Marketing and Audience Engagement
Our yearbook staff advertises and reaches out to our student body through physical signs/displays, social media and surveys. I emphasize active marketing, so that there's always something advertising the book.
Preorder Hearts
In February, I worked with our Social Media Editor, Maria Morales-Ocampo, to create this big heart in the hallway on the English floor. She created and put up the "We love people who preorder the yearbook" and the list of names of everyone who preordered, then I cut out and taped a lot of hearts. I also added the number of books preordered/left for a clearer visual and number of the book totals.
Within two days, the preorder number jumped from 633 to 718.
Selling Advertisements
I love going on every trip I can for journalism, but do not have the money to fund it out of pocket. At the start of this year, I made a table of every college within Arkansas and found out emails of people in charge of marketing. Then, I made a template and emailed every single person.
Majority of the schools responded, and I ended up selling several ads. Half of the profit went into my "J-Bank," and has helped send me on trips this year.
Social Media
A big priority of mine is building up leadership in the staff. At the end of last year, I encouraged Maria Morales-Ocampo to apply for social media editor because I believed she would do well at it. I was proven right.
She developed a strong visual theme. We requested that she post Photos of the Weeks, event highlights, informational posts, marketing, etc. with a minimum of two posts per week. We let her run it, and she takes our requests, encouragement and critiques with enthusiasm.
Through this, the Instagram has gained many followers and thousands of views.
Surveys
For each deadline, we send out surveys. We don't just use them to put polls and numbers on our spreads, but to find people to cover for specific things.
Surveys are sent out to English classes. Some teachers started a competition, and will give bonus points if their students respond the most.
