What? So what? Now what?

A guide to reflecting on your community and content strategy

The task

The final part of this assessment requires a short reflective report (MAXIMUM 1,000 words) looking at how the project worked, what were the high (and low) points and how you would move it forward.

Sustainability is a key issue for most web projects, so you need to be thinking about it.

The report

• Broadly themed along these lines

1. Intro to project – what was it about?2. What you did3. So what happened?4. Now what?5. Conclusion?6. Appendix (not in word count): Original

On reflection

If you’ve never written a reflective report before a very simple model created by Driscoll is based on three steps:

1. What? – Did you do?2. So What? – What worked, what didn’t and why?3. Now What? – How would you do this differently

or build on it?

Reflecting on the task

Points to address

• What is the purpose of your site, and did that change following the launch of your site?

• What were the tools you used to support your community, how did they change and what worked best?

• What was the biggest number of hits you had on a post, and why do you think that was?

• How did you change your social media strategy? What worked best, what didn’t work?

• What would you change?

Key examples

YOU MUST REFERENCE KEY POSTS THAT SUPPORT THE POINTS YOUR ARE

MAKING AND LINK TO THEM IN THE REPORT

What reflection is not• Whinging about what

you didn’t - or couldn’t be bothered to - do.

• Claiming a social media campaign if you haven’t invested time and effort in it.

• Blaming other people if part of a team.

• Take responsibility for your own work.

How will I know?

You’ll need to be looking closely at the stats packages for the various tools that you used for your project.

They will give you some clear insights into what your audience thinks about what you have been doing

Twitter

A whole host of tools to look at how you have been using Twitter:

– Twittercounter– Tweetreach– Tweetstats– Topsy– Twittergrader– Twitalyzer

Did you try bit.ly?

But what does it all mean?

What isn’t a good campaign

Team effort – not anymore• Each member of a team must write a report based on own efforts

• Each member is responsible for their own submission

• This is not a blame game, but about what you did and how you dealt with situations and how you would do it differently.

• “I’m not working with XXXX again” is not a strategic review of your own work

(remember I’ll have everyone’s reports to draw on)

The submission

• Your 1,000-word report• A copy of your original strategy document

attached to it

• Submitted to the drop box within MCT507 on Blackboard (and a copy emailed to mottersheadgg@cardiff.ac.uk) no later than:

5pm January 13, 2012

Points to check for report and all posts

• Impact and coherence• Use of language• Spelling and grammar• Engagement

A reminder in the time remaining

You haven’t finished blogging, it runs until submission!!!!!

Advice from the original strategy briefing:

Not all of your posts will need to be long, in-depth articles but you will need to be blogging regularly.

Sites that aren’t updated regularly don’t do well – and 10% of the mark will be about frequent posting to

support that.