Reverse Engineer a News Feed Post

For the second half of this 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:

  • Do you agree or disagree?
    • Suggest a source or site that supports your position.
  • Did they leave something out?
    • Explain what was missing.
  • Add an additional viewpoint.

Affirmations such as “nice post,” “I like the way you explained this,” or “I agree” are not adequate for this discussion. Instead, 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 create a PDF to be submitted on ILearn with the following:

  1. Your First and Last Name
  2. Professor’s Name
  3. Section Number
  4. A screenshot of your original blog post
  5. A link to your original post
  6. A screenshot of your initial Facebook post, where you shared your blog post.
  7. A screenshot (from Facebook) of each of the three comments (expanded view) on a classmates post

7 Social Media Post Projects

Background

Nothing will kill social media branding efforts more than irregular posting. If you only Tweet once every few days or upload one new Instagram picture a month, you’re going to be forgotten. Shortened attention spans combined with rapidly growing social networks have made publishing more important than ever. How frequently you post is going to depend on your audience. It will take some trial and error to find out what works best for your brand.

Much of what drives traffic and revenue online is the constant creation of engaging content. The best brands that no one knows about doesn't do anyone any good. Conversely, a really solid plan but is garbage content isn't sustainable. The best situation is to create engaging content and a solid schedule  In this unit, you will be creating 7 posts for both of your channels and creating visuals to accompany each post.

Project Components

Captions

Captioins are the blocks of text which can accompany visuals on social media channels or stand alone. Writing an effective social media caption that actually drives engagement can really be an art form which is essential to get right. Your goal is to create meaningful captions which resonate with your audience.

Now you may ask if the same caption work across all platforms? Wrong. Each social media platform has its own strength and purpose, which means a unique approach is needed when writing cleverly crafted captions for your Facebook and LinkedIn platforms, not to mention those who have delved into the online marketing worlds of Pinterest and Twitter. And then there are #hashtags for Instagram. Look back on the begging weeks of the course to find best strategies for each platform you'll be using.

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 amongst the floods of content. To create a word list you will:

  1. Identify 3-5 themes, ideas or concepts for the posts you'll create.
  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.

Layout Sketches

You will need to create at least one sketch for every post. You may even need to create 2 different images based on the channels you are using. Sometimes the audiences vary drastically between social media channels and therefore require different designs. The sketches should show the general idea of the images being created, and it should also help you compose before you create.

Visuals

The visuals that accompany each post need to focus on stopping the scroll of your audience. This means they should be unique and not boring. Due to the different sizes and displaying options within channels, the visuals may need to be redesigned or reformatted. 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.

What is due?

By the end of this first project week, you will have developed the content for your posts and started crafting ideas for your scroll stopping images. You will finish the second due date by creating:

Final Captions

Now it is time to take your caption drafts and refine it. Think of the seascape principles and principally what value you’re bringing to your audience. Run the captions through something like Grammarly to ensure accurate spelling and grammar.

Layout Sketches

Now that you’ve gone through the wordlist exercise, you should have some ideas which will create scroll stopping images. Use some of those ideas to create at least a sketch per post, which will help you craft better images.

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 on an audience
  5. Help with Taboos
  6. Give advice or feedback on the strategy
  7. Provide advice on sketches

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
    • This is a screenshot of your expanded Facebook post comment from the first due date
  4. Caption Draft
    • This is a screenshot of your expanded Facebook post comment from the first due date
  5. Word List
    • This is a screenshot of your expanded Facebook post comment from the first due date
  6. Three critique/feedback comments
    • This is a screenshot of your expanded Facebook post comment
  7. Final Captions
  8. Layout Sketches