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Dennis Wang
Dr. De Piero
Writing 2, Winter
17 February 2016
How to be ahead of the trend? Think digitally:
An analysis of the social media strategy.
At the start of the twenty first century, the rising dominance of technology is slowly
becoming an integral part of our daily lives. The way we communicate, with family members or
friends, receive current events, purchase items, and the way many other components work are
slowly moving into the vast boundless regions of the digital world. Through such medium, we

Commented [1]: Any chance of "hooking" me more

here, Dennis? I already know this -- what can you lay
down here that'll get me revved up about this WP2?
Commented [2]: I want you to take another look at
how you're using commas in this sentence (and where
you could use something else instead to give your
reader more clarity).

also gain provide a flow of ideas, awareness and influence. Due to such major changes, social
media is slowly becoming a major channel for communications between people, businesses, as
well as suppliers and consumers. In this paper, the usage of social media will be explored

Commented [3]: Get to it, Dennis. I'm slowing down

and losing momentum.

through scholarly articles The Social Strategy cone: Towards a new framework for evaluating
social media strategies, by Robert Effing and Ton A.M. Spil, exploring the three different stages
of maturity of using social media, But not all social media are the same: Analyzing
organizations social media usage patterns, by Eun Go and Kyung Han You, a published
research on the social media application used by companies, along with New York Times article
Luxury Brands and the Social Campaign, by Mark Scott on the increase presence of online
advertisement. By comparing and contrasting the analysis of each piece, as well as the usage of
language, and style format, one can see that these articles, despite talking about similar topics,
employ different content and analysis to discuss the usage and impact of social media to our
society.

Commented [4]: I need more of a specific, driving

thesis statement, Dennis. What, exactly, are you going
to be arguing here? And what specific points are you
going to use to make that case? What about the
conventions within this genre will you be emphasizing?
And what about moves? Also: do you think itd help
your reader (technically, me) to lay out which specific
sources youll be using to make your case?
The introductory paragraph is so crucial *for readers*
because it provides them with the expectations for your
whole piece. The more direction you give me, the
more focused *my reading* will be --- and the more I'll
be able to take away from your piece.

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One of the main goals in using social media is reaching out to an audience. In the
perspectives of many people, companies, and other organizations, defining the objective and goal
for using social media is essential because it is an important part of the social media strategy,
identifying who companies are selling or communicating to and how to do it. Like what Janet
Boyd in the article Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking), said, in discovery of ones objective, one
must also consider objective facts, logos, simmering emotion, pathos, and credibility, ethos
(Boyd 98). In the scholarly articles, a clear objective, the logistics of social media usage, is
defined, making the focus of its target audience, communication and business analysts, easier to
identify. In The Social Strategy cone: Towards a new framework for evaluating social media

Commented [5]: I'd like you to find a way to "say" all of

this in half of the words/space.

strategies for example, its objective for social media is meant more as an analysis of the social
media phenomenon and its relation to a business model, aiming to examine the profound impact
and effect it has for many organizations in terms of its goals, sales, marketing and customer
feedbacks by evaluating which stage companies are at currently. To back up this claim, the
article by Effing and Spil presented numerous examples from different companies-sports
advertisement to local restaurants, that explained their reasons for using social media. One of its
subject, a local restaurant for example, stated that they have one clear goal in social media: to
attract clients in a higher age bracket (30-50)-from their traditionally younger customers
(Effing, Spil).
Likewise, article But not all social media are the same: Analyzing organizations social
media usage patterns also employed similar concept by defining its goals first, introducing the
typology of social media, such as blogs and social networking sites and analyzing how
organizations utilize them for advertisement and e-commerce communication. Specifically, the
article analyzes how effective different social media application such as official websites and

Commented [6]: I think you wanted to use dashes

here to off-set a specific piece of info from the rest of
the sentence. Here's how you could do that:
To back up this claim, the article by Effing and Spil
presented numerous examples from different
companies -- sports advertisement to local restaurants
-- that explained their reasons for using social media.
Commented [7]: OK, so what kind of objective are we
talking about? Companies' objectives for using social
media? Or the researchers' objective(s) for studying it?
Also: how does this relate back to your main
argument? If I'm having trouble understanding why
(which I am, a bit), you might need to work it into this
paragraph more explicitly.
Commented [8]: No need to spell out the super-long
title multiple times. If you're going to reference
something like this more than once, I'd give it an
abbreviation in parentheses *right after* the first time
you use it -- that signals to your reader, "Yo, I'm not
spelling out this whole title each time, so be ready for
this abbreviated/truncated version."
Commented [9]: So what discipline(s) are these two
pieces from?

