Marketing and Audience Engagement
As important as creating journalistic work is, even more importance comes from spreading the content we create to as many people as possible. Here are some techniques that I used this year to increase engagement and promote our publication.
Publication Day
Publication days are easily some of my favorite days of the year. We finally get to see our hard work in fruition, and the student body gets to connect over the newspaper. Returning from online classes, I noticed that the majority of the younger students weren’t aware of publication days and the hype around them. To cultivate this excitement once again, I teamed up with Video Editor, Alaina, and we created publication day hype videos.
Another tradition I started on publication day is I dress up in crazy clothes and wear a hard hat with WSS stickers on it. My idea of dressing crazy is that people will stare at me or talk to me in the hallways. When they ask, “Why are you dressed like that?” I reply, “It’s WSS day! Here, take a publication.”
Community-Driven Work
From houselessness to the prevalence of school shootings, WSS has covered many complicated and thought-provoking investigative pieces. Although this type of journalism is necessary and current, many students providing feedback mentioned that some of our stories became overwhelmingly deep, and students were discouraged to dive into our content. This year, my Co-EIC and I reminded ourselves that we are a high school publication that should be community-driven. When we do cover more nuanced topics, we need to focus on creating a connection to our school and community. Sometimes, it’s okay to cover the not-so-deep pieces and purely showcase what is happening around West High. In cover stories like, “Write this down,” and “Mr. Merkle’s Magic,” and profiles like, “Everyone has a story,” and “Behind the scenes,” readers are able to learn about often untold stories of the people integral to the West community.
Interactive Media
To promote interaction with our newspaper, social media, and website, we started to experiment with interactive articles. Typically in the entertainment sections, our adviser helps us brainstorm feasible incentives for students to interact with an article. This simple technique fosters greater excitement around the newspaper.
Story Promotion
After every piece of work is published on the website, we promote them on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Social media promotion has become a habit for our publication and it is a great and simple way to widen our reach.
