Marketing and Audience Engagement
“You can’t buy engagement. You have to build engagement.”
-Tara-Nicholle Nelson, Author and CEO
Something to think about…
Branding is everything, and it’s what separates the good from the great.
Journalists are in the business to engage. They find a way to engage their reader, their community and the general public as a whole. However, some fall short of understanding the true way to engage isn’t in a big, flashy way; it’s in the details. Logos, fonts, graphics, consistency and themes, all of those factors play into making a large impact. I have come to learn when considering the outreach of my work, it’s not always in the way I present a story but in how I present myself. Over the past few years, I have tried to build an image for myself that is memorable and distinct in order to maximize my reach.
Twitter Engagements
Twitter serves as the main platform where I showcase my work, and through consistent personal branding, the number of impressions accumulated by my posts has grown. In the past year, I have been able to garner over 500 new followers in the span of five months. Since the fall of junior year, my impression count has been in the six figures. These statistics do not include the number of impressions on professional social media accounts I have done work for, including VYPE Houston’s account, which is comfortably over the 1 million impression mark.
Below are graphs indicating my Twitter impression statistics within a few months’ time.
Junior Year 2021-2022
Twitter impressions from August 23, 2021 through November 21, 2021
Twitter impressions from November 22, 2021 through February 21, 2022
Senior Year 2022-2023
Twitter impressions from August 22, 2022 through November 20, 2022
Twitter impressions from November 21, 2022 through January 8, 2023
The Bridge App
When my co-editor-in-chief and I were officially chosen to lead the publication, we knew we wanted to find a way to showcase the work in a way where it would appeal to different audiences. After finding the SNO site had an additional app extension, we worked to get the purchase of the extension approved and brainstorm the set-up. App users can subscribe to a specific reporter, section or all stories to be notified when a story of their interest is posted and it also goes in their own ‘Following’ tab for easier access. We also created an ESPN-like sports section where app users have the latest scores, rosters, schedules and more for every sport at Bridgeland right at their fingertips under the ‘SportsCenter’ tab. We chose to do that in order to attract a majority of the Bridgeland community since sports play a huge role, which increases the foot traffic to the app and to the stories.
Below is a graph showing story engagement solely on the app since its launch in December.
Personal Branding
Something I think I have done persistently well is building a personal brand for myself and my work. The main way I have done this is through Twitter and Instagram accounts. I personally believe that is why the most engagement I see with my work is on social media.
My social media pages serve as the primary way I interact with my community and the communities I report on. By providing coverage of a variety of events across the state while also remaining heavily active on these accounts, I increase trust between myself and the followers who keep up with me while also proving I am verifiable.
I use my own personal watermark on all the photos I post to not only protect my work but also to get my name out. I also send these pictures to the players who are featured if they request them from me. I only do it on the term they tag me in every photo posted. With many influential high level recruits in Texas, I have gained notoriety and followers through them tagging me on their posts.
I operate my Twitter and Instagram with different types of content intentionally. On Twitter, all live coverage and immediate information I want to get out there is seen, while on Instagram, I post more of content creator-like work that shows my creative side. I do this to give both facets of the content I create equal attention and also to give people a reason to follow me on both accounts. I have seen this be successful after promoting a post on one of my accounts on the other and vice versa.
Although I do post different types of content on my social media, the way I try to portray myself to the public remains the same. I try to be relatable by thinking of witty things to post or keeping them in the know about life, and the things I stand for are evident. At the forefront of how I brand myself, I push being a strong female in sports across the board. I use an intense shade of pink in a lot of different aspects to try and subconsciously embed that image of a bold female next to my name. I have a consistent template I use for all my live coverage tweets for games, a consistent signoff to all standups, a consistent way of promoting the stories I write on Instagram, and the list goes on and on.
Consistency has been the name of the game for me in terms of working towards cultivating a distinct image. I think I have laid a firm foundation for myself to expand that ability and build a bigger name for myself and what I do. Presentation is everything, and I am constantly learning how to get better at it.
The More You Know
What I’ve learned from marketing and audience engagement
How to build a personal brand on social media platforms
To direct social media posts toward the follower audiences in order to maximize engagement
To analyze reader tendencies in order to drive up numbers on The Bridge app