Web Editor Morgan Pewitt shares her work and goals
at the Chicago Crusader Newspaper
In late 2020, I was hired by the Chicago Crusader Newspaper as a freelance web editor to revamp their current digital presence by developing and implementing a social media strategy. The overall objective was to improve their digital presence by further publicizing the Chicago Crusader’s stories on its current website, as well as in new digital mediums.
Before I was hired, the Crusader had multiple accounts on social media that were neglected and inactive. They were not up to par for what the publisher, Dorothy R. Leavell, and the Crusader team had in mind. I came on board to manage the accounts and assist in growing Crusader’s presence on the relevant social media platforms––Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
As most businesses have changed how they work due to the pandemic, so has the Crusader. We communicate by email, text, slack and zoom to achieve our goals. Working remotely, I coordinated with our existing marketing team and a few other new additions to prioritize what content we would use on our social media accounts daily.
We focused on the timely posting of articles published weekly in the newspaper, as well as the content for the digital newsletter, the Pulse. This helps to improve traffic to both the website and social media. Although a new website was launched this summer after our 81st anniversary, we are still in the process of improving the website’s functionality and recovering data lost in the transition to provide our visitors with archived stories.
Despite this challenge, we have seen an increase in viewing from our social media posts as a direct result of the Crusader’s coverage of stories relevant to our audience and the improved frequency with which we post articles and targeted ads.
We will continue to move forward with this strategy as it has proven to be successful.
Thanks to the generosity of funding provided by The Field Foundation of Illinois, Inc. in producing this article.
