As part of your professionalization, your social media will be on display whether you want it to or not. Having no social media presence can be as harmful as having a reckless social media presence, according to the Society for Human Resources Management (2015).  The Social Media Package addresses the connections between digital presence, public persona, and professionalization.

Assignment Overview

The Social Media package focuses on a set of ubiquitous writing platforms and examines the benefits, constraints, pitfalls and consequences of developing your personal brand online. Students will practice conscious social media engagement via this assignment, in which they will:

• Discuss their relationship with social media, as well as social media’s role in developing their public persona 
• identify and write a synopsis of three social media platforms that are popular in their professional field 
• begin building a professional social media presence through three (3) platform posts (one for each platform) that contribute to their professional web presence
• Reflect on choices and aims

Post topics should demonstrate a professional presence and support the goals of good social media practice.  

PROJECT IS DUE: October 16 @ 5 pm (iCollege)

Eligible Media

In your presentations, you explored the digital presence across a broad variety of platforms. For this assignment, however, your media choices will be restricted to just social media. However, there are some platforms that are field-specific, such as iMDB and the film industry, which are also allowable. Avoid LinkedIn if you can, as we will be building those pages in our next project, but if you want to use LinkedIn, make sure you are writing a full post.

You must select three, so if you are a social media novice or do not actively engage in social media, you can make fresh accounts or mimic the platform format, instead. You might also want to read the article from the SHRM linked in the introduction to this page (above). 

No matter what platforms you choose, they should be relevant to your career goals and your posts must be professionally focused. Below is a list of common, relevant media from which you can choose:

• Instagram
• Twitter
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Tumbler
• Pinterest
• Goodreads
• TikTok

You may also consider field specific sites like:

• Flickr (photographer second site)
• Soundcloud (sound/music)
• iMDB (film/media)
• Discord (tech/gaming)
• One you propose – please email me for approval if you want to include something not mentioned here

Project Format

Your format will be one continuous document and be divided by headers, using a subheading for each section. Your project should be completed in Word or another accessible platform in which I can make notes (avoid Pages, which is not accessible to anyone without a Mac; you must submit as a downloadable document and not a web page, so if you work in Google docs, please download your finished product and submit as a file).

The order and format for your project is as follows:

Introduction (with your authors block in the left or right corner)

Introduce the project with a brief overview of your relationship with social media, how you consider its role in developing your public persona, and what social media you selected. 

Social Media Platforms 

In this section of the project you will include each of your platforms. Title each subsection with the name of the platform. Beneath your platform name, you will include the following, in order:

• a two-paragraph synopsis of the platform and a link to your post: The synopsis is a summary and should include a brief history, how the platform is most often used, who in your field is influential on the platform and an example of why you cite them. 
• Links to your platform post/posts completed for this project

Reflection

The final section will be a 1-page reflection that summarizes what you took away from this project, how you might continue with your social media with respect to your public persona, and what your intentions were with your posts, overall. 

References

If you use any secondary sources to support your project, please conclude with an alphabetized References page.