Ryan Boyle

If you are not already familiar with it, the Associated Collegiate Press hosts two conferences every year around the country. Colleges and media organizations flock to a nice hotel, attend panels, get bombarded by sponsors, and tweet excessively  – unless you were that girl who said, “Who Tweets?” Yes, where did you go to school again?

Since I spoke on the, “Online Editors Discuss Management” panel most of my ideas and thoughts are going to be on that topic. If anyone was at the panel it got off to a rough start, one over eager panelist decided to speak for a straight 30 minutes, and everything went down hill from there. I didn’t envision a lecture, since when I was in the audience for the same panel last year I enjoyed it so much.

At one point The Suffolk Journal website was in transition between CollegePublisher and WordPress, and that’s were I feel like a lot of other college newspapers are currently. You have a system, but it’s not perfect – nor are you completely satisfied with it. From the students I talked to at #acpla their colleges website is a one man band operation or the code monkey left and the website is a rusting piece of machinery sitting on the front lawn, and nobody knows how to move it. While I am happy with our newspaper website, it needs constant adjustment and tweaking. The news industry is required to constantly adapt, and as a result you’re colleges website should need to do the same. You ask how?

• WordPress, CollegePublisher, Drupal, Joomla, or DIY? You need to explore them all, find one you like, play with it extensively and see if your staff can use it. Look at the industry trends, what are the major players using? I’m biased towards WordPress, I wouldn’t touch CollegePublisher with a ten-foot pole. WordPress is easy to install, easy to update, it has extensive plugins and themes, and it’s gaining traction at an exponential rate.

• Engage your audience, engage your audience, engage your audience. You didn’t repeat it out loud, so go back and do that please. If your using Facebook Pages and Twitter, you must engage your audience. If someone tweets to you, @reply them back if its relevant. If someone posts on your Facebook wall, make sure you comment if it’s relevant. When you engage you’re audience, you are showing that you care, you boost the credibility of you’re brand, and you make a connection with that person. You are reaching out and saying, I am human too.

• Credible versus Tabloid. This all depends on your organization and which side you lean to, but generally avoid “tabloidisms”. The three issues you want to avoid are, retweeting irrelevant things, breaking rumors, and fire poking. Who care’s that Charlie Sheen tweets “#winning” you don’t need to retweet that from your organizations account. It’s not relevant. Rumor has it your president is involved in a top secret clandestine spy mission to sabotage the school down the street. You expose his plan via Twitter, did you talk to him, the other school, or confirm anything yet. It’s probably not April Fools Day either. Yeah, you’re screwed, and you have no credibility. Last those two guys on the SGA keep having Twitter fits at each other. You retweet and encourage their epic battle. You just promoted anti-Darwinism, plus who cares. Mind your own business, you just gained four tabloid points #fail.

• Hit by a bus theory. This is probably the most important point, but the farthest from reality, or right around the corner. If you were to get hit by a bus in 15 minutes, would someone know how to manage the site, add content, upgrade, and inform your audience of your funeral date? If you answered no to any of the above you need a staff manual, or “pass down book” as we call them in the security industry. This is the bible of your organization. It will contain the commenting policy, the important contact information for the domain, hosting, university, and web editor. A “what if” section for all those hypothetical situations that someone might encounter after your tragedy. It also will highlight your policy on social media, how the site is organized, who manages the site, what platform and services you use on the site, and how will it’s successor be chosen? If you don’t have one, create one. At the very least: contact phone numbers, who owns the domain, and where it’s registered, who controls the hosting and what provider do you use, emergency contact numbers and emails for tech support staff, and where the backups are stored or what backup service you use.

If you ignore everything else, you need to take into account what your staff have to say, and what your community says. Just because someone is a freshman or a senior who’s a vegetable with senioritis, doesn’t mean they don’t have good input. Most of the time people don’t say their opinions because they feel they don’t control it, it doesn’t matter what they think. Ask your staff what they think, ask your community what’s missing from the website. Train your staff to use the website, even if they just have a login with limited permissions so they are at least familiar with the platform. Don’t be afraid of change. Make improvements to your theme, try out new features, track your progress, address areas that need work. Following these simple steps you are setting yourself up for success.