Content Strategy Analysis

Learning Outcomes

• Demonstrate key concerns related to organizational content strategy.
• Employ qualitative and quantitive methods to analyze audience engagement.
• Demonstrate conventions of the informal report as a professional genre.

Description

Project Overview

In this project, you will offer a professional assessment of an organization's digital content strategy. The goals of digital content strategy include:

• Intentionally designing information across an array of genres and modes.
• Delivering clear and appropriate content for users’ needs in specific contexts.
• Aligning the goals of organizations and users.

You will identify an organization and observe the content they write across digital platforms. Specifically, you will:

1. Analyze a minimum of three of the organization's communication channels (their website, social media platforms, blogs, etc.).
2. Employ qualitative and quantitative research strategies to make sense of the organization's public communication strategies in online environments.
3. Write an informal report that analyzes the organization's content strategy, online writing conventions, and practices for circulating information to engage audiences.

Guidelines

The end result of this unit will not be an academic essay. Instead, you will format your analysis as an informal report with the following components:

• Header: To/From/Date/Subject
• Introduction: Professional documents start with the purpose of the correspondence and a quick synthesis of your main points/findings. You will introduce the purpose of the report, the organization you selected, and the three communication channels that you’re organizing, followed by key findings.
• Context: Provide context about the organization you chose, especially their goals and target audience(s).
• Methods: Here you will describe the processes you engaged to collect the data used in your informal report. You won't report on your findings / your analysis in this section, but simply describe how you collected the data.
• Discussion: Here, you will present the outcomes of your research and your analysis of the organization’s three communication channels. Note the different kinds of messages and texts the organization shares across channels, pulling examples of effective communication and audience engagement to support your analysis. This section should include at least one multimodal visualization of quantitative data you collected. You are also welcome to include screenshots as necessary, provided they include clear captions and alt-text.
• Conclusions: After the discussion, you will offer a concise evaluation of the organization’s content strategy based on the organization’s goals and their target audience. You will then offer suggestions and / or action steps.

Requirements

Your report should reflect the guidelines above and demonstrate use of both qualitative and quantitative research methods strategies. The final document will be 3-4 pages and employ professional block-letter formatting: single-spaced, no indents, and a full space between paragraphs.