Week 07 – First Due Date

Reverse Engineer an Article Promotion

Instructions:

For this assignment, you will find a promotion to an article (piece of content) on social media and analyze it. After you have found the social media post promoting an article you would like to analyze, write a blog post (you can use any blog platform of your choice, like WordPress or Medium) which analyzes the effectiveness of the brand and their design.

Please make sure that you use BYU-Idaho appropriate materials to analyze. Your understanding will be shown through a combination of writing and “draw overs.” A “draw over” is when you take an original design and use a program like Photoshop to draw over top of it. This allows you to visually show what you are writing about. Watch this video which demonstrates how to create a draw over: Draw Over Instructions. A minimum of three principles of design should be discussed.

Your post should include the following:

    • Introduction:
      Write an introduction to your post. Include:

      • the unaltered original design.
      • any background information to help set up the rest of the post
      • an introduction to the audience and how the post is connecting to that group
      • how are they using the seascape principles
    • Analysis:
      Create draw overs and write paragraphs explaining how the designer utilized three of the following (one draw over and paragraph for each):

      • contrast
      • repetition
      • alignment
      • proximity
      • color
      • typography
      • Composition
      • Fundamentals 
      • Lines
      • Layout
      • Golden Section
      • Rule of Thirds
      • Not Half
      • Swiss Grid
      • Custom Grids
    • Conclusion:
      Write a brief description of how the above principles contribute to the overall design.

After you have written and published your blog post, add a link to the coinciding post to your class’ FACEBOOK GROUP.

Branding Project Evaluation

Instructions:

Now that the project is over, it is time to reflect on how things went. Write a brief explanation of your experience, what went well and any areas of opportunities. This is where you will use the metrics defined within the ippie process you’ve written during the first week of this project.

Submit to iLearn

After you have written an evaluation of the project, put together a PDF with the following:

  1. First and Last Name
  2. Section, semester and professor
  3. Screenshots of branding from each channel
  4. An evaluation of what went well and what could be improved upon

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?

Like we did in the last project, you will start to plan how you will succeed. Those who take the time to think and consider all aspects of a project before they start to execute will experience higher results, therefore, the first assignments associated with the project will help you identify and plan. Develop the following:

IPPIE Plan Write up

You need to develop a response to the first two sections of the IPPIE plan. This means you should identify key strategies to make your branding a success. Understanding your audience and how to connect with that audience is key. Therefore you should answer:

  • Objectives
  • What is the main clear message of your brand?
  • Who is your audience (define them here)?
  • What actions would you like your audience to take?
  • When do you expect your audience to take the action? (this should be more than “immediately”)
  • Seascape Principles
  • Which seascape principles will accompany your brand’s message?
  • How will the seascape principles connect with your audience and get them to take action?
  • Which taboos should be avoided when branding your channel?

Since you have now defined your audience and how to connect with them, now you need to plan the execution. Plan your:

  • Strategy
  • Who: what will you do in the branding project to connect with your audience?
  • Where: Do the channels have different requirements or taboos?
  • What: List each piece of content needed for the project and describe what each of those pieces of content will contain.
  • When: Create a schedule for the project. (Gantt Charts is an option)
  • Define Success
  • Decide the metrics which will best track the success of your objective/action.

Article Draft

It is time to write a rough draft of your blog content. This should be only a rough draft, but that doesn’t mean just an outline. It should have enough content to understand the key concepts of your blog post.

Word List

Create a word list as described above.

Where to submit

After you have created your IPPIE plan, voice statement, and logo sketches, add a comment to the coinciding post to your class’ FACEBOOK GROUP. All three items can be included as one comment.