Level: Can be customized for writers at all levels.

Context: This assignment focuses on social media, and on asking students to consider audience, purpose, and medium more specifically. This could be done as an in-class assignment, alone or in groups, or as a homework assignment.

Assignment:

Social media is a new writing genre that organizations have had to learn how to create in the past decade or so. Some do social media extremely well, and some, of course, really don’t. In the AWWE interview with a Director of Business Development at a creative agency, we hear a reflection about both the importance of social media and the fact that he feels the agency doesn’t designate adequate resources to it:

“I believe in the power of [social media], and I would even say that we should invest 100 times more in it than we do, but at this point, it’s meant to be like a fact checker, kind of like a check box. One, it’s just meant to show a little personality. If someone we’re already in conversation with us or in the early stages of vetting and they happen to likes Instagram and uses it heavily, if they were to check us out it’s visually engaging, it shows some personality, it’s consistently showing our brand, like we, it’s consistently designed, all which I do in an app in about five minutes a day. We show our culture a little bit, and it’s meant to be more smart sarcasm and wit, is kind of the energy and vibe that we give off outwardly, I don’t know if that’s necessarily like the type of people we are, but it’s usually energizing, it has a little bit of a wit to it. And when I’m writing, it’s pretty plain, you know, we’re leveraging some type of quotes, or writing about a client and keeping it short and sweet, and just really trying to boost people’s awareness in our active community of what that is, and then I think over time, it could lead to more organic reach. But it’s pretty straightforward, it doesn’t, I don’t have a ton of input, I think I’ve, we all know what social media looks like, and we know what the popular people on social media post and the copy they write, and you just try to mimic something that looks and feels authentic to you, and is still obviously, you know, lighthearted.”

Like many organizations, this interviewee’s company struggles to successful write for and utilize write social media. Summarize his perspective in answering the following questions:

1. How does the Director of Business Development view social media as it is currently used in his organization?

• What types of posts does he currently write?

• When he says he’s trying “to mimic something that looks and feels authentic,” what do you think he means?

The interviewee states that he mimics “what the popular people on social media post.” Many organizations do this—look to other, perhaps bigger or more successful organizations in their field—for inspiration and guidance for their online communications. To get a sense of how this is done and to learn to better analyze social media texts (and all texts), please follow the instructions below:

1. Choose an industry you’re interested in, either personally or professionally. (You might choose, for instance, the industry of yoga, restaurants, banking, or aerospace).

• Within your chosen industry, choose two different organizations that have an overlapping social media presence. (Meaning that they utilize at least one of the same platforms; they’re both on Twitter or Facebook, for example.)

• On the platform they both use, examine their social media presence over the past month to two months and answer the following questions:

For organization #1:

• Describe the tone and language used.
• Who do you think their audience or audiences are? How can you tell? What assumptions is the writer of the post making about their audiences?
• What do you think their top two or three primary purposes are on social media? (For instance, they may be looking, first, to “sell,” but they might also want to display themselves as an “organization who cares,” or as a particularly reliable brand.)
• Find a post that you think is particularly successful or unsuccessful. Describe the post and why you think it succeeded or failed (be sure to contextualize this with the audiences and purposes you note above.)

For organization #2:

• Describe the tone and language used.
• Who do you think their audience or audiences are? How can you tell? What assumptions is the writer of the post making about their audiences?
• What do you think their top two or three primary purposes are on social media? (For instance, they may be looking, first, to “sell,” but they might also want to display themselves as an “organization who cares,” or as a particularly reliable brand.)
• Find a post that you think is particularly successful or unsuccessful. Describe the post and why you think it succeeded or failed (be sure to contextualize this with the audiences and purposes you note above.)

• Which organization do you think is more successful in achieving their purposes and reaching their target audiences? Why?

What advice would you give the less successful organization?

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