Month: November 2024

By Coral Scoles-Coburn 

Isabella Serrano has been freelancing as a content creator and photographer in Missoula, Montana, while also working as a marketing coordinator for Studio Sweat. After falling in love with Missoula and transferring to the University of Montana in 2020, she graduated in 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. Growing up between San Diego and Portland, Oregon, Serrano’s early life was centered around sports, which she played in college at the University of Nevada, Reno, before transferring to Missoula. Social media plays a huge role in her professional life and in her personal life. Serrano has always been drawn to various forms of art, including photography, drawing, calligraphy, and design, and social media gave her an outlet to be creative when she felt like she couldn’t in the sports world.

University of Montana journalism student and photographer Coral Scoles-Coburn interviewed Serrano with emailed questions and below is a transcript of Serrano’s answers, edited slightly for brevity and clarity. 

Q: Can you tell me about your overall take on social media? How has your perspective changed over the years? 

A: As a young teenager, my family was very restrictive with my social media access, and I never grasped the benefits and or damage it could do. When I went away to college, I had full access and quickly learned how beautiful, scary, funny, harsh, educational, and so much more social media can be. I have firsthand experienced the highest highs and lowest lows that come with using social media and I believe that if used correctly it could really be a beneficial tool to have in your back pocket. Over the years, I have primarily focused on all the positives that come from social platforms as it is my main work source and want to continue to love what I do. 

Q: What does social media mean to you as a photographer? Why do you think showcasing your work on platforms like Instagram is important? 

A: Social media is crucial to me as a photographer and freelance content creator. I do the majority of my marketing and showcasing through social media and without it my clientele would be minimal. In this generation, informal conversations and planning such as direct messaging has become the main form of communication for most. Even clientele in the older demographic have dm’d me through Instagram to set up meetings, ask for pricing, and plan photoshoots. Platforms such as Instagram grew exponentially and became a hub for a lot of creative personnel to showcase their art. It is important to use Instagram as a showcasing tool because it reaches audiences I wouldn’t be able to through other marketing outside of social media. It also allows me to follow my aesthetic and format I personally think draws an audience to my page. 

Q: How has your presence on social media helped you grow? How has it shaped professional opportunities for you?

A: My social media presence has exponentially grown for the fact I have more clientele as well as my passion and personal enjoyment for social media and content creation. The more I post, run ads, and collaborate with other individuals, the more Instagram and the algorithm will favor my page and push out my content to an audience interested in my work. I have not only seen the quality of my work get better due to a higher demand but I have drawn in higher clients who truly believe in me and my skills. 

Q: How does your personal identity shape the content you share on social media? What parts of your life do you think are important to show your audience, and why? 

A: As mentioned before, I grew up playing sports at the highest level and it instilled a driven work ethic as well as the constant need to perfect things in my life. When I set my mind on something I really strive to be the absolute best I can be and I really think it shows in the quality of work I produce. When it comes to my own personal social media, I tend to show the upbeat and aesthetic parts of my life. I really enjoy interior design and fashion as well so I play around with the fun carefree side of social media on my own page. 

Q: What factors influence your decision on what content makes it to your Instagram feed? Do you have specific criteria or strategies you use to curate your page? 

A: I can not stress this enough as someone who mainly runs her social media off her phone and creates a majority of user-generated content, DO NOT POST A VIDEO OR PICTURE OF LOW QUALITY!!!!!!! I have worked with so many businesses and individuals that want to post a video or picture but either the lighting is bad, the camera is smudged, the video is shaky, the subject is uncentered, countless little but major things that make a difference in a quality post. I mainly focus on getting clean, clear high-quality content first and then focus on what reels and carousels will be posted. It may seem like minuscule criteria but it truly makes a world of difference in how your audience views it. 

Q: Do you use Instagram’s analytics or other tools to keep track of your performance? If so, what metrics do you focus on, and how do they guide your content planning? 

A: I use Instagram analytics and insights as all pages I run are business pages. It is a free tool on Instagram that can really be beneficial when utilized. The pages I run have followings in the thousands so I stayed focused on the main metrics such as engagement rate, following count, impressions, and active times. These metrics aid my content planning by directing me toward which content interests our audience the most. Not all trends can be beneficial to your business but it never hurts to try something new and be bold because you never know exactly what content will resonate with your audience the most. 

Q: How do you handle changes in Instagram’s trends? Have you had to change your strategy to keep your audience engaged due to changing trends?

A: I thankfully haven’t had to change my style of creating but I have had to be more prepared to keep up with new trends. I now use Mondays as an informative and planning day. I look at my personal and business analytics and review what performed well and what didn’t. This helps with my planning for socials for the week so I can see what trends Instagram favors and which we can move on from. I use at least an hour or two to see which profiles, sounds, reels, and hashtags are trending and how I can implement them into my work. Trends are always going to be changing and it may seem difficult to stay on top of it but if you come prepared, it makes your future work easier and helps keep your audience engaged. 

