Final post pt. 2

Honestly, and I’m not sucking up: I enjoyed this class immensely. I was interested in the subject matter each and every week. Almost all the readings and assignments were engaging. I was excited to participate each week on the discussion boards. The interaction with both you and my classmates was extremely rewarding, and I grew immeasurably through our discussions as a writer, editor, producer and student.

That said, I have a few suggestions.

Final post pt. 1

My biggest takeaway from this course can be summarized by a quote from Kurt Vonnegut, from our first module:

“Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead–or worse, they will stop reading you.”

Final: Tar Nation

Thanks so much for the feedback on this original content assignment. I was happy with what I was able to get together for our purposes, and I agree that there is a lot of potential here. I’m serious about pursuing it, though perhaps after this program. I think there’s a lot of potential there. I’ve made a lot of the edits you recommended as well as some others.

Final: Press release

Here’s my re-edited press release for the final.

Module 14/Final: FAQs

Like you, I was pretty happy with my FAQs for Tar Nation as part of the Module 13 assignment. But I reworked it some more for the purposes of this week’s assignment and the final, to add some navigation aids as well as a few more questions.

Check it out here.

Thanks!

Module 13: Tar Nation

I have created a whole new site for my young UNC alumni network Web site, now called Tar Nation. With this assignment, I wanted to do more than some simple writings, though I have plenty on the site. I wanted to create an interactive site of interest to young alumni. And even though it’s what I would call in “beta,” there’s a ton there. I think this site could be very viable, especially for the audience I outlined in my proposal.

Module 12: Press release

Wilmington Star-News Press Alert

Community Interaction Division

1003 S. 17th Street

Wilmington, NC 28402

Contact: Ryan C. Tuck, community interaction manager

910.398.5757

ryan.tuck@starnewsonline.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Star-News launches new prep sports Web site

Prep sports fans can find message boards, photo galleries, player profiles

Observations

First, live blogging a sports game is tough.

Live blog: Patriots v. Colts

My thoughts on the experience will be attached in a separate post. Also, I thought you’d like to see a live blog post I “coached” the other day from one of our reporters here. She told me about the incident late, so I only had an hour or so to prepare her (I showed her the Bill Simmons blog, the MacWorld blog and the New York Times’ Caucus blog, all of which do great live posts). But I think she did a great job.

Anyway, on to mine …

Week 9: The Young Alumni Network

For this week’s continuation assignment, I will address questions raised from week 8, and I will further explain my proposal.

First, my responses to questions from my week 8 post:

First, what will be in it for young alumni to participate? How will their involvement be incented? Encouraged?

Like any online forum, there won’t be any outward incentive to participate. Compelling content will be the main attraction, in addition to the social networking options available. I expect this feature to be heavy on viral marketing – I intend to exploit facebook and myspace alumni groups to both promote and solicit content. Whether in contributing their own content or just readinig, I expect alumni to keep up with this feature because of the content and because of the opportunities to share in common experiences with other alumni. I talked a lot about promotion in my week 8 post: I hope to promote this feature through the General Alumni Association as well as facebook and myspace. I expect young alumni to be aware of the platform, and we’ll work to demystify the entire concept to encourage submissions as well as to attract readers. This isn’t going to be a passive reading experience as led by one person. This will be a dynamic arena for young alumni to share in their experiences together. I see it as a more centralized, professional facebook experience.

You mention that in your target audience the diversity is “even more unique” online. I didn’t catch what is unique about the audience offline. You mention percentages, but is this breakdown unique? Do you mean unique from general interest sites? Or unique within academia? And how is it yet more unique online?

I mean that the audience of the dailytarheel.com comes from all over. Referrers originate from some 25+ countries and every state in the U.S. While this aspect of online readership is common, I believe the diversity is even stronger with the DTH Web site, because of the alumni factor. People associate dailytarheel.com, like www.unc.edu, with their alma mater and they visit the sites with increasing regularity to “keep up.” The emergence of RSS and mobility, as well as the greater investment of both the University and the DTH in their online operations also has provided a boost in general traffic.

Using DTH blogs as examples, you see you will have to promote effectively and develop better content. I wonder if even those steps would significantly boost DTH blog traffic. Isn’t it possible people just don’t look to a campus paper for that kind of content? IT’s worth asking.

I think this is a valid point, which is why I propose the external partnerships I do. Facebook, www.unc.edu.edu – these will be vital to the success of such an initiative. We can’t expect all our readership potential to be realized through promotion on JUST dailytarheel.com

For your FAQs, continue to flesh these out. And I strongly suggest using language regular people use. “Platform” is not one of these words. I can’t get too warm and fuzzy about my “platform” of choice. I dive off one; I launch rockets from one. I relate to communities of interest. If that makes sense.

Yep. These were a bit jargon-y, as I didn’t know if I was preparing them for you or for the actual audience. Look to my new detailed proposal for more questions, as well as the answers!