Lab 11: Going Social

Integrated Strategic Communication: COMM 306
syllabus | schedule of events | student blogs


Chapter 18 discusses social media and its uses for strategic communication.  In college, we know better than many about the abundance of social media outlets available to Internet users today.

For this lab, choose a local or  regional brand that functions where you are currently living. Assess this brands use of its website and social media. Your analysis should focus on the following questions about developing winning web content from your text book (page 363-364):

  • What is the goal of this company’s use for this media outlet?
  • What content does the company included?
  • How often is it edited?
  • How interactive is it (are users using it and how can you tell)?

For your brand, assess their presence on the following 10 platforms:
Why these ten platforms? These are some of the most commonly used social media sites today. It is likely that your business may not have a presence on all sites. If your business does not have a presence on a site, explain that and give some remarks about what a company could do with a presence on that site.

  1. The company website
  2. Twitter
  3. Facebook
  4. YouTube
  5. Pinterest
  6. LinkedIn
  7. Instagram
  8. Industry-specific social media (Yelp, Amazon, OpenTable, MySpace, etc.)
  9. Foursquare
  10. Any other social media that you find linked through any one of the above or through a Google search for the brand or its locations.

You should answer all four questions for each of the 10 platforms.

Submitting the assignment

To submit this assignment, create a blog post on your website titled “Lab 11: Going Social.” In this blog post, list your findings. Start with an introduction so that your reader knows what they are about to see (really what you are doing is conducting a communication audit of a company’s use of social media, so say that!). Then, use headers inside your post to move through each of the 10 platforms, answering the questions. End with a summary paragraph about your findings.

Oh! Don’t forget to include links to each of the company’s presences under each heading. Feel free to show sample images or videos, with appropriate citations.