Social Media Interview

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with Julia Donofrio, the Executive Social Media Producer of the Marquette Wire. She shared how social media is a fundamental medium she utilizes to help her spread the news and promote Marquette Wire content- both print and multimedia to the Marquette community.

Read more about what Julia believes her experiences as an Exec SM Producer in a recap of our conversation below.

What’s your current social media position?

Julia: I’m the executive social media producer for The Marquette Wire and I run all the social media accounts — from Twitter, to Instagram, to Facebook… posting and publishing stories and promoting (Marquette Wire) events, tv shows, and radio shows and things like that. Breaking news coverage and creating a weekly newsletter to distribute to through email blasts to our audiences. I’m just the link between stories being linked and published in the Marquette Tribune (newspaper) and being able to have that content be seen by the public — be shared… and being able to allow the content to start conversations on social.

As a student-run news media organization, I understand that your social team is limited in number. How is the dynamic between you and those on your team and your ability to get your job done?

Julia: It’s just me and we just have one assistant — the first year having an assistant position. We want to make sure we’re very active, everywhere, all the time. Even with two people, it’s a lot of organization. Most of the job isn’t just hitting ‘send tweet’ much of it is planning. You know — looking ahead at you week with social calendars like Hootsuite…always keeping up with the current projects and events we’ll need to promote next.

Especially Tuesdays — since it our biggest news day — the beginning of a new news cycle, our to do list is spread out by: Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon and Tuesday night. There’s a lot of editing. You have to be witty and quick and smart with writing concisely, with AP style…proper grammar. We try to get at least two or three sets of eye to look over drafts of post beforehand — but in a pinch you have to be able to write something quick, edit, and post it.

What’s your favorite social platform and why?

Julia: I personally like Twitter the best because it’s where I get my news. I feel like I’m on there the most — it’s sharable, ‘retweeting’ and ‘liking’ is a very easy way to spread content on a post fast. You can’t really do it as easily on Instagram. But, I have realized that Facebook is where a decent chunk of our traction. It is… a lot of our following there is parents, grandparents, faculty and more conversation starting. With Facebook too, we can vary the posts a bit more of the story and can add a story quote in the post’s description.

What types of content does your job rely on?

Julia: Normally, we’ll do the lede (including this at the beginning of the post), put in statistics or other data because it grabs your attention. But, we don’t write all the stories so we don’t have the time to read word-for-word — just being sure we’re framing (the post) in the right context. We don’t wanna put too much our our own writing in it because we don’t want to skew the story in any way.

Who is your audience?

Julia: Students — because I feel like I know so much more about the university from being a part of the Wire’s E-board meetings for the weekly editorials. I feel like it’s hard to be aware, if you’re not informed. As students, Marquette is a place where we spend much our our time and our coverage should be intended to reach them in particular. It’s important that we all understand what’s going on — including university faculty, staff and parents.

What monitoring tools do you use?

Julia: Hootsuite is our main tool for scheduling. On the flip side, analytics — our website: marquettewire.org uses google analytics. We check those every week to see how many people we’re reaching online. And every social platform has their own backend analytics tracking we frequently monitor.

How would you measure social media success for your organization?

Julia: Checking out analytics to find out how many people we’re reaching on ‘peak news days’, measuring the trends and growth in: reach, impressions, time spent on a story, and bounce-rate.

Have you experienced a need for crisis management?

Julia: No. But, in times where there’s been an inaccuracy reported or other grammar errors, we have a procedure we follow to inform the audience that there was an error and that it’s since been corrected.

What future career do you wish to hold in social?

Julia: Social is becoming the face of public relations and it’s changing so much, I’m really glad I can get this foundation now — and just watch it evolve. And so next year, I would like to do social for next year’s Democratic National Convention. But, it’d be interested in anything in media, with writing or social.

What advice do you have for students interested in this field?

Julia: Student media is a great way to get started with this — but any club you’re interested in…like any organization can use social media.