Building a Social Media Campaign

As an assignment for Social Media Content Strategy, I began a social media campaign  The main goal was to create a campaign that gains followers for a specific brand or topic and helps gain exposure. I began Wisco Happenings, a social media campaign built around the recent political events in Wisconsin, my home state.

The original goal of Wisco Happenings was to simply stay on top of any new political information that was being discussed. Due to lack of time and the massive amount of immediate news information, I was unable to keep up with the pace that is required to keep this audience. This caused me to take a different approach with a goal to share opinions of Wisconsin residents.

Instead of posting news updates about the political events, I began asking questions to my viewers. The first set of questions was posted in a survey-style, and I asked viewers to answer and respond via email or through facebook messages. In the end, I received a handful of responses and posted WI resident profiles based on their answers. The next approach was to ask one question at a time through facebook and twitter. This garnered a large amount of responses via facebook, while only receiving two from twitter. But I was happy with my results, as I was gaining new followers based on these open questions and achieving my goal of sharing opinions from hard-working WI residents.

The main outlets I used to produce and share all of this information were WiscoHappenings.tumblr.com, Twitter.com/WiscoHappenings, Facebook.com/WiscoHappenings, and WiscoHappenings@gmail.com.

I used Google Analytics to follow the follow the traffic to the WiscoHappenings blog. The data that I received from Google Analytics provided me with information such as the most popular posts, the best time of day to post, the best type of information to post, and where viewers were coming from(facebook, twitter, tumblr, keywords). Some of the data can be seen below:

Based on what I observed from learning how to read the data/analytics and viewing these trends I have learned a lot about how to build a successful social media campaign. Use as many social media tools as you can to share your information; this will help build a bigger audience. Post and update frequently to help keep and grow an audience.   Definitely engage directly with viewers, for example: reply to their comments, or create a post based on their suggestions. I believe this will allow for more respect and people may be more inclined to share your information if they feel that they have a personal connection. In the end, I think the best piece of advice that I can give based on my personal experience with this campaign is to keep track of your viewers and analytics because being able to understand the trends of your viewers will be a huge help in finding a path that works best for the kind of campaign you are trying to build.

Learning Adobe Flash

During the process of learning Adobe Flash to build websites, I built a portfolio site for a film editor, Tim Sauer.

Here is a link to view the site:

http://students.depaul.edu/~esauer2/TimSauer.html

Creative Processes Project

I took an advertising class that revolved around the topic of “The Creative Process”.  Throughout the term, we spent time reviewing different approaches and participating in activities that helped develop creative ideas.  The main goal at the end of the term was to have created an advertising campaign for two different products, with each campaign including three ads. I chose to develop campaigns for Nikon lenses and Q-tips.

The main objective of the Nikon advertisements was to compare the camera lens to the human eye.

The main objective of the Q-tip ads was to pose an every-day kind of problem that can easily be fixed with the use of a Q-tip.

Here are my campaigns:

Text + Image Final Project:

Please view the finished product here:

http://icantpayrent.tumblr.com/

Project iteration #3

[1] what did you accomplish last week?

I completed Marijas narrated letter video, finished most of the audio editing for Eric’s video. Started editing Anna’s video.

[2] what are your goals for next week?

Finish Eric and Anna’s videos.  For Eric’s video I still need to find more images to play while the audio is playing.  I still have to tell my unemployment story in video form. Upload everything into a blog.

[3] what’s going well?

After not using Final Cut Pro for the last 6 years, I was surprised at how I was able to step back into it without too many problems. The editing is going quicker than I expected which is good because of my lack of time.

[4] what’s not going well?

I still feel that my lack of time will hinder the final result. I am, most likely, going to have to skip one part that I thought would help connect all four of the videos and really exhibit the multimodality of the project.

[5] what help do you need from classmates and the instructor?

If you can supply me time, that will be much appreciated.

Project iteration

[1] what did you accomplish last week?

I completed the final 2 interviews for my project. I met with Eric over lunch and I recorded our conversation. I also did a video chat with Anna that I recorded. I already had Marija’s written experience.

[2] what are your goals for next week?

I need to edit all of my interviews into individual stories about each persons experience.  I also need to record my own experience.

[3] what’s going well?

All three of my interviews have gone very well, and everyone seemed intrigued by the idea of my project. They were all extremely helpful, and exited to see the final product.

[4] what’s not going well?

I was going to use imovie to do quick edits, but as it turns out, I need to get a little more “in depth” with my editing so I need a better program.  I do not have final cut pro, nor does my computer have the capacity to handle it. I came to class early today to try to upload some of my stuff into final cut so I could begin editing, however, I was unaware that the computers in this lab do not have final cut.  So, new plan – loop campus or my work if they will let me stick around and edit non-work videos.

[5] what do I need from you?

Since I was planning on beginning editing on Sunday, and now I have to wait until I have access to the program, I am very worried that I will be able to get everything done in time. I want to make 5 videos. One for each individual experience and a final video with all of our collected thoughts together. This isn’t really a statement for help or suggestions, it’s just more about my worries…

Project Proposal

Gunther Kress asks the question, “What has produced the explosive interest in the issue multimodality over the last decade or son? And, most obviously, why now?”  He answers, “…simply and yet most powerful: the world of communication has changed and is still changing; and the reasons for that lie in a vast web of intertwined social, economic, cultural and technological changes.” (P.5)

MY IDEA:

The Farm Security Administration(FSA) was created by the government in 1937 to assist rural communities that were financially devastated by the Great Depression. The most notable project of the FSA was their photographic documentation of the lives of Americans from all around the country during these hard times. As a way of expressing the need for the FSA’s mission and gaining public support, photographers and writers were hired to document the way of life for rural families to show the hardships that they were trying to overcome.

This huge collection of photographs was one of the first and most famous documentary projects. At this time, the popularity and accessibility of cameras was still in its beginning stages, but the government saw a way to use this new technology to its advantage.

I want to take this old idea and utilize the changes in social, economic, cultural and technological changes to present a documentary-style project that represents a certain aspect of current events. During the time of the FSA, they only had two main modes to communicate their concerns to the public, alphabetic text and photographic image(almost all images in black and white). Today, we have access to text, images, color, movement, sound. This is an old idea with a vast amount of new modes to help me accomplish a documentation of what I see happening around me, and with the help of newspapers, magazines, television, and the world-wide web, I hope to create a multimodal, multimedia project.

MY QUESTIONS:

I still have questions about how to execute my idea. I am working with the original idea of creating a blog devoted specifically around my topic. I am also curious about creating a website, however, I have never built a website from scratch and am considering the possibility of using this as an opportunity to go through a learning process involving web design.

I also question whether or not it should be interactive; should viewers be able to comment or add their own opinions, images, ideas?  The idea is to document a certain aspect of what is happening in the world around us, does it become less of a documentation if others are allowed to express their opinions in an open forum? On the other hand, I see the concept of an open forum as simply another way to show the power of change in the world of communication and the extent to which new modes have expanded into our everyday lives.