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Rewriting the Department’s Social Media Platforms
by Alex Geffard When I first began as one of the newest members in the Writing Arts Internship, one of the first tasks I was assigned to was maintain the department's already existing social media websites/accounts/pages-the Writing Arts Facebook page, the Rowan Writing Arts website, the Writing Arts Internship Website, and the Rowan Writing Arts twitter page. I found this ironic as I had only begun using social media about a year before (growing up, my parents didn’t want me to become addicted to it; I am mainly using it now to stay in touch with friends from high school, and keep up with news from the University), I was still unfamiliar with all the features. Now, I was responsible with maintaining multiple social platforms at once:
As daunting as this all seemed, I was now a part of an internship, and had to contribute somehow. While I knew I would have other little tasks for the job here and there, I knew that maintaining these platforms would be my... PURPose. One thing that the Department stresses for all the platforms is that followers do not have to be in the Writing Arts major, or even be a part of Rowan University. I always keep this in mind as I work through each of the projects. I hope to be able to make vast improvements in each of these platforms, willing to try out new ideas to bring in more activity. Social media is always changing, so my fellow interns and I try to adapt to it as best we can (this trains us to be familiar with current technology and new online social and writing trends) . In the end, I hope that all the changes will inspire students coming to (or already at) Rowan to consider taking up a Writing Arts major, and just offer interested people a community focused on sharing writing. Don't Forget to Visit/Like/Follow/Subscribe/Share All of Our Different Platforms |
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www.facebook.com/writingarts/ The facebook page was already working quite well when I began. My fellow intern, Amanda Spadel, and I, working with our leaders Devon James and Professor Kopp, came up with a “quota”, in which we would post at least TWO major pieces of information each week, with a few smaller posts in between. Major posts included interviews with professors, new department announcements, and upcoming events to check out. Minor posts involved current events and anything about writing from the outside world that would interest our followers. While we haven’t always been able to meet this “quota”, it has motivated us to add whatever we can to the page. In my case, this included creating a series known as “Wise Words of the Week”. Once every seven days (most often on a Wednesday), I post a quote about writing from an influential writer. This quote is meant to stimulate readers’ minds, and hopefully give them something to say. In the same blog post, I like to add, “Comment your thoughts and ideas below”. This indicates to readers that we welcome discussion in the comment section. That’s the reason I came up with this series (I had a similar idea on my personal facebook page called “Inspirational Quote of the Week”). If I can get writers to talk about writing with each other, then I will have succeeded in my idea. In the past few weeks, I have noticed that Writing Arts students have been doing just that with the quotes. As with anything, it is still a work in progress, as I am trying to find ways to engage more readers to write on these posts. Earl Garcia (another intern), and I have also been working on a blog series that follows his thoughts while reading passages of Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey. We try to complete one blog per week, during with I post it on the Internship website. Then, around a day later, I share on facebook that the new blog post is available, hopefully bringing some attention to the website. |
Rowan Writing Arts Website www.rowanwritingarts.org/ For the Rowan Writing Arts website, we have been updating the information on classes and redesigning the visuals. I personally haven’t done much to this website, but Amanda has, including redesigning the Piktochart on the front page. This piece, along with a few others, is found in the Writer’s Insider, which we try to update so as to provide the readers with an idea of where we’re at. |
Writing Arts Internship Website writingartsinternship.weebly.com My main project, the one I have been incrementally working on each week, is re-imagining the Writing Arts Internship website. I want to make the website as easy to navigate as possible (so people like me are not stressed out when we want to find a specific piece of information quickly), while giving visitors a good idea of what our internship entails( this is especially important for those individuals who are interested in doing the internship). I have redesigned the layout of the page, and I am in the process of making sure that everything is coherent. |
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Twitter
twitter.com/rowanwrites Finally, I was tasked with posting on Twitter. While I do have a personal Twitter account, I never use it. I don’t like about posting every little update in my life. This carries over to the Internship. I don’t know what I would be posting or how often I should do so. Plus I prefer to to work on Facebook than Twitter. Now, I didn’t want the Twitter page to be inactive, so I was able to link the Facebook account to the Twitter page. This means that most of the posts on Facebook will automatically appear on Twitter. Of course, there are some limitations that I still have to work around, like the word count on Twitter, and the inability of pictures posted on Facebook appearing on the Twitter page. |
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www.instagram.com/rowanwriting/ Idea Submission Email Address: rwainstagramposts@gmail.com This might seem like a lot to maintain, and while it all is, I had the bright idea to add another platform- Instagram. This is still very much a work in progress, but my idea for Rowan Writing Arts instagram account is a place where we can involve our followers. The previously mentioned “Wise Words of the Week” are now being published here before being shared to the Facebook page. Just like the facebook posts, we encourage people to voice their thoughts and ideas about the quotes in the comment section. We are also planning to post images from some writing events that we have visited. We post about articles such as this one. For the followers, we created the above email, so that they may send in anything they want us to post. This includes sharing quotes, promoting poems and books, and showing images of different writing events that the person has visited. Currently, we don’t have much up, as we are in the process of collecting submissions, so that we can post a lot of content over a number of days. The number of followers has been slowly increasing, and we try to promote this new page on Facebook. |
YouTube www.youtube.com/channel/UC_zwiQ1OiirDj5INEAFK-mw The second project I have chosen to take up (because why not?) is renovating the YouTube page. Rowan Writing Arts has a YouTube page, where all of our videos (and all the drafts) are stored. When I look at it, I find it to be a big mess. It is so hard to find a specific video, when you have of 150 others all mixed in no particular order. I like order, so I will be sorting all these videos out into nicely organized playlists. I will also redesign our YouTube page’s layout and pick a new banner image. I want the final product to be easy to navigate, simple, and welcoming. |