Category Archives: Strategic Campaigns

Classes, Classroom Activities and Exercises, Strategic Campaigns

Use this Worksheet in Your Class to Design a Message Map and Key Messages for a Communication Campaign (Part 2 of 2)

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Teaching Students to Develop Message Maps

In the first post in this series I provided an activity to teach students what key messages are and how they can begin learning to identify and extract key messages. If you haven’t read it, please do so before proceeding.

Below, students take the brainstorm activity and go out and get some feedback for their key messages. Then, they develop a message map.

Continue reading Use this Worksheet in Your Class to Design a Message Map and Key Messages for a Communication Campaign (Part 2 of 2) →

Classes, Classroom Activities and Exercises, Strategic Campaigns

How to Teach Key Messages to PR and Marketing Students: Activity Included (Part 1 of 2)

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This post may contain affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, if you click a link and make a purchase, I will make a commission. Please read my disclosure for details.

Teaching Students to Develop Key Messages is a Great Public Relations Class Activity

As a kid, I paid more attention to the lyrics than the rhythm or the beat. I also probably spent more time thinking about how authors expressed the ideas in a story than the story itself.

Maybe that’s why messaging is one aspect of brand building and campaign planning that has always fascinated me. While people often find the process of building key messages tedious, I see it as the fun kind of tedious.

This is part 1 of a two-part series on how I teach students to develop key messages and build a message map in my Strategic Campaign class.

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Classes, Classroom Activities and Exercises, Strategic Campaigns

What’s Changing? Creative Briefs and Using Story Arcs in Pitch Presentations

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It’s that time of year. The tradition must continue! It is time, of course, for my ‘What’s Changing’ blog post to start off the semester. I’ve been writing these posts for years as a way to highlight key changes I have in mind for the semester ahead. For example, here’s last semester’s post.

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Communication Research, Social Media, Strategic Campaigns, Teaching Social Media, Writing Across Platforms

Here are my social media, communication research, persuasion and message design, strategic campaigns and writing across platforms class syllabi for this year

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This semester has certainly crept up on me. I had a very busy winter break. The realization that this semester has crept up on me has me realizing a few other things, things that have gotten away from me.

One such thing that has gotten away from me is keeping the syllabi on this blog up to date.  As longtime readers of this blog probably know, my mission here is to share what I’m doing in the classroom as well as what I am thinking about as it relates to teaching and learning social media and related fields. While my primary means of doing that is via blog posts, from the start I also set out to share syllabi. Yet, as we turned the page to 2019 I realized I have neglected to share syllabi from anything after 2017, sans my 2018 persuasion and message design syllabus.  Eek!

Continue reading Here are my social media, communication research, persuasion and message design, strategic campaigns and writing across platforms class syllabi for this year →

Classes, Strategic Campaigns

Fall 2017 Strategic Campaign Client Presentations: Reflections and Learning Opportunities

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This semester, my COMM 470 Strategic Campaigns students had the opportunity to take on an international non-profit as a client. That non-profit was Children of Uganda.  Children of Uganda seeks to give a hand up to women and children in Uganda. Among its efforts, Children of Uganda helps put Ugandan children through school and provides micro-funding for income generating projects for Ugandan women.

It was an amazing learning opportunity to partner with the passionate and dedicated team at Children of Uganda. It was very inspiring for me. And I believe it was for the students as well.

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Classes, Strategic Campaigns, Teaching Social Media

Reflections on how My Strategic Campaigns class helped #StartCT

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This past semester was the inaugural offering of Comm 470 Strategic Campaigns in the Department of Communication here at Shepherd. And with that, I’d like to offer a brief reflection on the experience. It was a great learning and growing experience for both me and the students!

Continue reading Reflections on how My Strategic Campaigns class helped #StartCT →