Fluent Essays

ENG302 Sean Moxley-Kelly Research Report Context For this project, you will take on the role of a Social Media Manager/Digital Marketing Strategist for a newly-launched company. You will research and write an informational report that provides background information about “best practices” regarding how businesses in your industry use social media to engage with the public and promote their business. Your task is to produce one deliverable for a newly-hired Chief Marketing Officer: a written research report, which is detailed on the following pages. The new CMO was hired just after you, but is now your direct superior, meaning you interact with them regularly. They have considerable marketing experience. However, the CMO’s previous experience was in a different industry – they are entirely new to your industry. The rest of the marketing team is also pretty new to this industry. The CMO has requested this report from you (and similar contributions from other team members) as a way to benefit from your more local expertise. The Assignment To get started, you will select a specific industry that you have interest in and imagine details of a start-up organization in that industry. You should be able to define that industry by describing the kinds of economic activities it engages in (products or services produced) and by providing examples of extant companies that operate in that industry. For instance, if I wanted to write about “the meat substitute industry” I could say that it’s an industry that produces products, sold at grocery stores and sometimes in restaurants, that provide plant-based protein in meals. These usually strive to replicate the taste and texture of meats. Example companies include MorningStar Farms and Quorn, and recently Impossible Foods. As an alternative approach, you could select a country (other than the U.S.) and examine the social media marketing practices in that country. Most businesses also increasingly operate in a global environment that requires employees to be aware of and sensitive to international cultures. Therefore, employees in the business world are expected to be familiar with the values, expectations, and norms of other countries. In this case, you could draw on your own experience as well as secondary research to prepare your superiors for possible expansion into international markets. You might, for example, focus on social media marketing practices in China, which are different from those in the United States. This version of this assignment substitutes “a particular country” for “a particular industry” but otherwise operates the same and has the same requirements. Note: The industry you select for the Report will form the basis of the work you do in the Proposal Project, where you will build on this work to propose specific strategies that your fictional company should use as they roll out their social media plan. So please think carefully about the fictional company you create and the competitor brand you choose. You will be working with these ideas for the remainder of the semester. Research You have access to an excellent resource in your efforts to be persuasive: Arizona State University’s library database. You will use that database to develop expertise on your chosen topic. Your final report will include a minimum of three sources, at least two of which must be drawn from these databases. You should additionally do primary research on a competitor’s marketing practices. You should choose a specific company and a specific social media platform they use. For example, you are imagining that you are an athletic shoe company and you decide to research Nike’s social media use. Now you will choose one of its many social media platforms to research: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Tumblr, Snapchat, Pinterest, etc. You will only choose 1 social media platform to research. I suggest you choose a social media platform that you use and understand well. Written Report Assignment Requirements You will produce a short, ~4-5 page report for the CMO and the rest of the marketing team. Your primary goal is to provide information that will assist your audience as they begin making decisions about whether and how to pursue a social media marketing campaign on your selected platform. While you are not trying to persuade the audience to a particular course of action, the report is nevertheless a persuasive document. You are presenting critical insights, drawn from your own experiences, your critical thinking, and your research. In other words, you are making a claim about what is important, what should be known. You must persuade the audience to take your assessment of the topic seriously. Your report must contain report-style framing material, such as a title page (including the title of your report, a graphic, your name), sections and section headers, and a references list in APA format. Grading Criteria (Report) All submissions will be graded according to five criteria, listed below. Each criteria will receive a grade of 0 (Incomplete), 1 (Satisfactory), 2 (Good), or 3 (Excellent). These are approximately equivalent to F, C, B and A grades. The Final Assignment Grade represents an approximate average of the grades on the individual criteria. So, for instance, earning a “2” on the first two criteria, and a “3” on the remaining three criteria, will result in a low “A” or high “B” assignment grade. Exact final grades may be a little higher or lower based on intangibles and the overall effectiveness of the document. For this assignment, the grading criteria are: Key points: Is the purpose of the document clear? Does the stated purpose reflect the actual purpose? Are there central points (about what should be known)? Are they clear? Do they receive appropriate emphasis? Discussion: Are the insights brought by the writer (for the reader) clear? Is the relevance of the report to the reader evident? Are the implications or value of the