The holiday time is exciting! It is a time for parties and gifts and upcoming vacations. It’s also a time when most of us like to “loosen our belts” and tend to lose focus on everyday tasks and goals. That includes the yearbook committee.
So how can you keep your committee productive and avoid procrastination during the holiday season without being called “the Grinch?” Here are some tips:
- Provide your committee with a work party. While this may sound counterproductive, work parties can motivate the team to continue working while simultaneously enjoying the season. Maybe have a Secret Santa for just the staff and bring in special holiday food for the committee while they work.
- Implement a rewards system. Reward systems are spectacularly beneficial during the holiday season because there are so many unique activities that will for sure entice team members. For example, reward team members that finish their tasks with a gift card that they can then use on holiday gifts for their friends and family.
- Create looser goals. Yes everyone wants to slow down the pace during the holidays. That doesn’t mean the great yearbook you are creating should be neglected. By giving the team lighter written goals each day you can help them stay motivated but also reward them with free time that they can enjoy. Remember a little bit of work is better than no work at all.
The holidays are about being together. Productive yearbook committees will more than likely continue to enjoy each other’s company while they are staying productive and creating a great yearbook!
While the theme and content make up the most important parts of the class yearbook, a title is still very important. That is because in many instances the book won’t be referred to as the class yearbook but by its title.
So what makes for a good title? Here are some ideas:
- One title idea that will always work is an inspirational type of title. Perhaps “Taking The Lead” or “Only The Beginning”. Both of these provide a sense not of ending one chapter but rather starting a new one.
- A title based off the theme of the book is also a great idea. If your theme were current events perhaps you would want to go with a title like a newspaper such as the “(name of school) Times”. The yearbook is meant to capture the events that went on during the school year. This makes this type of title very appropriate.
- Utilizing your school mascot is also a great direction to go in for your yearbook title. For example, play off the word Roar if your mascot is a tiger or lion. If your school mascot is the wolves you could play off the word Howl.
- If the class had a theme song or chant, a yearbook may relate well if its title includes words from that music. Perhaps “This Is How We Do It.” Or “Once Upon A Time.”
If none of these suggestions work you can always look back at past yearbooks from your school and simply repeat it’s name and just update the year and colors.
Your yearbook title will stay with each of its recipients for generations to come. By making it memorable will make the book that much better.
A major part to the body of the class yearbook is writing stories. These stories are important as they first-handily talk about experiences and memories that occurred during the class’s graduation year.
Unfortunately though, not every student is a chatterbox and getting them to share these first-hand experiences can be challenging. When this occurs, a yearbook committee member should coach these particular students on what to write about. Here are some example ideas:
Remember When… This is a great gateway to get a memorable story from students. Maybe, ask them to discuss where they were and whom they were with during a holiday break or how they reacted when they received their first college acceptance letter. These are great stories that the entire class would love to read, both today and for years to come.
Which Faculty Member Inspired You Most During Your Time In School and Why? Choosing a name will be easy for a student to provide. The reason why they chose that individual will be unique though. Maybe this teacher or faculty member assisted them on passing a certain class or went the extra level for them outside the classroom.
Which current event during your graduation year did you enjoy most? This is another open-ended question that will get a slew of different responses. Maybe it was something school related such as winning the state championship in basketball or being a lead character in the class play. Maybe though, it was a family member coming back from a tour of active duty to spend the holidays with you and the rest of the family.
Yearbook writing assignments shouldn’t make students feel like they are taking an exam. They should be fun and give students the true ability to express themselves. This in-turn will provide the best yearbook content that everyone can enjoy for generations!
A major part of a class yearbook is the interview section. It is here where the yearbook committee selects various students, perhaps the valedictorian or class president, and asks them a series of questions that will then be published in the yearbook.
As a yearbook committee member, this is a very important job as it is their responsibility not only to ask the right questions, but also to transcribe the interview properly. This is so they don’t have the potential of being misinterpreted.
Before you conduct the interview, here are a few tips on how make it not only go smooth and seamless:
- Be upbeat and encouraging. Not every person you interview will have a slew of stuff to talk about. Keep an open mind when going into the interview and try to get the information to come out of the interviewee naturally without having to pull it from them. If you can’t get the right information out of them at first, it is okay to move on to another topic and perhaps even go back to it later.
- Be prepared. As the interviewer, come prepared with a list of questions ahead of time. You can get inspiration from a number of sources including previous yearbooks. Concentrate on core topics that you can than expand upon.
- Ask narrower questions at first. These questions require yes and no answers and just brief responses. This will help break the ice and hopefully lead to more expanded, detailed answers as you move forward with the interview.
- Don’t be afraid of asking “What If…” questions. This will hopefully encourage the interviewee to utilize some thought and uniqueness when giving their answers as well as make the responses interesting.
School yearbook interviews are a great way to include first-hand experiences of students during their graduating year. Their answers will for sure be remembered for generations to come.
Looking for advertisers can definitely be a challenge at times for any yearbook committee. Who should you reach out too? How do you get in front of the decision makers? Will it be awkward? Remember, yearbook staff members aren’t professional salesmen and women. They are usually students.
While reaching out to local businesses via door-to-door, by phone and/or email are all good methods; you may want to consider this year thinking “outside-the-box.” One-way to do this is with social media, specifically Facebook.
Besides creating a Facebook page for your school yearbook and posting content on the progress of the book, you may want to put together a small budget for Facebook advertising.
With Facebook advertising you can do some serious “laser” targeting so you are marketing your book to the right audience and not people who have absolutely no interest.
One way to do this is to target locals in the area. You can do this by going into the Facebook ad manager.
Once you get there you will want to put in a radius of people within 10 miles of your school zip code. After that, there are a variety of options you do for your targeting.
One recommendation that should get your ad seen by the right people is to target by behavior. Facebook defines behavior as reaching people based on purchase behaviors or intents, device usage and more. Within that category are charitable donations and within that is a subcategory of children’s causes. Choosing that option will help tremendously. This way your ad, which you will be able to create later in the process, will target people that in the past have given donations to children’s causes. You can always adjust your targeting and see which performs better as you go.
Note: You have the option to use an external website as a landing page where people can go to get more information on the yearbook advertising, rather than using a yearbook Facebook page.
Facebook is the world’s biggest social network and has a slew of information on people. By targeting the audience you are looking for can find new sponsors and advertisers you may never have thought would have been interested!
So how can you keep your committee productive and avoid procrastination during the holiday season without being called “the Grinch?” Here are some tips:
