Letting our community know about us!
Embedded Files
As each person comes up to our booth, I hand them a flyer with our website QR code on it. I greet them with a smile and point to our latest story on the TV. My team has spent the entirety of our class period preparing for this night, from displaying our awards to plugging in the Tv to laying out the candy — we knew this was our time to shine.
My number one priority this year was to let the school know about our newspaper. It was disheartening to see that a lot of my peers last year didn't even know that Prosper High has a newspaper in the first place. I want the newspaper to be a place where students can find the latest happenings and learn about meaningful local stories. So far, our advertising operation has been a success — we've has students, staff, and CTE programs reach out to us to cover them, and our website views have skyrocketed.
Our marketing methods
School TV Monitors
School TV Monitors
Growing our connections around the school, especially with the librarians and this year, has helped have more visibility with the teachers. They have also allowed us to advertise our articles on the TV monitors they control around the school.
Expo & New Student Nights
Expo & New Student Nights
An amazing way to reach underclassmen and new students is through publicizing our publication in club expo nights and new student nights where these students and their families tour the CTE programs. We also make sure to stand out compared to the other clubs and programs by constantly handing out flyers and having a TV displaying our website. This year, we tried something new and had people sign up for a Starbucks gift card raffle, which garnered 50+ more people to our stand.
Hand delivering magazines
Hand delivering magazines
Every time we get our new magazines from print, we dedicate a class period to hand delivering magazines to teachers and featured students. We split up and tackle each side of the school, engaging in conversation about the writing process. with the teachers. We figured that by having our magazines in every corner of the school, students couldn't escape our work.
They tried to clip our wings...
This year, they did a lot of budget cuts to CTE programs, with our newspaper being one of the most affected. As a result, we had to figure out different, creative ways to raise money to pay for competition entries, our website, and the magazines. One idea I had was to promote features on other students and guest speakers at our school
I made this flyer to promote features and we were able to show this on the various TV monitors throughout the school. And...it worked! Two computer science students, Ron Minin and Yunjae Park, reached out to us to do a story on their AI chatbot, and an English teacher also reached out to us to cover a World War II veteran speaking at her class.
We have raised almost $400 alone this year with our marketing tactics!
This email shows Yunjae's appreciation for our feature. The official chatbot Instagram doubled in followers after our article!
Mr. Sax, the World War II veteran we covered, also showed his apprectaion through a comment and he donated $100 for us to use towards our magazines.
Minga points galore!
But, we wanted more audience engagement with our website, and so after discussing potential options, we decided to use the software the our school impleneted this year to manage school operations, Minga. At first, the team wasn't sure how we liked this software, and I must admit it did bring some hassle when it came to going to out interview or covering events, but we didn't let that get us down. Instead, we observed that Minga points were becoming a huge incentive for students as they could redeem them for snacks, removing a tardy, and Minga socks. So, our amazing graphic designers added a special announcement to our website, in which students could receive points by commenting on our articles. And to no surprise, this was a huge hit! Below are some screenshots proving this.
First, here is the eye-catching announcement that Emily Logan, our web designer, put up after we made the decision! Putting the announcements in the home page ensured that every viewer would see it.
Next, here are the comments we received after that announcement. Previously, the comment feature on our website was unused, but now we can at least one comment every five days!
Exactly a year ago: The numbers don't lie!
1/15/25 to 2/25/25
1/15/25 to 2/25/25
We had 13,719 total visitors across the span of these 30 days with about 500 visitors each day. The big spike that skewed the average was from my UT Austin editorial that received 6,007 over the span of five days.
1/15/26 to 2/15/26
1/15/26 to 2/15/26
Now, we have 28,488 total visitors over the span of these 30 days with there being a big spike more consistently every other two days. The team has noticed that our views have skyrocketed since the Minga announcement, especially on sports, which seem to be a big hit in Prosper High.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse