Marketing & Audience Engagement

Managing the concoctions society presents to student journalists is terrifying. As attention spans are shortening and people shift to engaging with more short-form content, the need to keep your audience engaged grows. But there's one more ball you must juggle with: money. The Purple Tide is a newsmagazine that is not funded by the school, leading us to independently raise funds to print for the public to read.

Funding

Tag days

Businesses

Oftentimes, we have to find unique ways to raise the money needed. One of the primary ways we do this is by having advertisements in the newspaper.

We task our staffers to go out and ask businesses if they would want to be in the paper, but it's been tough enforcing that. Therefore, this year, my co-EICs and I created a "Tag Day" where, in groups of 3-5, we go to shopping centers and knock door to door asking if they would be willing to put their advertisement in. This is a big event that occurs on one day.

Our first one this year was on 9/9. As you can see on the chart there, we split up and went to different businesses. We got $880, not even including the other pledges we received from businesses that would get back to us.

It's a fun group activity as well! Here's me rewarding myself with a smoothie after finishing hours of knocking on businesses' doors.

We ate at CAVA together right after. It was really fun!

202526 Ad Contract & Sizes (1).pdf

This is the paper contract we give them! It has everything, from the pricing to how to pay to who to contact. The second page gives an idea of how it will look on paper as well.

Here's an example of a business we got during a Tag Day that purchased a full page Ad. This is what it looks like in the paper. The businesses give us the design and then we put it in for them in the paper.

Patrons

However, another thing that we do is ask teachers in our school if they would be willing to contribute money to our newspaper as a patron. So, we organized a "Tag Day" for this as well. We collected several pledges!

Additionally, The Purple Tide has different levels of patronage, from Bronze ($35) to Diamond ($300). Other than teachers, we also accept them from families or individual donors!

Here's where the names are shown with who donated and what level they are, right above our Editorial Policy and next to our staff names.

202526 The Purple Tide patron form (1).pdf

Here's what the form given to potential patrons looks like.

Donations

We also accept donations. They can be seen if you scroll to the bottom of our page on our website, as depicted here.

Fundraisers

Last but not least, we have fundraisers where we partner with a store and promote the sales of that shop to take a portion of the profit. Here's an example of one we did with Cinnaholic.

Not only do we partner, but we also promote it on our social media. We created a "reel" on Instagram using a trend at the time as a format to convey the information of the location, time, and contents we were able to purchase. In the age of the "screen-agers," I find this one of the most effective ways to get the word out.

We also make a simple post on our account with all the needed information, with the same information as the reel.

Distribution at our school

Here, I'm asking a girl if she would like a copy of the newspaper during lunch. I do this across the Cafeteria, then repeat four times again.

Distribution also means one other thing: food parties! We bring an array of snacks to celebrate our hard work.

Distribution days are when we take the printed copies of our newspaper and then hand them out around the school.

Some ways we do this are by putting copies in the gym lobby, school library, or teacher mailboxes. We also ensure that those staff members who were patrons get a copy hand-delivered to them.

The biggest way is by distributing during our school lunches! For context, our school has four lunches: A, B, C, and D. During every lunch, I split the class up and lug the cart with boxes fill of newspaper copies to the Cafeteria.

There, I awaken my inner salesperson by tapping people on the shoulder or interrupting conversations to ask if they would like a copy. It's really trained my social speaking skills!

We take stacks like these and place them in different parts of the school.

We promote our distribution on our social media as well. Here's an example of a couple of countdowns and updates we put on Instagram. My co-EICs and I love to be included in posts like this.

Distribution past our school community

In 2024 (my first year as Editor-in-Chief), I decided to tackle the issue of our newspapers not going past our school. They were meant for the Chantilly community and beyond, after all! So I contacted our local library's director and asked if we could put some copies there. Thankfully, they said yes, so ever since, I've been putting copies of our newspaper there.

Wow... copies of our newspaper out in the wild! They certainly blend in with the other professional magazines and flyers.

We have a great relationship with our local Pohanka car dealership. We provide them with copies whenever they put an Ad in the paper. Here's a post of my former executive board and me thanking them.

Below is an example of their Ad in our paper. They love promoting us, and we are ever so grateful.

Social media

We also post a lot of silly things on our Instagram reels, like a behind-the-scenes look at our process of creating the paper, trending audios to create engaging reels, and humanizing the people behind the newspaper by letting us show the world our personalities. We also have posts showing us working during worknights... we need recognition for all the late nights. Here are some of my favorites!

Over the past year, 83,459 people have visited our website.

Engagement on our website

Some of our most viewed stories in the past year + trending stories now

Promoting the course

I try to promote the newspaper at whatever events are offered. There was an activities fair where I could talk to underclassmen to promote the class, so I had a poster board and presented it with my editors. I'm holding a flyer with more info on the left!

tptpromovidfixed.mp4

Join the newspaper promotional video! Clips of current editors and staffers attest to why you should join this course. (I did not edit this video, but participated in attesting to the course's value)

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