If your col­lege news­pa­per isn’t on the web yet, now’s the time to be. In a time where there are spec­u­la­tions of a revi­tal­iza­tion of the news­pa­per indus­try in a dig­i­tal form, why not get started early? Here are three quick ways to get started on the web, with­out hav­ing to invest a sin­gle dollar:

Face­book

The most pop­u­lar social net­work­ing site, espe­cially amongst col­lege stu­dents, is by far Face­book. You’ll find that a lot of your read­ers have Face­book accounts, so cre­at­ing a Face­book Fan Page can yield you a lot of fol­low­ers. You can use the fan page to share related links, pho­tos, and to make quick posts about sto­ries you’ve writ­ten in your paper. To cre­ate a fan page, check out Face­book.

Twit­ter

Twit­ter has been gain­ing pop­u­lar­ity in the past few years. Twit­ter is a great resource when you want to send out a mes­sage let­ting peo­ple know of a new edi­tion, late break­ing news (for exam­ple, sport scores from a game), or gen­eral infor­ma­tion that you want to get to your fol­low­ers. Twit­ter can gen­er­ally be linked with other social media net­works, such as Face­book or tum­blr, so you can update in one place and have it prop­a­gate down the stream.

Tum­blr

If you are look­ing for some­thing more than 140 char­ac­ters, or if you don’t want to have your mom friend your news­pa­per, you may want to go with a “big­ger” alter­na­tive. Using a site such as tumblr.com will allow you to post a larger array of con­tent, such as embed­ding images and videos within your posts, with­out hav­ing to pay. Even bet­ter, you’re allowed to mod­ify the theme to your own lik­ing; so if you have a poten­tial web devel­oper on hand, you can make your tum­blr look even more pro­fes­sional (and branded).

Tum­blr also has great social media link­ing option. If you have a Face­book account or a Twit­ter page, you’re able to have updates from Tum­blr auto­mat­i­cally post, so any of your fol­low­ers across those plat­forms will also be notified.

Overview

If you’re look­ing to reach the masses quickly, eas­ily, and on the cheap, Face­book is the way to go. If you want more con­tent, a more per­son­al­ized expe­ri­ence for your paper, then I would sug­gest check­ing out tum­blr. If you do all three, you can use social media to its best and reach the largest group of inter­net users.

How is your paper’s web pres­ence? What have you done recently to improve it?

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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