01 Jan 1. A description

You are to complete your Individual Project no later than the conclusion ofModule 8. For additional information about this project, review theIndividual Project Guidelines and Rubric.

You need to submit your completed Individual Project to the Individual Project Dropboxno later than Sunday 11:59 PM EST/EDT. (This Dropbox basket is linked to Turnitin.)

You are to complete your Individual Project no later than the conclusion ofModule 8. For additional information about this project, review theIndividual Project Guidelines and Rubric.

You need to submit your completed Individual Project to the Individual Project Dropboxno later than Sunday 11:59 PM EST/EDT. (This Dropbox basket is linked to Turnitin.)

MKT 580

Individual Website Project

The assignment is to design a personal website that will be used as a tool to promote your career. In today’s world, with jobs changing all the time, as well as companies assigning projects to outside teams that consist of individual consultants (project outsourcing), it is unlikely that many people will start and end their careers with the same organization.

One approach is to think of yourself as a one-person consulting company. During different times of your career, you may be steadily employed as a full-time employee for a company, and/or take on projects on a client-by-client basis. Either way, you need to think of yourself as a brand.

This project is designed to get you started on utilizing the Internet and social media to establish a brand image for yourself and to promote it. The idea is that this website should be the hub of all social media marketing activities for your personal brand.

Using the traditional communication model, you are the sender. Your target audience consists of all potential employers who are interested in hiring people with similar skills as the ones you have. The website, as well as all other social media tools that you are using and are linked to the site, is the message you are sending, encoded in the language of Internet marketing. The responses you want for the audience of your website is to:

1. Perceive you along the personal brand image you are promoting.

1. Find the website interesting, and visit it again.

1. Spread positive information about you and your website.

1. If they have no job available for you at the time, to keep you in mind for the future.

1. If they have a job available for someone with your skills, to invite you for an interview.

The specific design of the website is your decision. You can use any software you want for the design. Some of the tools are discussed in more detail in the presentation by Dr. Toole, which can be found in Module 1. Here is a quick summary of the things you want to keep in mind:

1. Your website should be easy to navigate.

1. The purpose of your website should be clear to the audience.

1. It should be aesthetically pleasing.

1. It should include your contact information.

1. It should include your resume.

1. It should have links to all social media that can add to your qualifications (for example: LinkedIn).

1. It should have a blog. In the blog, you need to have at least 3 blog entries for professional purposes. We will discuss them below.

1. It should have a link to your Twitter account. You will need to send 3 Twitter messages related to the topics of your three blogs.

1. It should have a section that displays some evidence of your skills and accomplishments. This section is essentially a portfolio and testimony of achievements.

1. You can add any other section(s) that may cover personal hobbies, activities, and interests, as long as they do not contradict or distract from the brand image you are trying to promote. If done properly, such a section can add to the brand image.

1. You should upload any relevant web analytics tools (such as Google Analytics) so that you can capture all traffic on the site and measure visitor engagement and any other behavior of interest.

The information can be any combination of text, video, pictures, or audio that gets the job done. There are no restrictions.

Assignment Deadlines:

By the end of Module 1, you need to submit a short (no more than one page) document that includes the following:

1. An identification of the industry and type of job you want to focus on. Essentially it is a description of the career path you want to pursue or are already pursuing.

1. A detailed description of the personal brand image that you are trying to promote via the website. What are the impressions, thoughts, and images about you that a visitor to your website should take away after exploring it?

After the submission, your instructor will provide you with some feedback to clarify any questions or issues that may arise.

By the end of Module 3, you need to submit a document including the text of your first blog and Twitter message.

By the end of Module 5, you need to submit a document including the text of your second blog and Twitter message.

By the end of Module 6, you need to submit a document including the text of your third blog and Twitter message.

You will receive feedback on all of them. This feedback is designed to help you revise them and improve them so that by the time you include them in your website, they will be more effective in promoting your personal brand image.

You are free to select any topic you want for your blog. Ideally you want a topic related to the career you are pursuing, because your audience will be interested in that. Your blog should demonstrate that:

1. You are someone who has deep knowledge about the industry/career you are focused on.

1. You are someone who is keeping up with the latest developments.

1. You are someone with critical thinking who can look at events or issues and go deep into them and provide original and creative insights.

1. You are a good writer and can communicate very well both in a medium-length format such as a blog or a very short one such as Twitter.

Ideally, you would like your website visitors to become engaged with your blogs:

1. At the most basic level, you want the readers to go beyond the title and actually invest the time to read the blog.

1. At the second level of engagement, you want your readers to have a positive experience and to feel that they got some valuable information, something they can use directly or trade as social capital. If the second level has been achieved, the readers are very likely to return to the blog.

1. At the third level, you want your readers to actually pass on the link to your blog to their friends and acquaintances via social media.

1. Finally at the highest level of engagement, they will do all three previous levels, but they will also invest time to respond to your blog and participate in discussions.

Some of the things you want to keep in mind when you write your blogs are:

1. Start with an attention-capturing title.

1. Provide a brief summary of the topic you will be discussing. Do not try to deal with multiple topics in a single blog. Stay focused.

1. Provide a brief explanation of why this topic is relevant to your audience. In other words, why should they care?

1. Describe briefly how this topic has been dealt with up until this point.

1. Provide your original thoughts, critiques, interpretations, and solutions to the issue at hand. This is where you should be providing original, innovative, and valuable content.

1. Finally, invite comments, be polite and courteous, and update your blog frequently.

Your Twitter messages should capture the essence of the topic you discussed in your blog, and make it likely that people will respond and re-tweet. The essence is a cool title and creativity in the selection of every single word.

By midnight Thursday of Module 7, you need to submit the brief document about the goals of your website and the link to your website as part of the discussion for Module 7. The idea is that you will use the feedback from your classmates to improve your website when you submit it at the end of the semester. Essentially the other students in the class function as a test market for your website.

By the end of Module 8, you need to submit a document including the following:

1. An identification of the industry and type of job you want to focus on. Essentially it is a description of the career path you want to pursue or are already pursuing. This would be an updated version of the document you submitted at the end of Module 1 based on your instructor’s feedback.

1. A detailed description of the personal brand image that you are trying to promote via the website. What are the impressions, thoughts, and images about you that a visitor to your website should take away after exploring it? This would be an updated version of the document you submitted at the end of Module 1 based on your instructor’s feedback.

1. A description of how you designed your website and why you think that the design and content you provided will generate the desirable personal brand image perceptions among the target audience. Your instructor will obviously look at your website, but this part of your document explains your thought process on why you made the particular choices that show up on the website.

1. A detailed web analytics report that includes all clickstream analytics of the visitors to your website as well as any other tools and metrics you decided to use. Your report should include tables and charts with an explanation of the metrics.

1. The link to your website. Your website at this point should include the updated blogs and Twitter messages based on the instructor’s feedback.

1. Your cell phone contact in case your instructor needs to reach you due to any technical difficulty with accessing your website.