Q: What advice would you give to others trying to build a fun, authentic, yet professional connection with their followers on social media? 

A: My biggest advice I would give to others building their social media presence is to FIND YOUR OWN STYLE!!!!!! There are so many creators, photographers, videographers, etc. that have worked to find a style that suits them, and copying someone else’s aesthetic will only delay your progress. Get out there, photograph people and everyday life for fun, reach out to mentors, use your resources, and truly just have fun creating. Art is beautiful in so many different forms and when you can create your own authentic work there is no better feeling.

This Q&A is part of a series created by students in Courtney Cowgill’s Social Media and Audience Engagement course at the University of Montana School of Journalism. Students sought out creatives who are doing social media for good to offer tips and insights into the ever-evolving landscape of social media.

By Hannah Tyler

Skylar Rispens is a freelance journalist in Missoula, Montana and now she works with the University of Montana. Before she took a job at UM, Rispens worked at several news organizations as a reporter and writer. Her social media page consists of her photojournalism and stories that she writes.

University of Montana student Hannah Tyler recently interviewed Rispens about best practices on social media and what follows is a transcript of their conversation, edited lightly for brevity and clarity.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Skylar Rispens (@skylar_rispens)

Q: What kind of journalism do you do when you write?

A: I am absolutely hooked on any sort of journalism about education. I graduated from the University of Montana School of Journalism in 2019 and immediately dove into the local news scene in Montana. I spent the summer of 2019 as a local reporter and photographer for the Seeley Swan Pathfinder (I even helped distribute papers to newsstands around the valley, and mailed them to subscribers who did not live locally). Once that wrapped up, I moved to work as a breaking news reporter at the Great Falls Tribune. It was there that I started picking up education stories from time to time, but once the pandemic hit and we had to move to fully remote work I cut my teeth on pretty much every beat you can think of to support my colleagues and community (I even doubled as a photographer on occasion). After about two years in Great Falls I moved back to Missoula to work as an education reporter for the Missoulian newspaper. For about two years, I covered everything related to education, my editor called it the “diapers to diplomas” beat, but I also wrote on issues around statewide education policy. I was unfortunately laid off from my position at the Missoulian in the spring of 2023. Last fall, I started a job as a reporter with StateScoop and EdScoop, which are publications for a Washington D.C.-based online tech news company, but left that role in June 2024. It’s worth mentioning though that while I was starting that job with Scoop News Group I was simultaneously completely a reporting fellowship through the Education Writers Association for my pitch on what works–and what doesn’t–when it comes to four-day school weeks in Montana (a story idea that had been rattling around in my head since I worked in Great Falls).

Q: What made you want to work for the University of Montana?

A: There were many factors that influenced my decision to work for the University of Montana, but I ultimately decided I needed to leave the full-time journalism industry because I craved a more stable work environment and I wanted a job that would allow me to continue living in the community I love. It wasn’t easy to make the jump to the “dark side,” but I was very familiar with the high-quality writing produced by the UM News Service and figured it would be a great opportunity for me to continue using my journalism skills while learning about an entirely new industry. Plus, I truly believe in the purpose and mission of higher education, so if I can write articles that ignite a passion for a student to further their education at our institution I think that’s a win.

Q: What would you say your target audience is for your writing?

A: My audience at UM ranges. The news articles produced by my team are published through a variety of channels including the UM website and social media, but we also distribute our articles to external media (depending on the article, they could be sent out to local, statewide or regional media lists) in hopes that it will be picked up by those journalists and editors. I also have tried my hand at some creative copywriting for unique social media channels for UM, so it’s been fun as a writer to tap into different voices and tones, which you can’t always do in traditional journalism. For any freelance journalism work I am doing, my audience also ranges. Generally, I would say that I am trying to write for either a local audience (Missoula or western Montana), but have written stories with a statewide audience in mind as well. But I just recently freelanced with a publication out of San Diego, California as a contributing reporter, so I didn’t actually write any copy for the article but I helped gather some information for the reporter.

Q: How has social media has helped (or hurt) your freelance journalism and your news writing for the university?

A: I’ve always been chronically online haha. During journalism school and then my full-time journalism career I cultivated a following of about 2,800 people consisting of folks from all corners of Montana and other education journalists who wanted to be connected to my work and news-sense. That following came in handy when I got laid off from my job with the Missoulian because it connected me to the editors with the Montana Free Press and I’ve written several stories for them in the last 18 months. It’s also what helped me land that freelance assignment with the publication in San Diego strangely enough. I wouldn’t say that social media ever really hurt my journalism career (whether as a full-time employee or freelancer) because I keep most of my channels pretty locked down. I made the decision to have any public-facing accounts focused on my career after some not-so-fun run-ins with crazy people on the internet who just want to harass young women working in journalism. My most active, public-facing professional account is definitely my Twitter. Now that I no longer work in full-time journalism that account is a bit more quiet, but I’ve taken a few more stabs at showcasing my personality there than I previously have.

