The Blaze Copy Editor | 2025 WI Student Journalist of the Year
Marketing and Audience Engagement
Being able to sell our yearbook throughout the year is half of our battle. When it comes to finding new and creative ways to encourage people to buy their book, I look to my staff and other social media accounts for inspiration. Last year, the staff and I slowly dropped hints about the theme and the cover until finally releasing both the day the book went out. This helped us keep engagement with our audience and made our school feel more involved in our work. This year, we're going to go around the school and actually include people in our TikTok and Instagram posts in hopes that it will motivate people to purchase their yearbook.
Marketing
People want to know about the product we spend months making for them to take home at the end of the year. I use our Instagram as a way for everyone to be able to see new things we're working on and to share what they think, too. My goal is always to get interaction on our social media, and I've seen a lot more of it this year than last. I'm rarely ever not taking pictures. I'm so glad that I'm able to document everything our staff does on a permanent place such as the internet.
Distribution Posts
As the year went on and prices for yearbooks got higher, I made sure to make many posts reminding students that their deadline to purchase a book was swiftly approaching.
For each holiday, I make little posters or reminders that any time is the perfect time to buy your yearbook. These posts and our Photo of the Week posts get reposted the most.
While people anxiously awaited the reveal of our cover, we posted super small sneak peeks for students. We promised a cover reveal when we reached a certain number of books purchased, and we kept our promise.
This was the cover reveal we posted when we finally sold 375 yearbooks. Not only were we proud of what we made, but we also received so much positive feedback and excitement about our cover.
SNO Analytics
When I took over our social media accounts, I also took over our website. Since I took over in December, Mrs. Corbett and I have made many changes to the website to make it easier to navigate than before. Below are the analytics from my first and second year on our site.
Above are the analytics of our SNO website from Dec. 2023 - June 2024.
Above are the analytics of our SNO website from Sept. 2024 - Mar. 2025.
Engagement
Living in the age of social media means that engagement and interaction are so much more important now than before. High schoolers are constantly on their phones and most are wanting to be the first to like and comment on the latest post. With a recent phone ban being set in place at Indian Trail, it's been harder to get the views and likes that we want during the day. However, a dive into our Instagram analytics showed that over the course of 90 days, our viewers are most active between the times of noon and 9 P.M. Knowing this has helped me have a better gauge on when our account is most likely to get the likes, comments and follows from our school.
I post stories that people can click on, type on or move things on. I've found making posts more interactive generates more traffic and activity on our profile. I like using the question box on our stories because I love hearing other people's ideas on what we can add or take away from our book, website or social medias.
Instagram Engagement
Being the social media manager for The Blaze has taught me so much about the digital world. I've learned that posting relatable content is what draws people in, so that's what I do. My goal for the rest of my time as the social media manager is to make people want to interact more, especially on our stories. I plan to make more polls, add Q&A's and post more about student life.
Learning that most of our viewers are people who don't follow us was a bit of a shock to me. But it's a challenge I plan to work through. My goal is to shift this percentage to have, at the very least, 80% of our viewers be followers. I'm going to make posts encouraging people to follow our account so they don't miss out on anything.
Using this bar graph of our viewers most active times helps me plan out times to post. I do see a difference in interaction when I post during the school day versus when I post after school, the latter getting more attention. Sometimes I will also draft posts during the week so that I can post them later in the day on the weekend, which is also when we get a lot more engagement.