Understanding Social Media Strategy: The Queen’s Journal
The Queen’s Journal (The Journal) has a long standing history in the Queen’s community, and has served as a reputable source of campus news since 1873 (The Queen's Journal, 2019). Currently, The Journal sends out communications and focuses on social growth on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, in addition the primary website. However, due to The Journal being entirely student run, the team experiences large turnover in staff from year to year. As a result, each year, new students are in charge of growing readership via social media; ultimately creating a visible lack of congruency across the platforms, and the need for a stronger unified social media. This research report will discuss an overview of the current activity online, including strengths and weakness and provide recommendations which will improve the organizations ranking on search engines, increase engagement with the desired target audience and target meaningful activity online. Search Engine Optimization, more commonly known as SEO, is a method used by websites in order to increase web traffic. Most people that use search engines only click on links within the top three results. In order to boost a website’s ranking on a search result page, search engine optimization is needed. This includes the use of keywords so that the search engine can see the website, and backlinks so that the search engine can trust the website (Bluehost, 2012). Currently, The Journal is not utilizing these methods to their fullest extent. Although consistent, their profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram lack an informative biography that tells users what the organization does. Additionally, The Journal’s social media posts are limited in their hashtag and keyword use, shown by the repetitive #queensu and #ygk tags on each of their posts. Instead, the Journal should use descriptive and relevant tags that relate to their article. However, they should make sure to avoid overloading their tweets with hashtags. Two or three hashtags are sufficient.
Additionally, given that SEO seeks a pages credibility, The Journal should focus on establishing backlinks. Backlinks can be acquired by publishing content that other sites want to link to, therefore legitimizing the website, and adding value to the content. Engagement with other organizations or even readers can aid the process of generating backlinks.
To continue, engagement can increase the spread of word of mouth and widen the reach to potential readers. Competitors’ engagement levels are already far higher than the Journal’s. The Queen’s Gazette, another student-run paper, frequently retweets content posted by other university organizations. By interacting with users, they are encouraging user generated content which creates dialogue and brand personality. This exposes the followers that are interested in that particular content to what they are looking for, as well as widening the paper’s reach through word of mouth as one re-share is then shared with an entire new network. On Facebook and Twitter, The Journal can make use of the sharing and retweeting functions to do this. Neil Patel, entrepreneur and influencer, has some Facebook engagement tips in the video linked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qjhcUxhfg0
The Journal has thousands of followers across their social media accounts, yet the paper engages with none of them. Any comments posted on a Journal article are left without replies. It is recommended that the Journal interacts with its audience, and add personality to their posts with questions for their followers. Audience engagement encourages viewership and interaction. Concrete recommendations include: replying to comments, commenting and liking the posts of their users, and using captions which prompt engagement such as questions for the audience.
To discuss the overall activity by Queen’s Journal, it can be observed it is quite active on both Facebook and Twitter, with daily posts on both platforms. It would be suggested that the Queen's Journal may wish to consider “unpinning” a post on Twitter from July 2018 to avoid imagery which portrays inactivity. In comparison to its activity on Facebook and Twitter, The Journal is observed to be inactive on Instagram. The Journal seems somewhat aware of this issue as the website does not include a social link to Instagram. Inactivity is visible by the last post being from October 2018. Given that their account is public for users to search, the account should either be dissolved or actively present online. Given that the target audience of students aged 18-24 is incredibly active on Instagram, our team’s recommendation would be to increase activity here and follow the same engagement principles above. With the use of the Instagram stories feature organizations are enabled to share information about important events which in this case could be upcoming article releases. It is shown that Facebook is becoming increasingly unpopular among young people and video content is consumed most frequently (Sulleyman, 2018) Comparing Facebook and Instagram activity among youth, there is no evidence to dispute The Journal’s need for presence on Instagram.
In conclusion, The Journal should attempt to improve upon its use of SEO, its engagement with its target audience, and its overall activity on its various social media platforms. Tangible recommendations such as increasing use of hashtags, stimulating backlinks, replying to comments, and increase its activity on Instagram and Instagram stories aim to increase the organizations reach and impressions online resulting in an increase in readership as well. As a traditional organization, The Journal must adapt to and take advantage of modern technology to continue to see stronger consistency in viewership in the digital age!
References: Bluehost. (2012, Jan 31). What is SEO and how does it work? [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqg3F-8jBec Niel, P. (2017, Sep 25). 4 Facebook Marketing Tips to Boost Engagement on Your Page | How Often Should You Post? [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qjhcUxhfg0 Rana, A. (2018, Apr 7). Twitter and Backlinks: How to Tweet Your Way to Link Juice. Retrieved from https://blog.monitorbacklinks.com/seo/twitter-backlinks/ Sulleyman, A. (2018, February 12). Millions of young people are quitting Facebook. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-quit- young-people-social-media-snapchat-instagram-emarketer-a8206486.html The Queen's Journal. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.queensjournal.ca/