This Q&A is part of a series created by students in Courtney Cowgill’s Social Media and Audience Engagement course at the University of Montana School of Journalism. Students sought out creatives who are doing social media for good to offer tips and insights into the ever-evolving landscape of social media.

By Kohl Wolfe

Jackson Wagner is the Assistant Director of Communications for Griz Volleyball, Men’s Basketball, Cross Country, and Track & Field, a position he’s held since 2022. He is responsible for creating content for all of the social pages related to these sports, as well as creating content for UM’s Sports Information Department. A graduate of UM’s Journalism department, Wagner previously worked as a sports reporter for the Montana Kaimin before graduating.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jackson Wagner (@jackson.wagner)

University of Montana Kohl Wolfe interviewed Wagner about social media and best practices working in sports media and what follows is a transcript of their conversation.

Q: How, if at all, do you believe sports social media differs from the regular types of social media we see on an everyday basis? Do you believe that it functions inherently differently, or is it the same?

A: I believe that sports social media does differ from the regular types of social media. There are a lot of takeaways that you can use from the day-to-day content that is created, but to me sports socials exist in a bubble on their own. There are a lot of things that have become common in sports social media. If you check the page of any professional or collegiate sports team, you will see an increase in graphic design, cinematic videos, and highly stylized “media day” type photos. I do think it functions differently from general social media, especially in my role communicating on behalf of a program. There is a certain rhythm that comes with posting as a sports account, and my general workflow is similar on a week-to-week basis. There are different styles and voices that you can use when running an account, but I like to think that sports stays away from a lot of the shock-factor, click-bait style posts that are becoming more common in general.

Q: In what ways do you believe social platforms can be used to strengthen the reporting you do?

A: I think that social platforms can often allow you to connect more with the subjects that you are working with on a daily basis. By running our accounts, I’m able to speak with student-athletes about what they like to see from our pages and can sometimes cater content around how it will appear on social media. I also use my social posts in a lot of my stories, either embedding posts directly into our website to display as you read or just to pull information that I gained through social media and expand upon it in a story.

Q: In what ways, if at all, do you think it hurts your reporting?

A: I do think that sometimes the focus on socials and the day-to-day grind of making sure that content is coming out can take time away from reporting on longer, more in-depth stories. One of my passions is feature writing, and I started this job hoping to write a long profile on all the freshmen and newcomers on my teams. The focus on social media, and creating content specifically for those channels, has taken away the time I need to do that. For example, instead of feature stories with our men’s basketball team we created interview-style videos with fellow players on the team that go out only on our social channels.

Q: In the time from when you started your job until now, how have you seen the landscape of sports social media change? You’ve said before that it’s becoming an increasingly important part of the job. Why do you think that is?

A: I touched on this before, but I think there is a constant battle for being on the forefront of college world in terms of videos, photos, and graphics. It’s becoming increasingly important to be able to promote your athletes on these channels and collaborate with them to build a brand for themselves. When I started, I viewed social media primarily as a place to get the work that I was doing in terms of stories out for the public to see, but I didn’t do much beyond that. We use the word “content creators” a lot and it can be pretty vague, but that to me has become the goal of the job. We are trying to create content that gets our student-athletes in front of more eyes and makes them look as good as possible. I spend more time creating graphics and editing photos now than I ever did when I first got into this role, and it just naturally takes time away from writing and reporting.

Q: In a world where people in athletics are heavily trained in how to deal with the media, do you ever find it difficult to break the barriers between reporter and athlete/coach?

A: We do put an emphasis on teaching student-athletes how best to interact with the media. I think that can lead to a lot of “coach speak” and boring answers, but I try to do whatever I can to get student-athletes and coaches in front of anyone that wants to speak with them. One of my favorite stories that I ever worked on covered the injury of Griz quarterback Reese Phillips. I wrote for the Montana Kaimin at the time, but Reese and Griz Athletics gave me great access at his home and it allowed me to go more in-depth.

It depends on the athlete, and the situation, but I view any opportunity to speak with the media for a story as a positive thing for our athletes. They can learn a lot from the experience, and I think it helps them in real-life situations like job interviews that they will encounter once their playing careers are done. That said, it can be difficult with the busy schedules of all involved to set up even a quick 10-minute interview following practices sometimes.

Q: What’s the hardest part of working on the social platforms?

