Project Progress: Getting Noticed

The semester is officially more than halfway over. And wow has time flown by. Over the past nine weeks I’ve been working with The Picket on their website and utilizing social media to expand readership and engage the campus audience.

We’ve had seven issues so far, and I am proud to say that everyone of the articles printed is also available to read online. I personally think that this is not only a matter of convience for students and faculty who wish to read the paper, but also for the writers! One of the things that has been most important to me in re-developing the website this semester are our writer’s online profiles. They act as an online portfolio, and it may be because I’m so close to graduation that I realize it’s importance to the job-hunting process, but I also wanted to develop a kind of archive too.

The Picket’s presence on social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram has also increased. In August we had 152 ‘likes’ on Facebook and 51 followers on Twitter and today we now have 225 ‘likes’ on Facebook and 122 followers on Twitter. And I’ve also created an Instagram photo-sharing account which still needs some work, but we’ve picked up a few followers and I’m excited to see where that can lead us.

ACP Summer Workshop Series

This past summer I was fortunate enough to have Shepherd University send me, along with two other editors for The Picket, to the ACP Summer Workshop Series in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

It was a five day long conference filled with lectures and lessons from industry professionals and professors on everything from layout design, website and social media managing, different styles of reporting, blogging and new technologies, and more! The experience was fun and educational, and we were able to meet and network with our peers from a variety of other universities whom are pursing careers in our chosen fields.

Because of my position on The Picket’s staff as multimedia manager, I attended mostly website, marketing, advertising, and social media related sessions at the conference. My favorite speaker though was Charlie Weaver who works for the Iowa State Daily at Iowa State University acting as their online, design, and social media director. He was able to give me one-on-one advice about wordpress and better branding specifically geared towards The Picket’s audience and size of Shepherd’s campus.

I also enjoyed Erica Hanna‘s keynote speech on blogging and creating a successful online presence in this new digital age. She was inspiring and touched on everything from how to get more views on YouTube to how to build your own personal profiles to aid you in the job-hunt after graduation.

Given the chance I would attend another ACP conference and recommend it to anyone in the journalism or media fields.

Our commentary editor, Katie, inside the University of Minnesota’s bookstore!

Organization Fair

Last week was org fair, an annual event that Shepherd University holds to showcase all of their organizations to incoming freshman and new students. This year was my first at The Picket booth (previously I had participated with my sorority). As multimedia manger for The Picket I took the opportunity to present our publication and staff in a new way. From a public relations standpoint I wanted to debut our new brand, website, and “face” of the picket with our new layout of the print addition. I wanted to make our booth as inviting as possible in order to recruit new writers and photographers for the publication as well.

I designed t-shirts that we gave away for free, and in an attempt to further advertise, I included flyers “calling all writers” inside the shirts too. At the time we had only published our orientation issue, so I made sure that we had plenty of copies of the paper to hand out as well so that new students could familiarize themselves with the publication.

During the event I utilized social media by live tweeting from The Picket’s twitter account, as well as posting photos and other information on all of the accounts including Instagram and Facebook, all of which got replies and follower interaction. I was pretty pleased with my first attempt at in-person marketing for The Picket and am anxious to find other events on campus where the publication can put more of a face to our name and interact with our readers and the campus community. We did get information from about twenty-five prospective writers as well as some other questions and feed back about our distribution and advertising that I think would be beneficial for The Picket to address, and I could possibly help with.

Author’s Bio Page Fiasco

Today I got to put my WordPress skills to good use. After toying around with the picket’s new website for almost a month now, noodling and trying to figure out this new theme, FireStarter, I was finally able to crack the code! I had previously worked through setting up the design scheme and layout of the site through widgets and menu options within the theme. But what had been giving me the most trouble was something I thought would be simple when I initially picked the theme; the staff bio page. Sure, I thought, just get the writers to take a headshot photo and give some basic information about themselves, oh no, boy was I wrong. One issue I’ve found with this particular theme is that even though its design possibilities and customization options are seemingly endless, there’s no real instruction manual to go along with it. I searched the web; Google-ing, looking on YouTube, reading WordPress blogs about WordPress, everything I could think of to help figure out my issue…

How do I get our photos to appear in those staff writers’ circles?

Hmm… well after much stress and hair pulling out, I met with my managing editor for the picket and together we sat in the office looking over the dashboard. It turns out that you need to create a separate user account for each writer in addition to a staff writer profile, then find out the user ID number that’s assigned to each different user (which after about a half hour of confusion and searching is in the url for each specific user) and then plug that user ID number into the All Authors Page “Theme Options” panel. Phew!

After discovering this and having my own “ahh-ha” moment I cheered aloud at my nerdy conquering of this once evil WordPress theme! And that was just last Thursday.

Take a look at the author’s bio page now to see my current progress.

Welcome to My Capstone Project

For my Capstone project I will be working with Shepherd University’s student newspaper, The Picket. I have been appointed as their Multimedia Manager for this semester and plan to create a new website and online presence for them in addition to running their social media accounts.

I am pursuing a career in public relations and marketing and have always had a fascination with social networking and how to further your business and even your personal brand through social media and online. I have previously worked for a local small business here in Shepherdstown and saw first hand how beneficial social media can be when it comes to advertising, creating a customer base, and getting your name out there. Many sites like Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Yelp, and even LinkedIn are great starting points and have free basic features that allow you to promote yourself and express individuality. In addition to small business experience, I’ve worked for an independent PR & Marketing firm which allowed me to see the wide range of needs that different clients have depending on their industry. And hopefully I’ll be able to utilize some of the skills I’ve picked up along the way to bring my vision for The Picket to life.

My overall plan for The Picket is to essentially re-brand the publication and give it a more modern appearance, as well as increasing readership both in print and online. I will be utilizing their existing Facebook and Twitter accounts, in addition to creating an Instagram and new website. The previous website that The Picket had been “using” (a term I use loosely due to it’s rarely updated content) was a basic WordPress site that had little development and was neither aesthetically pleasing or useful to the average university student when it comes to interacting with the publication. I plan to implement a new and interactive theme that is also compatible on other devices such as tablets and smart phones. I plan on working with Dr. Matthew Kushin to develop a strategic marketing plan and audience research to better find out the needs of students and how The Picket can appeal to them.

In addition to online, I will be working alongside the editors and layout team to achieve a more cohesive look and brand for The Picket; attending all editors meetings, layout meetings, and other weekly events to ensure the transition from print to online is as seamless as possible.