My campaign for project three is “Facebook Forever”. I started the campaign to promote the social networking site Facebook. Through the research and interviews I conducted in project two I found that using Facebook can be beneficial in many ways and can have a significantly positive impact on social well-being. My campaign was meant to inspire people to use Facebook as a way to better their social lives and connect with one another. I chose to create a YouTube video, BuzzFeed article, and Twitter account to promote my Facebook campaign. I worked on my YouTube video first because I knew it would require effort in filming and editing.

My inspiration for the YouTube video was driven by my track coach from England. I remember her telling me the story of how she and her husband met when they were in Elementary school and then reconnected on Facebook over 25 years later after they had both been married and had their own children. They hadn’t seen each other in years and then after messaging on Facebook they met up and are now married with a new baby. I started the video with clips of a long distance college couple messaging each other on Facebook. This scene was also inspired by a true story. I wanted to be able to reach a wide audience and for my viewers to be able to relate to the message I was arguing in the video. My targeted audience was primarily young people aged 12-35 who use Facebook. However, I feel that many people would be able to relate to my video regardless of their age.  I showed clips of college students on Facebook, clips from the popular romantic film The Notebook, and clip of my track coach from England telling her personal story and how Facebook had had such a large impact on her life. I titled my video “How Facebook Saves Relationships” because in the video, Facebook is what allowed the young college couple to continue their relationship and it is was allowed my track coaches Octavia and Cleophus to reconnect after many years without seeing one another. I used clips from The Notebook to demonstrate how the characters Noah and Allie were not able to continue their relationship across a long distance because they didn’t have an easily accessible method of instant communication like Facebook.

The video took quite a lot of time to film and edit. I chose to use titles, voice-overs, transitions, and background music to enhance my video and make it more appealing to my audience. I used iMovie to edit the video because I knew it had all of the tools I would need to make the video and upload it to YouTube. As soon as my video was posted to YouTube I began promotion. I sent it to some of my friends and family and posted it to both my class and campaign twitter accounts. After much promotion I was able to get 60 views, 3 comments, and 1 subscriber.

I made my Twitter account Facebookiscoolest where I promoted the hashtag #FacebookForever. I tried to make the graphics on my Twitter look sleek and professional in order to legitimize my page and make it seem credible. I followed many pages about social media, social media marketing, and popular accounts and favorited tweets that were relevant to my campaign to try and get noticed, get responses, and attain more followers. On Twitter I followed 127 accounts and was able to get 36 followers on my Facebook campaign account. I posted tweets that I thought people would find interesting or funny. I used memes, photos, and gifs. Twitter was also very useful in promoting my other genres because I was able to post links to my YouTube video and BuzzFeed article.

I wrote a BuzzFeed article titled “10 Reasons Why Facebook is a Sorority Girl’s Best Friend”. In the article I used gifs of famous women to portray my feelings as a sorority girl on Facebook. I chose to use celebrities because pop-culture is appealing to most young women. I used gifs and online jargon to make my article more laid-back and humorous. This genre was aimed at college students, particularly girls in a sorority. I chose to write this article because I found that after coming to college and joining a sorority I use Facebook a lot more than I used to and I find it to be very useful in almost everything dealing with the sorority. So far on my BuzzFeed article I have 29 views, 18 of which are viral.

            I started promoting my genres as soon as possible. All three genres have been up and running for a couple weeks now. I have consistently promoted my genres since I first published them but when I noticed a plateau in responses and views I would begin posting links and tweets to help further promote my genres. I used three different social media outlets to promote my campaign. I found Twitter to be the most effective in promoting my campaign because it allows for information to be sent out quickly and easily. It only takes a few seconds to read a tweet and it is easier to get responses and follows on Twitter.

            I wanted to incorporate multiple rhetorical appeals in my genres in order to appeal to a wider audience and promote my campaign more effectively. I used pathos in my YouTube video, a combination of pathos and logos in my BuzzFeed article and a combination of logos, ethos, and pathos on my Twitter account.

            The composition process for project 3 differed from project 2 in that project 3 was more about using the information that you found to create a new mode for argument. Project 3 required more rhetorical appeals to be employed in order to persuade the audience to be interested in your genres and follow your argument. For project 3 I found it was very important to consider your audience and who you are appealing to when deciding which genres to use. I had to consider what genres I would create and how my audience would react to them. Project 3 was more challenging than project 2 because it required a lot of creativity, time, and critical thinking. If I could give myself advice before beginning project 2 it would be to carefully decide your topic and how you will be able to make a campaign which argues one side of the argument. I found my topic to be quite interesting but very difficult to develop a campaign and promote. It was hard to find a relevant topic that had reliable and scholarly sources.