document evident? Support/use of research: Are the sources used credible and relevant? Do they contribute to key point and discussion? Are they valued appropriately in the text? Organization and structure: Does the organization reflect the purpose and priorities of the writer? At the level of paragraphs? At the level of sentences? Does it align with the reader’s expectations of this genre? Polish/Proof: Does the document show care and attention? Is it grammatically correct? Are images (or other inserts) placed correctly in the text? Are the small markers typical of this genre included? Are sources cited correctly in-text and in the bibliography? Report Outline Before You Start Writing: *Find your personal hypothesis Ex: “The primary trends to understand are…” *This is the starting point to your research and should help you develop a direction to focus your research and learning. Elements: (Besides Text) These are as-needed. · Title Page: Title, name, names of primary reader(s) and their title & organization, names of writer(s) and their title & organization & your contact email, date · Table of Contents (see the sample paper under “Files”) · Abstract or Executive Summary · Bibliography (minimum of 5 sources, 2 from scholarly sources) Elements: (Text): 1. Introduction: · Announce subject · What/who the text was prepared for (context) · “Roadmap” the report (what are the sections and subsections) · Why this will be helpful to the audience 2. Background (sometimes included in Introduction section) · Give background info · Provide context · Clarify key terms 3. Results/Findings · Two to five major results – each result is a pattern, theme or takeaway the audience should have · Sections and subsections indicate that you are addressing major results in systematic fashion · Content you might address in each subsection: · Detailed definition/description of pattern, · specific examples drawn from your research of that pattern, · relevant numbers and stats (likes, retweets, and/or replies, perhaps replies subdivided into positive and negative or other categories, perhaps all of these things over time/trends), · reasons for this pattern, · context for this pattern (references to secondary research), · assessment of effectiveness of this pattern, · challenge/conflicts related to this pattern, · recent news related to this pattern, · etc. 4. Discussion/ Impact (sometimes included in Conclusion section) a. Discussion of significance of overall changes for your audience 5. Conclusion · Restate and summarize main points · Re-emphasize the importance of the work Guide to Selecting a Topic For Report Assignment First, consider this to be a report that is particular to an industry – what is happening in that industry and why. Your audience is involved in, and cares very specifically about, that industry. You should be starting with an industry that you are interested in, and researching to understand what is happening there. You should be able to define that industry by describing the kinds of economic activities it engages in (products or services produced) and/or by providing examples. For instance, if I wanted to write about “the meat substitute industry” I could say that it’s an industry that produces products, sold at grocery stores and sometimes in restaurants, that provide plant-based protein in meals. These usually strive to replicate the taste and texture of meats. Example companies include MorningStar Farms and Quorn, and recently Impossible Foods. I think some trends in this industry are towards non-soy proteins, and generally towards rapid growth. But I will research more to learn about these trends, then think about how Gen Z are shaping it. In this example, it is very clear what is in-scope for my report and what is not. Obviously I’m not talking about beef, but also I’m not talking about blocks of tofu. It is important that you have a clear scope for your topic because this is a presentation. People are making time for your presentation because they involved in your selected industry, and you need to make a clear case that you have addressed the topic thoroughly, and not gone off-topic. WARNING: Not everything is an industry. “Social media marketing” is not an industry. It is a practice engaged in my many industries. Here is a list of industries generated in discussion with my students. I’m not promising all of these will be easy to write reports, but I think these would probably work: · Meat replacement industry (as above) · Meat or dairy industries · Dietary supplement industry (vitamins or workout supplements? They’re distinct, I think.) · Gyms/fitness centers · Coffee shops (Starbucks and independent coffee shops? Or just one of those categories?) · Educational software · Video game publishing · eSports (might include game developers who run events, e.g. Riot Games, or team owners, or maybe both) · Grocery stores · Malls, specifically retail real estate development · Department stores (big, diverse retailers that focus on apparel, for instance Nordstrom’s, but not WalMart) · Airline industry · Cruise ship industry · Music labels · Apparel industry (“fast fashion” retailers or “high fashion”?) · Cosmetics industry · Higher education · Fast food industry · Fast casual dining industry (i.e. Chipotle and other counter-serve places) · Alcohol (should probably be narrowed to either hard alcohol, beer, or wine) · Legal cannabis industry · Nonprofits (environmental nonprofits, animal care/adoption nonprofits, or some other specific sector) · Urban/electric personal transportation (i.e. not cars or public transportation, so powered bikes, scooters, electric skateboards, etc) The possible industries are possible to research but challenging: · Electric cars (tricky because it’s sort of a subset of the larger car industry, but I think it’s doable) · Media companies (tricky because these companies operate in many overlapping areas – it’s difficult to understand what Disney does because it does everything)