Due Date (subject to change): Week 10 Friday 5 pm
Word count: 1,500 words (± 10%, excluding the references, tables, figures and appendices)
Details: The purpose of this assignment is to actively engage with a social media marketing platform. It would require you to apply various concepts and tactics/strategies learnt in the lectures to populate, promote and measure the success of your blog.
o The report will be automatically subject to plagiarism check
o Feedback will be returned to you via FLO
o Relevant penalties: For late submissions without approved extensions, 5% of total
allocated marks will be deducted per day; No marks beyond 72 hours late.
The assignment will involve the following steps:
Step 1: Create a blog/website using any platform of your choice.
o There are several good options – see this comparison list
o I recommend one of the following: Wix, Weebly, Site123 or Substack
Step 2: By the end of Week 2, submit the link to your blog on FLO (the dropbox is located in Module/week 2).
Step 3: Aim to post in your blog regularly (at least one blog post, every week from Week 3 to 9) about social media marketing related activities that you come across, within your ‘theme’ of your choice. Your blog should feature insightful, interesting and thought-provoking posts about social media marketing matters. Your blog posts may include:
o social media activities by companies,
o examples of successful use of social media activities that you have come across
and your thoughts on it,
o examples of poor use of social media activities,
o a comment on different social media marketing tools/platforms o comments on efficient use of social media marketing,
Step 4: As part of your regular blog activity, you should use various promotional tactics to promote your blog. You can use the promotional tactics learnt in the lectures, or from any reference material/journal article, etc. or any other creative ideas. Your aim is to be a successful content creator in this area.
Step 5: You should use objective measures to assess the success of your blog and your promotional tactics. You can use the metrics and analytics discussed in the lecture, or from any reference material/journal article, etc.
Step 6: The final step is to write a report on your blogging activities during the semester, promotional activities and a discussion on the evaluation of the blog using objective measures.
Report structure
1. Introduction
Describe your blog. What is the blog about? What are the thought processes behind the blog posts and your chosen theme? Any plan?
2. Process
Choice of the platform and reasons behind it; discussion on updates – i.e., frequency, timing (day and week), and any other specific detail about the updates.
3. Content
Discussion on choice of the content within the chosen theme.
Discussion of the relevance and significance of social media marketing within the chosen theme.
Explanation of how is it interesting, relevant and reflective?
How does it add value to the reader?
4. Promotion
Discussion of your promotional activities (intended vs implemented).
Reflection on social media promotion best practices and whether they have been incorporated.
5. Measurement and Results
What measurement tools have you used and why?
What did you find i.e., analytics + pros and cons of the chosen metrics?
6. Conclusion
Reflect on what worked and what did not work regarding process, content creation, promotion, etc?
What did you learn: Was your blog successful or not? Why? some insights?
What did you discover and learn about blogging and social media promotions?
Some guidelines and additional information
You are expected to provide around 4 good quality references.
You must reference the articles following Harvard Referencing Guide and be consistent.
Don’t include the content of you blog posts in the main report (Use appendix for that
purpose if necessary). It is your reflections and thought process that we are interested in.
Assessment Criteria (Report)
You will be assessed based on the following points:
Process - choice of the platform, frequency, timing and updates (15%)
Content of the blog - interesting, reflective and well-written (30%)
Promotion of the blog – creative, regular and thoughtful (25%)
Measurement – objective measures (15%)
Discussion – overall discussion in the report; clarity of thoughts, justifications, and
demonstration of critical thinking (15%)