Carrie Blazina

Audience engagement projects

I’ve been doing audience-oriented work throughout my career. At the Online News Association, this meant leading a refresh of our social media strategy based on audience preferences and industry best practices, revitalizing a Slack group for the community and launching a newsletter on LinkedIn. At Pew Research Center, this meant writing audience callouts for a special social media campaign and scouring analytics data and online comments for story ideas that fit reader interests. At The Boston Globe, this meant writing catchy headlines and crafting clever copy to ensure stories reached the right audiences on institutional social media.

Across all projects and platforms, I have an eye for detail and take care to write engaging, efficient and accurate copy, using humor and voice where appropriate. Also, I love building community outside of work through everything from joining alumni groups online to participating in book clubs, and I have made sure to bring that sense of community to audience engagement efforts in my career. There’s simply nothing like finding your people, and I enjoy connecting with others who can provide ideas or share their experience.

Slack revitalization project at ONA

Based on internal and external feedback, I launched a project at ONA to revitalize its long-underutilized Slack community. This space had the potential to be the prime gathering place for the community, an effective communication and promotion channel for the organization and a platform to discuss ONA events. Also, members had told us that they wanted a digital space to connect more consistently year-round.

After conducting an audience survey to find out what potential users wanted from the space, I implemented that feedback by creating audience-requested channels, increasing the moderation of the group and posting audience callouts that engaged users. In the time I led this project, we saw hundreds of new users as well as new all-time highs for active daily and weekly users during the organization’s 2023 conference. The space has become an important place for building community among members and keeping them engaged with ONA and each other.

Pew Research Center social media campaign

In spring 2022, I wrote content for and project-managed a new Pew Research Center social media campaign that used new-to-us formats such as quizzes, short video loops and callouts. All of the posts focused on holidays or commemorations, large and important reports, and/or more casual and conversational topics. After initially joining the project as a writer for posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, I also took on a project manager role. I moved us from a Slack-based system without assigned tasks or clear deadlines to a Basecamp project where I created to-do lists, posted files and collected feedback on them, and set deadlines. A colleague said this showed my “ability to project manage, lead and support a team in charge of many moving pieces … keeping us organized and on track.”

For this post, we had discussed doing a post for Pride Month and decided to use fairly new Center data to do so. I wrote the social copy, which had to be approved by the researchers on the original project, and, given the overall sensitivity of the topic, took care to pick a piece of data that was emotionally-neutral-to-slightly-upbeat while acknowledging the reality that this corner of the LGBTQ world is small. I also handled the project management side by getting the visuals created by the digital team and approved by the researchers and sending the final materials to each social media manager in time to schedule the posts.

LinkedIn newsletter at ONA

When I worked at ONA, it was clear that journalists in the association’s community were interested in the organization’s career-related content such as job listings, archived learning sessions and tips for personal development. I also had been investing more time on LinkedIn because so many journalists became more active there amid the implosion of Twitter/X. So it made a lot of sense to launch a LinkedIn-based newsletter on these topics. I pitched this to my boss and we spent months revising various drafts, adding and removing sections, and deciding to add a first-person top section. I wrote the personal note for the first issue, and I am proud that this fast-growing newsletter is offering a helping hand to other journalists looking for new opportunities and focusing on career growth. The launch of the newsletter and its first issue drew 2,000+ subscribers.

Social media refresh project at ONA

I led a refresh of ONA’s social media strategy and platforms based on audience preferences and industry best practices — what platforms to be on, what content to post on each channel and how frequently to post — that led to a more streamlined experience for creating content and for followers. This led to a greater focus on LinkedIn and Slack (please read previous section) as well as a launch of a Threads account at a time when Twitter/X was becoming even more unstable.

As part of that project, which started in early July 2023, I got us up and running on Threads when that platform launched. It was a time of platform flux, with Twitter/X in particular chaos, and Threads seemed to be a low-lift place to launch because ONA had a built-in audience from a dormant Instagram account. ONA clearly needed a backup option for semi-real-time posting in case Twitter imploded, so I experimented with posting on Threads.

Part of the overall strategy from the social media refresh also involved starting conversations with audiences rather than one-way posting that didn’t engage audiences so much as talk at them. One of my favorite posts on Threads came about in early fall 2023 when I noticed other journalists (particularly Brian Stelter) trying to make a Journalism Threads community, and people were (re)introducing themselves. I thought this would be a great time to get more members engaged and try to subtly encourage folks to become members if they weren’t already, something that ONA leaders strongly encouraged the communications team to do on social and elsewhere. I enjoyed getting to hear from our members and experiment with a conversational tone and callouts that we didn’t always use.

On LinkedIn, in addition to starting the Office Hours newsletter, I started posting weekly recap/roundup posts that gathered updates from across the organization; this content was adapted and crossposted to Facebook and Slack as well. I also posted monthly discussion questions to attempt to engage audiences with opportunities to have their responses featured in the ONA Weekly newsletter and start a conversation on social media. The focus on LinkedIn was meant to engage the many journalists and community members who became more active there during the disruption at Twitter/X.

ONA23 conference communications

I handled many of the communications for ONA’s 2023 conference, including writing a newsletter every other week, writing and sharing featured session announcements, live-tweeting several sessions every day during the event, managing the Slack community in real time and writing and sending some of the daily email updates to attendees.

Social media posting for the conference involved pre-writing and getting approval of nearly all copy about scheduled sessions, scheduling posts across multiple platforms and figuring out which updates to post on which accounts (with regards to the aforementioned social media strategy refresh). I also live-tweeted three sessions a day, which meant thinking quickly to capture quotes, pictures and notable moments for people following from afar. Plus, the conference was not without its surprises, so I handled writing newsletter copy about, and worked with the rest of the communications and programs teams to plan, the late-breaking announcement of a new featured speaker. Additionally, I coordinated with external partners so they could post video clips from select sessions, which drew a huge amount of attention and engagement.