essay

Public Relations Campaign Using Social Media

(In-Class Activity: 3 credits)

Tasks to perform:

1. Watch PBS frontline TV program, “Generation Like,” to learn how companies use social media at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/generation-like/, and describe key takeaways in about half a page in word document.

2. If you have a facebook account, you may proceed to do the following task.

a. Follow Marketing Research Club at its facebook site (https://www.facebook.com/CalPolyMRC/) by pressing “Like” at the site.

b. Browse through some of the posts in the MRC facebook and like some of the posts you found interesting.

c. Select one or two post that you think your facebook friends would find interesting, and share them in the facebook site. You can do so by first visiting its site and clicking on “like” and “share” as in the example shown in the next page.

d. Wait for a few days to see reactions from the audience.

e. Write an essay in which you discuss why your friends responded to your post in the way they did. Were the responses what you expected before you shared the post? (If your friends’ reaction were different than you anticipated, do some experiments. For example, you may try again with a different post and see what happens.) Why or why not your audience responded in the way expected? You can write about your experiments in about half a page.

3. (Alternative task) If you don’t use facebook, you can do an alternative task.

a. Find an article that deals with how (a) business(es) use social media by searching an article published in a popular business trade periodicals such as Wall Street Journal, business week, and Economist.

b. Describe how the company featured in the article uses social media for marketing its products or services.

c. Describe how the company featured in the article uses social media for marketing its products or services.

d. Type your essay in about one page.

e. At the end of the essay, type “Reference” as a heading and provide a full citation of the article. Using either AMA style, Chicago style, or APA style. For example, you can see how to cite periodicals using AMA reference style in the second paragraph: https://www.ama.org/Documents/AMA_Reference_Style.pdf

4. Turn the assignment in a hardcopy. No email submission will be accepted.

Deliverables:

1. A short report on key lessons from the video in half a page. Everyone should do it whether or not you have facebook account.

2. A short essay:

a. Facebook users: A Short report on your observation of your friends’ responses on the shared post. Discuss why your friends responded to your post in the way they did. Were the responses what you expected before you shared the post? Why or why not? (half a page). This is one of the observational research methods.

b. For students who don’t use facebook: One page essay about case study as described above.

3. Appendix

a. Facebook users:

i. Printout that shows evidence of your having liked and follows MRC facebook page (not a particular post).

ii. Printout that shows the page of facebook site showing evidence that you shared at least one post with your friends

b. For students who don’t use facebook:

i. A copy of the article.

An example of the posts that should be printed and submitted as an appendix for facebook users