Earlier this year, I was hand-picked to fill a vacated board seat for the Rochester Association of Black Journalists.

When the previous board members left Rochester, I became the vice president for social media. Taking over the VP of social media means I’m in charge of the digital aspects of RABJ until 2017. While in this position, I’m hoping to make a few changes that will elevate the chapter and make potential members more enticed to join our organization.

More specifically, I have five goals I hope to accomplish as the social media VP.

A MORE COMPLETE, DYNAMIC HOME PAGE

To be clear, RABJ has a website From the front end, the site looks perfectly fine and that’s because it is. However, when someone wants to log in and make changes to the site, it’s cumbersome, frustrating and non-user friendly. And because of these issues, I’m hoping to migrate all our RABJ content to a WordPress-based theme. My ideal theme looks something like this.

INCREASED PRESENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

In case you didn’t know, RABJ is on Facebook and Twitter. But being on those sites isn’t enough. When compared to other NABJ chapters, Rochester is very low Facebook Likes and Twitter followers. One of my goals is to increase those numbers. For the first time in chapter history, we’ll be experimenting with Facebook Live, Periscope, live-tweeting and other advanced social strategies to grow traction.

PROFESSIONAL E-MAIL ADDRESSES

This one is pretty simple. Anyone who wants to contact a RABJ member has to send messages to a Gmail account. But just to punch up our professionalism a little more, I’ll be looking to create 10 RABJ e-mail addresses.

President (president@rabjournalists.org)

VP of Broadcast (vpbroadcast@rabjournalists.org)

VP of Print (vpprint@rabjournalists.org)

VP of Social Media (vpsocial@rabjournalists.org)

Treasurer (treasurer@rabjournalists.org)

Secretary (secretary@rabjournalists.org)

Parliamentarian (parlipro@rabjournalists.org)

Membership status, questions or information (membership@rabjournalists.org)

Entries for awards, contests, scholarships, competitions (submissions@rabjournalists.org)

General information about the chapter (info@rabjournalists.org)

INTEGRATE LIVE-STREAMING INTO MEETINGS

The advent of Periscope and Facebook Live means people can be present for our meetings without physically being there. I believe we will increase participation and increase our social media metrics if we used one of these features to live-stream our monthly meetings. It will involve someone monitoring the live stream to see if anyone has questions, but that’s honestly the hardest part of this goal.

A FIRST FOR NABJ 

My final goal is something I want to keep (somewhat) secret. I want to play it close to the chest because I’m not exactly sure how the specifics will pan out yet. However, if everything goes according to plan, Rochester’s NABJ chapter will be the first in NABJ history to have something like this. Hint: Read here.