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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.

Project - Final Week: Produce & Implement

First due date 

Develop the following and post to our Facebook group:

    1. Layout Comps (3-5) (NEW)
    2. Value Comps (3-5) (NEW)
facebook_discussion#1 & 2 are due by the FIRST due date as your initial post on the course Facebook group

Second due date

Step 1: Respond to your class mates Facebook posts and leave a comment to at least three classmates posts which adds value. Give quality feedback, not just “great stuff” or “this is amazing.” Your feedback should be a critique on the items produced and not on the individual.

Step 2: Put together a multi-page PDF and submit it on ILearn.

What to Submit on iLearn

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

Upload a PDF in I-Learn document that Includes the following:

    1. First and Last Name
    2. Section, semester and professor
    3. IPPIE Plan
    4. Article draft
    5. Word Lists
    6. Finished Article
    7. Visual Thumbnails
    8. Layout Comps (3-5) – screen shot of your expanded Facebook post comment
    9. Value Comps (3-5) – screen shot of your expanded Facebook post comment
    10. A screen shot (from Facebook) of each of the three comments (expanded view) on a classmates post (NEW)
    11. Finished Visuals (NEW)
    12. Screenshots of implemented article and visuals (NEW)
    13. Screenshots of implemented social media promotion (at least 3 channels) (NEW)

Name it firstname_lastname_week06.pdf

This PDF is due on the second due date of the Final Week

#1-13 are due by the SECOND due date in I-learn as a PDF