We were lucky to catch up with Gabriella Schatt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Gabriella , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you manage your own social media?

I still manage my personal media, but I have put together a team to help run The Hersheypark Passholders Group. As the group grew, it was harder to keep up with everything going on in it. Comments and posts were speeding up, and having a busy schedule was hard to keep an eye on things. It was tough finding people who were willing to agree with how I thought the group should be run. It wasn’t the best process at first, but after finding the right team it became a lot easier.

If you are thinking about bringing someone on to run your socials or help out, make sure there are boundaries and guidelines in place to help both parties. This way, there isn’t miscommunication and helps keep a better flow if multiple people are involved. At the end of the day, it is all for engagement and fun, so you want to keep it that way as much as possible.

Gabriella , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I currently am the creator and admin for “The Hersheypark Passholder Group”, as well as recently committing to the role of Game Day Coordinator for The Hershey Cubs Hockey Club. For the passholder group, I help provide information to season passholders of Hersheypark, as well as host giveaways, meetups, events and more! This has led me to work with various companies as well as Hershey Entertainment themselves. It has also helped me be a part of advertisements, campaigns, and social media opportunities for the company. As for the Hershey Cubs, this is a new position and my first year working with the team. So far, I have been able to provide graphic design for the companies’ ID badges for staff and players. As well as help oversee game day operations.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Although Covid 2020 had a lot of downs, it had a lot of highs for social media. It was one of the places we could be safely that would connect us to other people. During this time, there was a lot of confusion about how a lot of things were working in the world. Including entertainment! When I created the group back in 2018, I never really did much with it, but when 2020 hit a lot more people were curious about if anyone had answers to what was going to happen with Hersheypark. With that, more and more people joined not only for information, but for something to do. If it was playing the games we created or simply talking to new people, more and more joined each week. From there, we would add more and more for people to do over the years, if it was giveaways, meetups, events, or even just questionnaires about Hershey. When you engage with your audience, they pay attention. Which is probably my biggest advice when starting up on social media. Be yourself, even if someone else already has a similar idea. There is no problem in putting your spin on it and making it something to be proud of.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Creating something for people to enjoy is always something I’ll be big on. I am a huge advocate for creating experiences and that can come from many things. If it’s an event flyer that gets people to come out to an event you planned, to the event itself. There is something about working hard on an idea you had in your head and seeing it happen in real life. One of my examples is from when we had our first ever meetup night back in February 2024. Members of our group were invited out to The Hershey Bears game where they could get discounted tickets, high five the players in the tunnel before the game, a FREE souvenir cup, a chance at multiple signed hockey pucks, a gift for coming and more! It was a dream come true to be able to take a group of people and have them experience something they never had before. The best part was, it was all from creating the group, to creating the promotional video and graphics for the event. Being able to see everyone so excited as they got their signed puck or go down into the tunnel was such a dream for me. Knowing I was able to do that for over 200 people that night was amazing, and I will never forget it. Even describing it now for just this one event is hard, because being in the moment of making a memory for someone is just something that can never be described.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/GabriellaSchatt

Image Credits

Hershey Entertainment, Gabriella Schatt