More Context About the Assignment:

This assignment was meant to be a way to come up with a way to make Fairmont States newspaper The Columns, more active on social media, and with the student body overall, as they lacked a proper social media manager at the time. We were also asked how to get the attention of the student body and staff outside of social media.

I think starting with getting the student’s attention through social media is a good first step for the newspaper when it comes to distribution. The students are the ones who read and share stuff about the newspaper, and they also are the ones who help write for it. Faculty and Staff can be on the back burner for the first part of the distribution plan. The best way to develop a voice for the newspaper is to have a student staff member of the paper run the account. Normally, you can tell who is running the account and if they are in the same age category as the audience they’re targeting. Students on average are between 18-23 and knowing this age demographic, the best platform to use for this launch is Instagram.

The content shared on Instagram can be the articles that the students are actively writing for the paper. I think a good first step would be doing a meet-the-staff post so students on campus can see who’s writing for them. Doing this about me section can help the students connect more with the student paper, and it could ease some student’s anxieties about the writers possibly not being actual students at the college reporting on issues. When it comes to sharing the articles, it is fairly simple to google photos that coincide with them or create photos to reuse using websites like Canva. You can share a small section of the article in the text part of the Instagram post and encourage people to check out the articles on the website. I think seeing snippets of articles could add to the shareability of the content itself. If you want people to share the post about the article, they need to be able to see some of it. Not everyone shares things based on only the title and sometimes require more to see if they want to share it with their friends who could be students at the college.

When it comes to targeting the staff of the college the Falcon flier is a good place to start (we can pretend that it is actually reliable) but using another social media platform to get the faculty and staff’s attention is a good idea. I’m thinking of Facebook considering I don’t know a lot of professors who have Instagram. You can post on Instagram and Facebook at the same time since a lot of their features are cross-platform, however, I think it’s a good idea to use a different approach on Facebook. Considering the faculty and staff are normally older, it may be a good idea to use a professional approach. Sharing the articles on Facebook, sharing posts about the writers, and sharing other information that may just pertain to staff can help attract them to the paper. Stating hey if you guys want something covered, please submit a pitch through our website so we can get it covered for you and also help engage staff and faculty. They will be more inclined to share something if what’s written is what they recommend.

Flyers with QR codes in all of the buildings around campus either linking to the website or to the social media pages help spread the news of the paper to everyone. Having mass emails sent out by the head of the department about the paper and what the paper does can also help get more writers involved which would mean more stories to post. There are TVs broadcasting things all over campus and it is one simple email away from getting them to share something about the columns on them. The Falcon Center, the Ruth-Anne Musick Library, and Turley would be great ones as they are frequently visited by students.

The launch was successful so what now? I think now it’s important to utilize the other features of Instagram that Facebook has in common, reels. Short-form video content brings in a wider audience and can even attract those not part of the campus community. Using reels to have the writers give a brief rundown of their articles or having a specific person run around campus and interview people on hot topics can help increase engagement on and off campus. Utilizing Facebook, you can begin to share the posts from the columns to the Fairmont Community page and allow the community to see what the students are covering. Want more engagement on the website? Host small giveaways of Falcon Dollars if people comment on the articles or on the Instagram and Facebook posts themselves. Just in case there are new writers on the team, a staff team Q&A video and ask for user-submitted questions for each of the staff members. You can make the videos long-form on YouTube or Instagram TV or utilize the stories feature so they can be shared on Facebook as well. One thing to remember is to push for people to submit story pitches either through the websites or you can use the Instagram questions feature to get some ideas. If you want to reach more students, reach out to the manager of the Fairmont State pages or the Humanities Department manager and see if you can work out small content-sharing deals. Having the columns shared on these platforms helps branch it out to students who possibly never knew it existed.