Otter AI
This is the first year we’ve started using Otter AI, as a way to keep track of our interviews and provide instant transcripts of our interviews. It’s become a more effective way to pull quotes and determine which teachers and students we’ve already interviewed. In an effort to increase the amount of voices we hear from, I monitor the Otter page to ensure that we never use the same source twice over the course of a quarter. We’ve also begun to use these interviews as parts of podcasts, as seen in the interview from Mrs. Falk I used in my Model Minority Myth podcast.
Link to podcast: Model Minority Myth Podcast
Link to podcast: Model Minority Myth Podcast
QR codes
Since the pandemic, our school’s been using QR codes to check in, do safety scans, and contract trace us, so it was a no-brainer to start incorporating them in our print articles. They’re an effective way to tie our story back to our online site and people are already familiar with how to use them. Some of the more successful ways we’ve used QR codes have been linking print articles to videos, photo contests linked to our social media page, and using codes to direct viewers to full-length versions of abbreviated articles on our website.