Social Media
Social media is a beautiful opportunity to showcase the talents of the community, but it's also a great platform for Roar personalities to shine and have fun. I adopted the very lax role of Twitter manager in 2022 to accompany my centerfold role, and although I don't oversee it anymore, as I began as an EIC, I was adamant that we incorporate social media into our presence.
In 2021, our school's other newspaper, Denebola, which is online exclusive, began ramping up their social media usage by upping photo coverage at sports games, beginning a hit series called, "Fit Check Friday", where their social media manager would go around and ask random people what outfit they're wearing, and posting comics. Their following increased significantly, and started developing a larger persona than us.
Our competitive nature didn't really make us push for the switch, but it didn't not help...
The Social Media Switch
Social media is a beautiful opportunity to showcase the talents of the community, but it's also a great platform for Roar personalities to shine and have fun. I adopted the very lax role of Twitter manager in 2022 to accompany my centerfold role, and although I don't oversee it anymore, as I began as an EIC, I was adamant that we incorporate social media into our presence.
Previously, Roar's Instagram was pretty boring and only consisted of fluffy group photos of us holding newspapers, fluffy group photos of us announcing the new issue, and fluffy group photos of us in St. Louis during NSPA.
Cute, but not how a newspaper should go about social media these days.
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The post that changed a lot of things
2023 Lip Dub — one of our most popular posts
The change was practically instantaneous. As soon as senior staff was appointed and we had our first meeting together, I was very clear that one of my goals was to increase the value of our social media presence. I began by making that first flyer for the V40 kickoff meeting, and those first few posts of community coverage for Black Culture Day and the Women's Health Panel.
Along with that, I pushed for us to incorporate Social Media Managers into our staff, because previously, Emma, who was a features editor, was helping to run the Instagram, and I, who was a centerfold editor, was "helping" to "run" the "twitter". Nowadays, social media is no joke — if we want to have the best possible presence we can, we need people who are purely designated to that role.
So the first time ever, we included social media managers in our application, and hired two to purely oversee the Instagram. Immediately, we started covering events and capturing moments in our school's community that were important to us. We started developing a culture around the social media, and started developing a much larger presence on the front (+400 followers in less than a year).
Throughout the rest of the volume, we maintained our presence and only grew in our platform. The photography got better and the captions more informative — we started creating our own Roar style.
Media Day
As an athlete, media day is something that we always incorporated, not only for content purposes, but because it's simply a fun experience that brings teams together. I wanted to bring that to the Roar, and organized the first media day for the Volume 40 staff. I wanted to utilize this opportunity for the new staff to break out of their shells, so I put on some Jack Harlow and the rest is history.
News editor, Irene
Senior Staff prom poses!
Photo manager, Evan (who took all the photos)
Friends within staff
Promotional content
When I was on Roar, it had developed somewhat of a pretentious presence. There was very little promotion, it was very, "Come, if you dare, or have some kind of connection." Nothing about it was welcoming, and it was a little overly, scholarly.
A large reason of why I wanted a larger social media presence was because we had very few reporters. I knew that by catering to a larger audience, we would be able to get perspectives that we normally wouldn't attract, and it worked. I think our increase of readership, interaction, and members can be partially attributed to our social media presence.
That presence has allowed us to discovery perspectives that we often don't get. Roar attracted a type, and with social media, that "type" started fading away, and turned into the whole community.
This formatting became the Roar style for club announcements
Its actually true. John Krasinski and BJ Novak both were on Roar and was a reporter and EIC, respectively.
Post 2:30am paper delivery
Athletics
The weird thing is that our social media managers honestly seemed more interested in developing their photography skills than their content making skills. Which is... fine... I'm glad they had that outlet. Because of this, we got a lot of experimental athletics photos as they went to their friend's events.
I wasn't a huge fan of the fact that we were kind of losing our interest as a newspaper that also covered, news, and not just sports, but I could kind of tell that it was just a phase, so I didn't really do anything about it.
I was right – it only lasted during the fall before they went back to their normal content.
Strike Coverage
It was unprecedented. We had to cover it extensively.
Community Events
We can't always fit everything that happens into the paper. Social media is a perfect way to give recognition to those initiatives.