Social Media Design for Young Chicago Authors

I began my journey is communications with an internship at Young Chicago Authors in 2017.

After graduating early from high school, I cold-called YCA in search of mentorship, having been a competitor in their youth slam poetry competition for over three years and the captain of my high school slam team.

While at the time I was invested more in creative writing, with lofty dreams of writing and publishing poetry and prose, YCA gave me an in with nonprofit communications.

My decision to include this in my portfolio is to mark the growth of my skills since my internship in high school, but also speak on how I feel this experience informed the ideals I still carry with me in writing copy, creating graphics, and social media management today.

At Young Chicago Authors, I was a bit of a mentee for everyone who worked there. Whoever needed help, had me as their aide.

I originally started working with Tammy, who at the time was the Director of School and Community Resources. Under her guidance, I was put in charge of communicating directly with schools, educators, and more to schedule speaking events or teaching artist workshops across the Chicago area.

I worked with Nate Marshall as a part of the outreach Young Chicago Authors did to plan events with people publishing with Haymarket Books. He was personally involved in authoring and editing more than one manuscript developed with talent that had come out of YCA and its affiliate youth slam poetry competition "Louder Than A Bomb," which has since been renamed "Rooted and Radical."

However, it was José Olivarez that was the first person to teach about branding, brand identity, and web/social content. As the marketing manager of YCA, he had developed the branding and logo for the nonprofit—helping it find its footing as it was beginning to grow into more than just a grassroots organization, but a nonprofit with people like Chance the Rapper and Jamila Woods backing it for its instrumental youth outreach.

While working with José, I was put in charge of helping him develop web and social content to increase website traffic and help generate a consistent flow of donations for the nonprofit to continue its mission of youth literacy and continued education.

The idea was to role out website content that featured resources, lessons, and promotional content for all the creative enterprises housed under YCA's name.

"The Lesson" was a blog posting weekly for teachers and students alike to use for prompts and readings that would inspire writing. It was congruent with the workshop programs that we implemented in the city, taught by our teaching artists—poets, rappers, and creatives who wrote on a regular basis. "The Lesson" was essentially a lesson plan to help kids get inspired.

"The Top Five" was another weekly blog posting that would include our top five creative endeavors of the week. It was intended to show off new music, books, poems, and creative projects that people at YCA were promoting. This was created to empower the local community and encourage people to get involved with YCA programs like "Write to the City," "Wordplay," and more.

We featured the works of artists like Jamila Woods and Chance the Rapper, who were dropping new music at the time. We also featured the published work of YCA community members like Emon Lauren, with her poetry chapbook Commando. And touted the work of the youth poet laureate of Chicago (2017-2018) Patricia Frazier.

"The Plug" was by far our most popular blog posting, which included links to creative writing competitions, featured scholarships, and special opportunities for youth outreach in writing or creative organizations.

The intention was to increase community outreach and make things more accessible to the youth involved in all of YCA's programs. Everyone wanted there to be a streamlined and organized list of opportunities for students to grow their talents and receive accolades for their involvement in the arts. Especially during a time in which Chicago Public Schools were underfunded, oftentimes slashing the budget for music, writing, and arts-based programs.

At 17, I wasn't overtly confident in my ability to write, blog, or generally repurpose content in a meaningful way.

My approach to the blog was mainly compiling as much information as I could and trying to implement what I had been taught by my English teachers about summaries. My copywriting skills were not up to par with people with real marketing degrees, but I did my best to create an introductory spiel that I could easily reuse and focus my energy on researching links for the blog.

This "listcle" writing informed my approach to writing in college for organizations like HerCampus that centered around media repurposing.

At the time I got involved with Young Chicago Authors, the organization was pushing very hard to be recognized as a reputable 501c in the Chicago area.

As the person in charge of marketing, José did his best to capitalize on involvement from the community by curating a professional brand identity on all socials. For this reason, most of the graphics I created on socials were curated with brand colors, logoing, and promotion in mind.

José talked to me a lot about encouraging people to donate to the organization by generating content that showcased the successful members of the organization and capitalizing on specific events or holidays that encouraged giving.

Everyone starts somewhere

Brand identity and brand consistency are the cornerstone of impactful marketing

Attaching your brand to real people can set you apart from big corporations