Hello! My name is
JAMI LIM
El Estoque
Monta Vista High School, Cupertino, CA
NSPA Marketer of the Year
I am currently a senior at Monta Vista High School and served as an Arts & Entertainment editor on our newsmagazine, El Estoque, in the 2023-2024 school year. I began serving as a co-Editor-in-Chief in the latter half of second semester and will continue to for the 2024-2025 school year.
Within our high school’s community, a heavy emphasis on STEM academics often leaves humanities programs neglected or overlooked, making outreach and marketing a vital part of running our publication. During my time as an A&E section lead, I felt I was at the forefront of influence over audience engagement as my section attracted viewership with our coverage of popular and relevant topics within pop culture, leading me to take on marketing endeavors to grow our engagement. As an Editor-in-Chief, I now have more executive insight and control on our marketing agenda and have working towards increasing traffic through business advertising, social media, and more. Below are my marketing strategies and contributions this past year.
USING A&E
During my time as an Arts & Entertainment section lead, I observed that our entertainment reviews consistently garnered high engagement, which I hypothesized was due to timeliness, brevity, and relevancy, among other qualities. Thus, I was committed to improving the quality and consistency of our review catalog to maximize the traffic we received through it — I monitored our weekly review submissions on a shared spreadsheet to streamline the process, made thorough edits and suggestions while editing to achieve professionalism, and enforced a strict one-week publishing deadline to produce timely reviews.
★ 50% of our top 10 current trending stories are A&E according to site analytics.
★ I directed staff to create story promotions on our social media for particularly relevant reviews to gain more exposure.
★ Our edits spreadsheet allows me to track the phase of edits reviews are currently in as well as the publishing frequency to spread out publishing if needed.
When our adviser began receiving local concert reviewing opportunities from an organization called Moxie which would connect us with free tickets for local shows, I was put in charge of supervising and delegating these opportunities. Given that reviews often garner engagement, especially with these new opportunities diversifying our media coverage, I strived to increase standards by preparing staff to maximize concert experience, mentoring staff through the writing process, and requesting story promo on our socials. I also saw these reviews as an opportunity to expand our reach to beyond our student body and potential locals, so I trained review writers to implement search engine optimization by implementing keywords in headlines and including relevant tags. Our opportunities even expanded to film & media agencies contacting us with resources and opportunities to review new films. Our review catalog benefited significantly from utilizing the opportunities under my leadership, with a total of 36 reviews written this year compared to last year's total of 25.
★ Our most-viewed concert review exceeded 1000 views, indicating a reach beyond our local and student community.
★ I corresponded with an entertainment media marketing agency to secure an opportunity for a staff member to participate in an online press interview with the filmmakers and cast of "Girls State," allowing us to report that narrative and present a unique behind-the-scenes perspective, on top of the traditional review.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Our social media connects us to a large audience at a consistent rate with our daily content. Thus, I focused on growing social media viewership to eventually bring more attention to our other forms of content by adapting to changes within the digital community. This year, we began creating video reporting on TikTok in order to reach the audience that has amassed on that platform over the past few years. Prior to this, we were video reporting on Snapchat but we made the decision to terminate Snapchat coverage as the app seems to be declining in popularity. As TikTok has also popularized short-form video content, we placed an emphasis on making digestible video content across TikTok and Instagram Reels that viewers would be inclined to watch and share.
As I watched the engagement and viewership grow more rapidly than our previous socials, I encouraged staff members to be attentive to quality such as through lending microphones to designated reporters or directing them to use certain iPhone camera features to maintain professional videography. All TikTok content is submitted to a co-Editor-in-Chief for review before being published. Here, I make thorough edits on TikToks to increase quality, including adjusting sound and editing subtitles
★ TikTok users generally use the comment section more than users on other platforms. I began liking the comments from the El Estoque account to interact with viewers and attract more engagement, which I saw several TikTok accounts of professional brands do. With the transparency interaction on the app, I was able to gauge the level of engagement on certain types of posts and direct staff toward more high-interest stories such as local cultural events.
While we strive to grow our TikTok platform, Instagram continues to contain our largest following. As an EIC, I encourage staff to create story promotions for particularly relevant stories, which I review for edits and publish on our Instagram story.
During application season in our publication, utilizing our Instagram following, I proposed a comedic parody of a “Mean Girls” scene as our publication promo video which garnered over 6000 views.
PHOTOGRAPHY & VISUALS
Seeking to improve our website engagement, I observed that an emphasis on featuring outstanding photos increased website appeal and the clickability of our stories. El Estoque’s graphics team supplies our stories with visuals, however, I noticed a reliance on graphics for visuals and a lack of a very crucial aspect of journalism: photography. Using knowledge acquired from journalism conventions and studying professional photojournalism on my own, I compiled a comprehensive presentation on photography techniques and ideas staff can be utilizing, and the impact of photography on our engagement.
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★ My photo presentation, which I also plan to present at JEANC NorCal Media Day to educate on marketing.
A visible shift within our prominent form of visuals from graphics to photography can be seen as more staff refer to my presentation as a resource for taking photos.
★ Our homepage prior to my presentation.
★ Our homepage after giving my presentation.
ADVERTISING
One of the focuses within my role as EIC is managing the ads, sales, and sponsorships that we receive. Since each staff member is required to acquire $150 in sales per year, I keep track of all transactions on a spreadsheet which also allows me to hold staff members accountable if they have not met their quota. After an advertisement is solidified, I am in charge of carrying out ad placement on our website, as well as designing ads pages for our newsmagazine.
In the past, it has been common for staff members to procrastinate fulfilling their sales quota since it is not an urgent deadline and it is a daunting endeavor. In order to combat the intimidation of the sales process and decrease procrastination, I decided to compile a guide as an accessible resource for staff to turn to. This included our sales contracts, sample letters, our publication’s credibilities to highlight, and a business tracker. Using my guide, staff members contact businesses in higher frequencies, increasing our likeliness to land a sale.
★ I manage the extensive sales spreadsheet.
★ Broke down the sales process into bite-size assignments to diminish any intimidation staff my face.
OUTREACH
Forming a network with other scholastic publications not only allows our work to gain more exposure outside of our local community, but also allows us to learn from other publications which increased both viewership and quality. I utilized events such as NorCal Media Day or CSPA Spring Convention to network with other journalists and introduce El Estoque.
Fore example, last semester, a student journalist from Huron High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan reached out to me about an A&E multimedia package I designed, asking if I could share my knowledge of using web design for journalism content. I was struck by how far my work had reached and was eager to grow a relationship with a publication way beyond our current reach. After multiple Zoom sessions where I offered ideas and skills she could integrate into her publication and maintaining correspondence with her to offer myself as a resource, I was able to see the Huron Emory grow its multimedia catalog and its journalists continued to turn to our work for inspiration.
★ I even saw one of our magazines hung up on the wall of a journalism classroom at NorCal Media day!
★ I attended the CSPA Spring Convention's designated sessions for meeting and networking with other student journalists.
★ The message I received through my package's WixSite. I was eager to use this opportunity to strengthen our network beyond the NorCal region.