Week 08 – Second Due Date

Article Promotion Project Description

Background

Much of what drives traffic and revenue online is the proper promotion of engaging content. The best article that no one knows about doesn't do anyone any good. Conversely, a really solid promotion plan that drives a ton of traffic to garbage content is clickbait and isn't sustainable. The best situation is to create engaging content and a solid promotion plan that drives traffic to that content. In this unit, you will be writing an article and creating visuals to accompany that article.

Remember! A successful campaign uses multiple tweets or posts to promote an article. One tweet or post is not sufficient.

Project Components

Article

The article should be written with a specific message and with an audience in mind. The article should use best practices for online writing including the subject, formatting and length. While there is no specific length for this assignment, it should have enough value to satisfy the reader.

Visuals

The visuals that accompany the article will serve two purposes. First, they will be used in the promotion of the article on social media channels. Second, they will be used in the article to help guide the reader and reinforce or expand the concepts in the article. Due to the different sizes and displaying options of different channels, the visuals may need to be redesigned or reformatted for different channels. The visuals can take any form including, but not limited to, photography, photo manipulation, illustration, design, video, motion graphic, etc or any combination of those.

While there is not a specific number required, when you create more visuals you have more opportunities to promote your content. Remember that this is a Social Media Design course and the visuals will carry significant weight in the grading of this project.

Word lists:

A wordlist is a brainstorming activity to help you create scroll stopping images. Scroll stopping images are needed in today's current seascape to stand out amoungst the floods of content. To create a word list you will:

  1. Identify 3-5 themes, ideas or concepts from the article.
  2. Write them on top of the page.
  3. Under each one, make a list of words or phrases (should be extensive)
  4. Combine a word from 2 or more lists and see what ideas you come up with to visually represent the combination of those words

A good wordlist should help you combine/create visuals in a new way to encourage your audience to stop themselves from scrolling on social media and check out your content.

What is due?

Final Images

Up until now, we have been working on creating images to promote the blog post. Now it is time to finalize those images and add them to the blog post. We will use those images to help promote the content on your social channels.

Implement Promotional Posts

After you’ve created your images, put them into the blog post and use them to promote your post on the 2 social media channels. After you’ve added them to the post, it is time to publish the blog. If you have more than one image which will be used to promote your post, you can use programs like buffer or HootSuite to schedule the posts. You will need to show the posts, which include the captions when turning in your PDF.

Comments

For this part of the assignment, go to your class FACEBOOK GROUP, find the coinciding post, read your classmates’ initial posts and respond to three different classmates. Select someone without replies (if possible), and do some of the following:

  1. Ask questions
  2. Answer questions
  3. Suggest other principles which may help
  4. Give more insight
  5. Help with Taboos
  6. Give advice or feedback
  7. Provide advice on comps

Affirmations such as “nice post,” “I like the way your sketches,” or “I agree,” “this was such a great draft. You’ve really understood your audience and can see that with your IPPIE plan. I don’t really have any suggestions, I am just trying to make this post long enough” are not adequate for this discussion. Be thorough and thoughtful. Your replies should start a conversation, not end it.

Submit to iLearn

After you have made comments, you will collect screenshots and other artwork, and create a PDF to be submitted on ILearn with the following:

    1. First and Last Name
    2. Section, semester and professor
    3. IPPIE Plan
    4. Article Draft
    5. Word List
    6. Final Article
    7. Visual Sketches
    8. Layout Comps
      • screenshot of your expanded Facebook post comment
    9. Value Comp
      • screenshot of your expanded Facebook post comment
    10. A screenshot (from Facebook) of each of the three comments (expanded view) on a classmate’s initial post
    11. A screenshot of your published blog post with the visuals
    12. A screenshot of your article being shared on at least 2 channels
      • Be sure to include the caption
    13. A screenshot of any other posts planned to be used to promote your article
      • Be sure to include the caption