Sonya Pandya: NSPA Marketer of the Year

This past school year, The Messenger made marketing a primary goal to increase user engagement and the overall relationship with our audience. As Co-Editor-in-Chief, I managed and oversaw many of these actions, such as posting articles on both the website and social media, beginning new social media campaigns, and teaching new staffers to publicize our publication. I worked with the entire staff to primarily venture into new marketing plans.

The Messenger attends the majority of school events to take pictures and post them on social media. Occasionally, we’ll update the website with a gallery of these photos if there is an abundant amount. These pages refresh each year.

Links to our Football photos (click on the image to view the page)

With the ultimate goal of covering student life at Northview High School, we prioritize increasing students’ interactions on our social media page and website. The purpose of this is to improve the recognition of The Messenger as a reliable news source. Notably, we reached nearly double the amount of accounts than previous years in the majority of posts.

This year, we placed a focus on Public Relations (PR). A new marketing plan that our PR team developed this year was interactive and engaging content. We created several new additions, such as a monthly staff Spotify playlist, interactive Instagram stories during our trip to Columbia University, and bimonthly videos that showcase important events in or out of our classroom. These posts served a dual purpose: to increase staff bonding and market the publication.

We also made a recruitment video and an end-of-year tribute to the graduating class of seniors. Insights are listed below.

For the recruitment video:

  • 4,820 views

  • About 8 hours of watch time

  • 120 interactions

  • 1,446 accounts reached

For the end-of-year tribute:

  • 14,311 views

  • Over 2 days of watch time

  • 776 interactions

  • 6,687 accounts reached

The jump in overall insights shows that our audience grew throughout the school year, most likely due to frequent posts and engaging content that differed from previous years.

During the 2024-2025 school year, we published multiple important issues on our website and our digital issues. This involved an article on our website detailing live Presidential election updates. This was both a breaking news/live news article that several editors and I worked on to publish as soon as updates came out. Traffic to our websites increased significantly from the previous week to the week this article was posted on the website and our social media pages. This shows that timely articles and social media promotion work to increase views, traffic, and interaction.

Analytics from Squarespace for the week of Oct. 27 - Nov. 2.

Final Thoughts

Analytics from Squarespace for the week of Nov. 3-9, the same week that

“The Messenger’s Live 2024 Election Updates” was published.

The Messenger uses money and funding to print out our senior issue, scholastic memberships, the trip to Columbia University to allow our underclassmen staffers to learn new skills, and more. Due to the fact that The Messenger receives no funding from the school, staffers must reach out to local businesses to receive sponsors. The ad prices range from $10 to $75, and sales are varied each month.

Additionally, we sell uniquely staff-designed sweatshirts to the public. We advertise these sweatshirts online as well. We received $1,740 from 58 sweatshirt sales.

This year, the Messenger decided to hold a fundraiser as well. We were able to do this through Snap!, a mobile app that helps raise fundraisers for schools. Every staff member filled out the following form, listing 20 emails to send our campaign to.

Over the course of a few weeks, The Messenger raised a total of $3,005.

The flyer we used to file out the 20 emails.

In efforts to further increase our recognition, the Messenger attended International Night. International Night is one of the biggest events held at Northview High School and is looked forward to by students, teachers, and families. Our photographers and I took pictures, edited, and watermarked them. I uploaded the photos to our website, posted an announcement on our social media page, and sold the pictures to the performers’ family and friends.

We were able to earn $64, an increase from the previous year, but most importantly, our website reached a high of 484 visits. Additionally, our Instagram post received 514 likes, 101 shares, and reached 4,724 accounts, which is about 9 times the amount of accounts reached the previous year.

We received our highest visitors the day we posted our International Night pictures on our website and social media pages, Jan. 31. Analytics from Squarespace.

This past year, as I oversaw many new marketing plans and tactics being implemented, I saw our publication grow immensely in regards to connecting with our audience and bringing back our engagement and reach. Not only did we as editors work together, we also gave new staffers the opportunity to work with us and offer their opinions to promote The Messenger. It became very evident to me that social media marketing is incredibly important for promoting a publication; our audience is our foundation, and it’s very important to maintain that. As Co-Editor-in-Chief, while managing other aspects of the publication, I was able to place marketing as a primary focus so we could all improve. Regardless of many ups and downs this year, we persevered, and I definitely grew my skills and knowledge on the importance of calculated promotions, marketing campaigns, and timely posts.