A New Appreciation for Social Media
September 7, 2012
By: Simone Jackson
Recently, I was asked to be the editor of the “Obsidian,” a multicultural publication for BGSU students. I was very excited because I knew I would gain great experiences.
The “Obsidian” has been operating on campus since the 1970’s. Historically,it was a publication that targeted African American students. Today, our target audience is anyone of minority status. The “Obsidian” has not been an active organization on campus for a few years. Because of this, My co-editor and I were uncertain of how we were going to get the word out about our publication.
I decided to start a Twitter page in hopes of making students aware that the “Obsidian” was back. I knew that a lot of BGSU students, especially multicultural students, use Twitter extensively. I figured that this would be the best way to gain support and to find students who were willing to get involved.
The page has been active for four days, and so far, we have received great responses. Students are mentioning our organization and are telling how they would like to get involved. As the editor, I was excited by the turn out, and it was all because Twitter. I was most surprised at how fast we were being mentioned. Our first mention was posted 3 minutes after the page was setup, which was great publicity. I never realized how powerful social media was until that moment. It is a useful and beneficial tool when used correctly.
My experiences with Twitter this week have given me a new appreciation for social media. If organizations, especially not for profit groups, learned how to use social media correctly, there is no limit to what it could do for their organization. It is nice to talk about social media’s role in PR and journalism in class, but to see how quickly it can help with promoting, made me realize how we could use social media to gain readership.
The responses the “Obsidian” received from Twitter over the last few days, helped me to redirect my plans as editor. As a campus publication, we face the challenge of making students want to connect with us and read our pieces. Twitter and other social media sites will be a great tools in helping to ease this process. Social media is convenient and students check their profiles through out the day, giving them many opportunities to see our posts and read our stories.
Check out out our Twitter page