Toyon Promotion and Social Media
This week was all about Toyon promotion. Our submission deadline is this Friday, September 30th, and we are doing all we can to bring in more submissions. I helped our Print and Radio Media Liaison, Jacquelyn Lowe, chalk the University Quad and outside the library. The Humboldt State community is largely an outdoor community. Chalking seems to be more effective than posting fliers (which we also do) as so many students are constantly outside. I also did a bit of word-of-mouth promotion this week in my classes. We are currently lacking in literary analysis submissions. One of my classes has a literary analysis paper due the day before the Toyon submission deadline, so I encouraged my classmates to submit their papers. Some of my classmates who are new to the university had not heard of Toyon. I was able to spend a moment chatting with them both about submitting to the magazine and possibly working as an editor in the future. I also run HSU’s Orientation and Preview Programs’ Instagram page. I posted information there, both to showcase a valuable opportunity for prospective students and pull in submissions.
In the future, I would like to see the Toyon have a stronger social media presence. We are currently missing out on huge promotional opportunities with this lack of discoverability. I am going to chat with our Social Media Manager as well as our Managing Editor and Advisor about making our social media pages more discoverable. We can start by linking them to other Humboldt State affiliated pages, many of which I have direct connections to. I would like to see our social media head in the direction that many modern writers, such as Rupi Kaur and Lang Leav, have gone. Social media is a great way to solicit submissions as well as showcase the work we print. If we build a strong enough social media presence, we will be able to spread interest across the globe and bring in even more multilingual submissions. Throughout the next year, I would like to work closely with our Social Media Manager and our Layout & Visual Art Editors to build this presence.
Sydney Hubbel 