Marketing & Audience Engagement
Marketing is a vital part of the ODYSSEY program, driving both magazine sales and social media engagement. Generating traction ensures our content reaches its audience and sustains the program financially. This section highlights some of the strategies I’ve contributed to increase engagement, promote the magazine, and support the success of ODYSSEY.
Spheres of Influence
At the start of each school year, every ODYSSEY Media Group staffer creates a list of their personal sphere of influence—people they can reach out to when marketing magazine subscriptions. This includes former teachers, family members, community members and so much more. This is our first step in identifying potential buyers and building our audience. I’ve curated a list of over 100 people, helping lay the groundwork for strong subscription outreach.
Drafting scripts
As part of my marketing strategy, I draft scripts in advance for both in-person conversations and email outreach. This process allows me to clearly outline key points and ensure all necessary information is communicated. Preparing scripts also builds confidence and makes it easier to reach out to a larger number of people without relying on improvisation.
After creating my sphere of influence list, I personally reach out to each contact through a customized email, text, or call – tailoring the message to fit the person. In each conversation, I highlight key details like the subscription price, what it includes, our coverage of sports, news, and diverse viewpoints, but most importantly, how much the OMG means to me. By making the outreach personal and genuine, I aim to connect with people and encourage them to support our program through a subscription.
Reaching out to people
Both the sphere of influence list and personalized outreach are key parts of a larger assignment each OMG staffer completes called the Marketing Project. For this project, we are required to contact at least 10 potential subscribers and have them fill out a form to verify that we reached out. After the initial outreach, we track who purchased a subscription and follow up with those who said they would but haven’t yet. This project helps us build real-world communication skills while actively supporting our program’s growth.
Marketing project
Another way we market our program is through Candy Booths during lunch, where we trade a piece of candy for a social media follow. While this doesn’t directly promote our magazine, growing our social media presence is just as important. It helps expand our audience, increases visibility for our work, and builds long-term engagement with CCHS students to the OMG brand.
Candy booths
At the beginning of each year, our class participates in marketing and branding presentations led by our business manager and a guest speaker. Through these sessions, we take detailed notes to build a shared understanding of what marketing and branding are and why they matter in journalism. This foundation helps guide how we promote content, represent our publication and communicate with our audience throughout the year.
Notes
As Social Media Coordinator, audience engagement has been a top priority. Finding ways to encourage CCHS students to interact with our accounts has been essential for growing our presence and building trust with our audience. The examples below highlight some of the strategies I’ve used to increase engagement and foster meaningful connections with our students.
As Social Media Coordinator, one way I boosted audience engagement was through our weekly Trivia Tuesday posts. Each Tuesday, we share 8–12 trivia questions related to current events, holidays, or happenings that week or month. Students – and even adults – love participating, and we consistently see high engagement because it’s a fun, interactive way for people to connect with OMG content.
Trivia's
Reposting is a huge part of audience engagement for the program. Here is a screenshot of one of the many times I have reposted a scene/IG post the OMG has posted! This helps get more traction to the OMG Instagram and program. Not only do I repost but so does the OMG Instagram as showed in the second photo. This helps get more people clicking and overall more audience engagement.
Reposting
To get more people to stay and scroll through the OMG Instagram posts, we add music! Everyone loves music and it had statistically shown to improve the likes a post gets so we assure to add a clean, fun, popular and related song to almost every post made whichhelps increase our audience engagement!
Adding Music
Another effective way I increase engagement as Social Media Coordinator is through interactive question posts. For example, during Teacher Appreciation Week, I posted a photo asking people to comment their favorite CCHS teacher. The response was incredible – we received over 85 comments from alumni, current students and even other teachers, making it our most commented post of the year. Posts like these foster community connection and keep our audience actively involved with our program.