For this project, you will need to use sources that help you plan, produce, test, and implement a social media campaign. You’ll need to use primary and/ or secondary research to investigate a position or stance on something that matters to you and form an argument that will help others understand and perhaps adopt your position. You might secondary research to:
- develop a new position or continue to find evidence to support the position you’ve already made
- find other people and groups who share your position and find out about the kinds of advocacy that already exists
- investigate successful (and unsuccessful) social media campaigns about any topic to help you design your strategy.
Search for (Google) and analyze some advocacy mentor texts such as these:
- #notinhershoes Choose what you think is the most powerful image
- You Call It Food. I Call It Poison
- Al Franken: It Gets Better
- Happy Potter Alliance Sorry Harry, We’re Not Done
- #Kony2012 Know Your Meme
Think about the following:
- What is the purpose, audience, and context of the text? What is it’s maker’s statement of purpose?
- List everything about advocacy text that seems to you to be a choice, especially regarding organization and medium.
- Think about logos, pathos, ethos, color, layout, font, tone, word choice, images, etc.
- How are the choices used strategically? In other words, why the author make specific the choices you listed and how do you think they impact the audience?
- Do you think your original assessment of the rhetorical context (audience, purpose, context) is correct? Is there any choice that you’ve identified that does not seem to fit? Should you change your original statement?
- Overall, is this text effective in meeting communicating a stance and persuading others to understand and adopt it? Why or why not?
Talk with others about your analysis and assessment.
Next, decide on your position for you social media campaign and make sure you have credible sources to support you argument and main points. Think about your audience and your purpose, and choose evidence and examples that will be effective for both. Make sure you can articulate, in your own words, your position, key reasons, evidence and support, significance (why this issue matters), and what you want others to know, do, or think about it.
Next, design your campaign. Use these questions to help you think through the process.
Audience: Who is your audience? List their characteristics including age, gender, ethnicity, education, able-bodiedness, sexual orientation, economic level, upbringing, place of work or school, emotional states, habits, values and beliefs, possible questions they might ask, other identities that are relevant to your purpose. What attitudes or moods are your audience likely to be in? What might they be thinking? Why should they be interested in your message? Why might they be disinterested or hostile?
Purpose: What is your motivation? What do you hope your audience will do or feel or think after they have experienced your campaign? What is the best possible outcome? The worst? How will your communication change the situation that prompted you to create it? How will you measure your campaign’s effectiveness?
Context: What is the occasion of the communication? The place? What is the broader context? What else is going on in the world and in other texts that relates to your audience and purpose?
Description of Campaign as a Whole: Provide a 75 word or less summary of your entire social media campaign.
Description of Individual Texts (All texts should fit in with your larger purpose and audience, although some might target slightly different audience segments)
Text 1:
Medium (Twitter Conversation with Hashtag? Blog? YouTube Video? Facebook Page? Tumblr Blog?)
Strategies (Logos?, Ethos?, Pathos? Be specific in how you will use these appeals to target your audience.)
Arrangement (List the parts of this individual text. How will your arrange them? Feel free to sketch these out in a drawing if that would be helpful.)
Text 2: Medium, Strategies, Arrangement
Text 3: Medium, Strategies, Arrangement
Then, plan out your campaign using a graphic map like the one shown here (http://composingcommunity.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/flow-chart.jpg). This will help you sequence the parts of your campaign and decide how each text or series of texts will work inside the system of your social media campaign.
Share and get feedback on your plans from a peer, an instructor, or a mentor.
As you begin to draft, think through visual strategies of persuasion. Use the categories below to help you consider your choices.
Professional Ethos: Considering type, writing quality, paper, layout, color, graphics, images.
Reflection: Describe the ethos of your 1st social media text. What choices have you made to develop that ethos? What else could you work on?
Pathos in Photographs: Obvious & Less Obvious
Reflection: Describe how your image(s) use pathos to create emotion. What else could you add or change about the photos to make your images more effective?
Pathos of Color: Hue, Saturation, and Brightness and their emotional appeals
Reflection: How are you using color in your composition? What is the effect? What do you think is working well? What might you change?
Pathos of Type: Letter Shapes, Type Styles, Type Categories, Typefaces or Reading or Emphasis
Reflection: Describe the type choices you’ve made. What emotions do these choices invoke? What might you change or capitalize on to be more effective with your use of type?
Logos of Arrangement:
Limiting Elements
Reflection: Have you overloaded your screen with elements or been selective with what you chose to include?
Visual Hierarchy (Contrast and Sameness)
Reflection: What has the most weight on your screen? The least? How have you used contrast and sameness to direct the audience’s attention? How can you do a better job?
Unity (Repetition and Alignment)
How have you used repetition and alignment to create a unified text? What works? What might you change to be more effective?
Logos of Arrangement:
Limiting Elements
Reflection: Have you overloaded your screen with elements or been selective with what you chose to include?
Visual Hierarchy (Contrast and Sameness)
Reflection: What has the most weight on your screen? The least? How have you used contrast and sameness to direct the audience’s attention? How can you do a better job?
Unity (Repetition and Alignment)
Reflection: How might you use repetition and alignment to create a unified text? What works? What might you change to be more effective?
Beta Test Your Campaign with a variety of users to see how effectively you’ve used words, images, and media platforms to reach your audience. For more on Beta Testing, see read the Wikipedia Article on Usability Testing and check out 22 Essential Tools for Testing Your Website’s Usability.
Revise, retest, and repeat until you are ready to go live with your campaign.
Go live and ask everyone you know to share and participate.
Use analytic tools on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to measure your campaign’s effectiveness. Reflect on the results and retool as necessary.
Finally, use the prompts on the Writer’s Memo page (http://makercomp.wordpress.com/writers-memos/) to reflect on your make.
Adapted from:
Anne Wysocki’s Compose, Design, Advocate