By Adam Albrecht
Being the Senior Social Media Manager for a huge media company is difficult and many may crack under the pressure, but Kelly Laske makes it look easy.
And she loves it.
Laske, 28, is a 2012 graduate of Branford High School and currently works for US Weekly, a popular celebrity and entertainment based magazine. She has dreamed of being in her position since her high school days.
Laske returned this week to BHS and gave Mr. Miller’s Digital Journalism class a lot to think about. She has two main goals everyday in order to bring attention to the publication: drive people back to their website from social media and constantly increase engagement on the magazine’s content. US Weekly typically logs about 500 million page views a month, she said.
However, Laske is a one woman show which can make increasing page viewers tough.
“I tell them if I had a team I could get those numbers [page viewers] up,” she said, “But 35% coming from social media due just to me is pretty good.”
Laske uses Google Analytics to find exactly how many people view her social media posts on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
“You don’t want to rely on one source to bring people to the main website,” she said. Doing this gives her a one up on other new sources seeing as she knows what type of stories do better than others.
Another pro of being the Senior Social Media Manager is that she can see what is working well for US Weekly’s competitors. Laske can then use this information to help boost her company’s popularity. “If the numbers are high for a certain story,” she said. “You continue to squeeze everything you can out of it.”
Laske also told the students in Miller’s class that they don’t need a lot of fancy equipment in order to get the information and write these stories. All they really need is a phone. The most important thing is making sure what is posted or written is true and people are interested in the subject, she said.
Being in Laske’s position can be exhausting and requires massive amounts of effort and time.
“I would say that the only con of being the Senior Social Media Manager is you always have to be online,” she said. “You can never unplug for if you do, the risk of falling behind increases drastically.”
Laske enjoyed being able to see her former teacher Mr. Miller and give hope to the students of his class. She hopes that one day, they will follow in her footsteps and chase their dreams.
Editor's note: Adam Albrecht is a student in Digital Journalism this semester.
