Classes, Writing Across Platforms

Why I’m Still Teaching My Students to Write For Facebook… Despite Everything

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There has been a lot of talk in recent months about the decline of Facebook’s popularity, particularly among teens and young adults. Coupled with that, Facebook announced that there will be a sharp decline in brand page content showing up in News Feeds starting January 2015.This begs the question, should we still teach students to write for Facebook?

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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!

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Classes, Classroom Activities and Exercises, Social Media, Teaching Social Media

My Fall 2014 Social Media Class Project In Review

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shepherdcommunication-socialmedia
Typo! What happens when I Tweet from my phone while in a rush. :P

In the last few posts, I’ve been writing about my Social Media class and the semester project we’ve been doing. To recap, students create a social media content strategy for our department’s social media (the details of the assignment are on the previous post). They then use this plan to create content for the department. They create content 3  times, each time they are creating content for a certain time period. The content is presented to the class and then goes through an editorial process (i.e.., I grade them and make any needed mods) if needed before being published.

With the semester winding down, I want to share some of the work the students have been doing!

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Classes, Classroom Activities and Exercises, Social Media, Teaching Social Media

A Look at My Social Media Content Strategy Assignment

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Several weeks ago I mentioned that a big change in my Comm 322 Social Media class this semester (syllabus), is that students will be working to create the social media for our department’s Twitter, Instagram, and a brand new blog.

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Classes, Teaching Social Media, Writing Across Platforms

You Can Tweet a Quote Directly From a Pew Report

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I teach Comm 335 Writing Across Platforms (see syllabus), a class that in part looks at writing news releases and other content for the web. One tactic we talk about is creating Tweetable content for our social media releases assignment. PitchEngine – the social news release website we use for this assignment – enables users to write ‘quick facts’ that readers can Tweet.

So when I saw today a similar, more streamlined approach used by the Pew Internet project in their reports, I had to make a quick blog post about it. I was reading the Cell Phones, Social media, and Campaign 2014 report when I stumbled across this.

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Classes, Strategic Campaigns

Working with Charles Town Now: Shepherd Students Aim to Help #StartCT

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This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for details.

I can’t believe it’s mid October and … even scarier, it is midway through the semester! It’s been fun but it is moving fast!

One thing that has made this semester so fun and rewarding is our brand new COMM 470 Strategic Campaigns class in the Department of Communication at Shepherd University that I had the opportunity of adding to our curriculum.

Continue reading Working with Charles Town Now: Shepherd Students Aim to Help #StartCT →

A Social Media Education Blog by Matthew J. Kushin, Ph.D.