This was the first week I had my students in my social media class at the University of Louisville (#Freberg13) write their blog posts for their class. I have the students maintain a blog throughout this class. While blogs are considered to be a traditional social media platform, we do see them being incorporated throughout PR, advertising, and other marketing classes. However, I think it is key to allow students the opportunity to not only write content for the class, but also showcase their interests as well.
So, I asked the students this week to 1) introduce themselves to the class via Twitter and on their blog, 2) write a blog post talking about what is social media and 3) have the opportunity to write a blog post for extra credit on the guest speaker for that week.
We are going to have a lot of guest speakers come into the class, so this allows the students an opportunity to synthesize the content being presented as well as showcase their point of view.
I have been very impressed with all of the students and their blog posts so far – but I wanted to highlight a few that really did a good job in capturing what social media is. Diana discussed the current platforms that are being utilized right now in 2013 while Elizabeth highlighted some good resources on social media in her post. Amanda wrote about the timeline of social media and what she can do to apply this to her family’s business the Indiana Caverns. Jennifer discussed how social media has been incorporated across various platforms and brands including Oreo and Redbull strategically while sharing her personal favorite platform of Instagram. I also liked the fact that Justin provided a sports twist on social media for his blog post.
These are the type of posts I am looking for because you are able to see what the students are thinking about when it comes to social media, but also they are able to put on their own personal twist to it.
We also had our first guest speaker for my social media class for the semester. Sheryl Boddie (Connelly) from Marketing Media Management is a great social media professional – we met last year at the Emerging Media Summit event and I knew she would be a great professional to introduce to my students at UofL. She has done a great work for the company on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
Sheryl provided strategic insights, practical tips, and advice to the students in my social media class on not only how to approach social media for their clients, but also for themselves. The 50 minute class seemed to fly by since we all were having a great time with Sheryl. Special thanks again to Sheryl for taking the time out to share her expertise and insights with all of us.
Here are some of the student blog posts about Sheryl’s visit:
Overall, I am excited to see what the students do with their blogs this semester. I think this is an essential assignment for them to utilize not only for this class, but incorporate and maintain after the class to help their online personas.
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
Karen
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