Week 07 – Second Due Date

Reverse Engineer an Article Promotion

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

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?

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

Final Article

Now it is time to take your draft and refine it. Think of the seascape principles and principally what value you’re bringing to your audience. Run the article through something like Grammarly to ensure accurate spelling and grammar. Add headers and subheader to divide up the text and make it easier for your audience to skim and quickly consume your content.

DO NOT PUBLISH YOUR BLOG POST THIS WEEK

15 Visual 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 15 sketches which will help you craft better images. Sketches should not be works of art but rather a way for you to put down ideas on paper.

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. Article 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 Article
  8. 15 Visual Sketches or more