Community-based Team Project Reflections

Team: Rebecca, April, Ramia and Brenda

¿Qué?
Our group intended to write a social media marketing plan to promote the course SPAN 232 and then implementarlo. Por la razón que ya existe un grupo en Facebook para Spanish community service learning, we wanted to make sure to incorporate it into our project. Also, because our professor has a Twitter page that she uses to promote Spanish community service learning, we wanted to use it to promote the class as well.

Although we knew that we wanted to use Facebook and Twitter, we did not plan out details as to how we were going to use them. What we ended up doing was sending out mass emails to registered student organizations (RSO) and departments on campus that we thought would have students that would be interested in the course. IN the email we included links to the Facebook and Twitter page so that students could learn more about the program and "like/follow" the pages if they desired, but we didn't do very much with those pages to reach out to our target population (students who might be interested in the course).

In general, we were successful in promoting SPAN 232 (via email) and were successful in writing a marketing plan. But we were not successful in taking full advantage of Facebook and Twitter as forms of social media.
--April

¿Y qué?
We learned various useful things from working on this project! We have come to understand that marketing is very complex and we need to study it a lot more to advertise our class efficiently and effectively. Effective marketing by way of social media requires innovative strategies. I don't think we were able to use all of our resource to create and implement the best strategies this time. I think we would need more group meeting time and more people than we have to promote our class in the best ways. Although the listervs we used are indeed social networks, in order to have a strong presence in popular social media we would have needed more people so that each one could focus on a medium. With a larger team we would have been able to make more frequent posts and to interact with people who are interested in our class.

To summarize, we learned that the task of social media marketing is challenging in many ways. To be well-prepared for a project like this, a team should have knowledge of marketing, several available team members, and focus on media that will make implementation of the plan effective and efficient.
--Rebecca

¿Ahora qué?
As the semester closes, we are finalizing our social media marketing plan. Included in our plan is a benefits section describing the various skills that are acquired and refined in the SPAN 232 course. Some of the skills listed are leadership, communication, time management and team building. Our team project has functioned as a reminder that these skills continue to grow through the SPAN 332 course. We were able to come together using these skills to collaborate ideas and develop a plan. While everything did not turn out the way we anticipated, the learning experience that we took from this project was not halted. The skills we acquired are very transferable to our future endeavors. Particularly, we learned to adapt to changes, which will be necessary as we transition from lives as college students to the work force.
--Ramia

Now that we have created a marketing plan for the course SPAN 232, we have many hop0es for the future of this program. Our idea in general was to bring awareness of the class, SPAN 232, to more students on campus. We wanted to exemplify the benefits and all the amazing experiences the students who take this class get to be a part of.

We hope that our marketing strategy can be used every year to increase the participation and interest in classes like SPAN 232 and 332. We tried to design a simple way of marketing this class using Facebook and Twitter. We know that by using these two popular social medias we can reach massive audiences on campus. Our steps include posting and tweeting a personal quote from a current student of 232 and 332 on a consistent basis, or a picture. This is something fairly simple that can be kept up with the semesters to come. We hope that with these ideas the promotion of SPAN 232 can continue.

Eventually, we hope that other classes and courses find out about all the benefits of courses taught this way and become interested in setting up their classes this way.
--Brenda