AdPR 5750/7750 Syllabus

About the class

Social media play a key role in campaigns and the daily work of marketing, public relations and advertising professionals. This class will integrate the growing research in the area with social media practices in these industries, focusing on the three underpinnings of a successful social media activity: Analytics, Listening and Engagement. Check out our final reports!

Analytics

A word cloud of the social media activity of the Grady College

In studying social media, one objective of this class is to help students make a conceptual shift from thinking about groups of primarily passive audiences to individuals who consume, create, and exchange content.

This calls for a focus on patterns of interactions among users on social media to identifying communities and influential users within topical contexts.

Some of the applications that will be used are Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, Twitter Analytics, Excel and NodeXL (for network analysis).

Strategic Listening

We will use a range of social media monitoring services and data collection tools to follow targeted social media conversations. This availability of large data requires a strategic and prioritized listening.

Strategic listening means monitoring posted content in the context of users’ social interactions, focusing on key users and communities. The Crimson Hexagon listening platform will be used in class.

Engagement  

Students will work throughout the semester to evaluate social media presence and activity of an organization of their choice. Students will study the social media environments of their area of interests, evaluate the success of their activity, and write a report.  

Three Class Components:

(1)  In class. We will learn about the role of social media in campaigns and the daily work of marketing, public relations and advertising professionals. We will review social media-related research, including successful and unsuccessful engagement tactics, including case studies of campaigns. The analytical mechanisms and measurements will be introduced, providing the foundations for the lab activities.   

(2)  In lab. We will use a variety of social media analytics and listening tools to collect and analyze social media data.

(3) Group projects.  Each group will select an area of inquiry and will measure, listen and evaluate related activity on social media for an organization or topic.

An infograph made by a students who examined the Grady College social media activity.