A: I think the hardest part is remaining creative on a day-to-day basis, and managing the different tones that I want to set with each sport. I am creating and posting different content for our men’s basketball team than I am for our women’s cross country team, for example. I want to always be posting the best content that I can and to be doing things that are worthwhile, but with the demands of posting on a near daily basis it can be difficult to find inspiration. I recently saw a post that said it’s odd to be expected to come up with creative, engaging posts on a daily basis that will essentially be forgotten in 24 hours. It’s a sentiment that I agree with for the most part. You are constantly striving to make the best product, but the time restraints of the job and the attention span of the audience are both shrinking.

Q: What’s the easiest part?

A: I think the easiest part for me is just having good photos and videos to post from our creative team. We are lucky to have plenty of photographers that are extremely talented at the University of Montana, so there are a lot of times where I can just get up a pretty basic post with some photos that takes little effort on my end but is still highly impactful for our student-athletes.

Q: As social media platforms become increasingly toxic, how do you work to protect the athletes you work with? Are there platforms where those negative interactions happen more?

A: This is increasingly a concern of mine, particularly on the men’s basketball pages where there are more eyes on the content. I do my best to block any accounts that only exist to troll our team and our student-athletes, and encourage our players to do their best to tune it out and block any negative comments that come their way. I think there is a place, particularly on our pages, for criticism. I don’t think there is any place for hateful speech, which unfortunately occurs often.

For our pages, Twitter (X) can be extremely toxic, particularly in bigger games for us that have more attention from the sports betting community. When our men’s basketball team played at Houston last year, for example, we had a lot of extremely hateful comments. It was a game against one of the top teams in the country, and one that we were expected to lose, but because our players didn’t hit a prop bet and we didn’t cover the spread, we had a lot of no-name accounts responding to our score graphics and recap story.

I’ve heard from our student-athletes that Instagram is becoming increasingly negative, and several of our men’s basketball players have showed me shocking DM’s that they’ve received. I do my best to remove any types of comments like these from our pages, and try to be wary of the situation in the game when posting.

Q: Do your thoughts/responsibilities on producing content change at all based on the different sports you cover? How differently does a sports page with a high following like basketball team’s operate compared to a page with a much smaller following like the Track team? How different are those interactions?

A: I do think my thought process is different depending on the sport, which I touched a bit on earlier, but I don’t view my responsibilities any differently. I want to be posting the same amount of content at the same quality level for all of my sports, regardless of the audience size. In my mind, they should operate the exact same way. There is a slight difference in what type of content I am going for on each page. I think part of it depends on the success of the team and what you are able to highlight. Track and field has so many athletes competing, and a big part of what the coaching staff and student-athletes want is personalized graphics for personal-best performances. I end up making a lot of these, and it takes up a good portion of my coverage for each meet, but it’s what they want. Basketball, on the other hand, gets far less of that type of content. I’m focused more on highlights and photos for basketball, and getting the feel of what it’s like to be inside the gym out to the fans. There are slight differences in my approach for all three of my sports.

Q: How do you balance social media being a tool for good rather than something that can, in many ways, maximize harm if incorrect information is spread? What advice would you give to minimize the negative affects social platforms can bring?

A: I think my advice for this is just to remain positive with what you are posting. I know it can be trendy to try to “dunk” on other teams through social media and to create some funny content at others’ expense, but I generally try to avoid that. My goal is always to share highlights and accomplishments through our social channels, and to use it to celebrate the athletes. There are times where I try to avoid posting if I think it will be damaging. In the men’s basketball championship game when things started to go against them, I posted a highlight video that was quickly the subject of a lot of online hate. I removed the highlight, and did minimal posting for the next few days because everything was being received with aggression. I think to avoid the harm of incorrect information, I just try my best to double- and triple-check all of the facts that I am posting from our accounts.

Q: What’s your favorite part of your job? Why? Do you think that will change as the relationship between social media and journalism evolves?

A: I think the favorite part of my job is seeing a positive reaction to something that I’ve done to impact a student-athlete. Our men’s javelin thrower Evan Todd is a three-time Big Sky Champion, and I was able to photograph and create graphics for him over the final two years of his career. He and I had a great relationship and he was so kind in thanking me for my work, and I felt in those moments that even if it is just a passing thing with social media, it does make a difference in the lives of the people that I am covering.

Q: Finally, is there anything I didn’t ask that you would want me or anyone else to know about? Anything important that you’re passionate about that I missed?

A: I can’t think of anything that you didn’t ask. I think for me, as someone who grew up in Montana as a Griz fan, the chance to represent the school and really be the public voice of some of the athletic teams is so meaningful. I would want to do well in any job that I held in life, but it means a bit more when you are doing something that you care deeply about. It can be a bit of a grind sometimes, but I’m always so thankful that I get to be a part of Griz Athletics.

This Q&A is part of a series created by students in Courtney Cowgill’s Social Media and Audience Engagement course at the University of Montana School of Journalism. Students sought out creatives who are doing social media for good to offer tips and insights into the ever-evolving landscape of social media.