MARKETING & AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
As chief-editor, it is important to constantly be audience-conscious and keep in touch with incentives that work (or don't work) to promote our paper, fundraisers that benefit our paper the most, and analytics on SNO Sites.
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Each year, we try to experiment with different fundraising ideas (contests, raffles, etc.) to decide what marketing works best for our team and community. Throughout all four years of my high school journalism journey, donuts have by far been the most prominent source of budget. Donut sales are easy to advertise around the school, and we use leftover boxes to sell individual donuts. I take note of what our targeted audience is and how best to market our fundraising sales to their specific interests.
Through my time as a journalist, I have learned that a great way to improve audience engagement is through incentives. To this day, our most viewed article on our Hatchie Headlines website is our "Halloween Costume Contest." We encouraged our students and staff to dress up for Halloween on a designated day and put out a poll on our website so people could vote for who their favorites were. This poll drew masses to our paper, and that draw prompted users to view other articles while on the website to vote. This competitive and fun contest brought up our audience engagement by a great amount.
Analytics are also a great way to garner audience engagement. By looking at the graphs over periods of time, I can discern what topics to cover and what audience we should promote to. I make an effort to frequently check up on SNO Sites' analytics feature after new batches of articles are uploaded so I stay consistently aware of audience interests.