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widgets are at delivering the product information and purchase methods to consumers.
Connecting it to Mike Bunns How to Read like a Writer, two of the main questions for any
article are what is the authors purpose for this piece of writing and who is the intended
audience (Bunn, 79). Through these references the articles have provided, one can see that
through research, context and content analysis, the scholarly pieces considered the applications
of ethos and logos, via experiments and surveys to reinforce the credibility and professional
status of a research paper by establishing the cause of the research initiation, such as the

Commented [10]: What were their experiments?

What'd they manipulate? What possible causation
were they attempting to understand?
What was their survey? What qs did they ask?

maturity stages of social media, and analyzing the effects later as it defines its goal, the
effectiveness of the strategies.

What insights do these methodological decisions give

us in terms of how different disciplines try to
understand social media in different ways?

When writing an article, it is crucial to consider how the structure of language and
formatting style will appeal to the readers. The scholarly articles for example, are written more in
technical language. Incorporating numerous jargons, data analysis, and also an index for the table
of contents,and references at the end, the two articles differ from New York Times article in that
its content focuses on the strategical aspect and applications of using social media, defining the
different functions and methods of usage whereas article Luxury Brands and the Social

Commented [11]: Didn't you already get at this?

Campaign appeals to the more pragmatic side of the concept, identifying how certain luxury

Commented [12]: This comment is in reference to the

whole paragraph:

brands are using social media influences to advertise its products for better sales. In the most

When I see thiseven before I start readingI think,

Ahhhhhhh! Attack of the page-long paragraph!

basic component of writing, a good question to ask is do you know the authors purpose for this
piece of writing? (Bunn, 76). To answer this question, one can easily find the answer in the title
of these articles, which answers the so what portion of the so what who cares dynamic.
Although all three articles does answer the purpose of its title, the subtle difference in
length between the three article titles display the depth in which the articles will dive into the
usage of social media. The two academic articles for example, contain about ten to fourteen

See if you like this metaphor:

Pretend your whole paper is a big, juicy steak. Do you
want your reader to enjoy that steak in easy-to-chew,
digestable bites? Or do you want them to start
gnawing away at whole thing in one piece (think:
zombie).
Paragraphs are like those bites. Give your reader
your argument in little, digestable, one-idea-at-a-time
bits. By doing so, theyll be able to following along the
trail of your argument much easier. To relate it back to
the steak metaphor, readers need to be able to see the
different parts/pieces/bites of the argument that theyre
chewing on.
Commented [13]: Is this *that* significant? If so, why?

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words in their title while New York Times article is six words. Drawing comparisons to the
content of the articles, it seems that the length of the title also correlates to the amount of
analysis that each paper dove into. In Luxury Brands and the Social Campaign, much breadth
is covered regarding the basic components of social media, such as add(ing) extra credibility to
marketing through celebrities and popular social media users to sell luxury products like
Lancome and Yves Saint Laurent (Scott). On the other hand, the two scholarly articles took a
step further and explored the more technical aspect of the phenomenon, like the definition of
social media strategy, the theory and research for different platforms of social media, the
different stages of media usage, and the case standing of the platforms. In The Social Strategy

Commented [14]: How were the definitions

similar/different? What theory(ies) did they use or
generate?

cone: Towards a new framework for evaluating social media strategies for example, the author
presented a cone model, separated by its initiation, diffusion, and maturity stage of using social
media to measure the effectiveness and overall consideration and performance it has for its
audience (Effing, Spil). An example that the article presented is sports brand companies, who
monitor the success of their social media through increase fan numbers, increasing interactivity,
and increased reach of its audience, reaching the maturity stage of social media by considering
the content activities, and constantly measuring feedback responses through applications such as
Twitter (Effing, Spil). Similar to the structure of a cone, one end will increase in circumference,
representing the number of factors that each stages of the model considers as part of the social
media strategy. Likewise, Go and Yous article also approached the topic similarly, using the
traditional guidelines of a bold title, headlines for its subsections, statistical data samples,
references to credible sources and conclusion to support its findings.
However, one of the drawbacks of scholarly articles is that it is too impractical for
traditional use. Objectively speaking, although the academic articles offers great indepth

Commented [15]: OK, this is good stuff here -- why,

exactly, is it impractical? They use jargon, OK... but so
what?

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understanding and implications of how different social media platforms works and their
effectiveness, unless you are an entrepreneur, a marketing or financial strategist or a scholar,
most of these information offer little use outside of that realm. Jargons such as BPG, SNPG,
CSG, and even standard deviation from statistics are not what we use in our daily vernacular
language. People do not just pull up statistical data or find a specific jargon in attempt to
understand a current trend of say an increase in purchase of LOreals new perfume (Go, You).
For a better understanding of such trend, going into the Fashion and Style section of a credible
newspaper or magazine such as New York Times tends to give more satisfying answers than a
scholarly article. In particular, article Luxury Brands and the Social Campaign did an excellent
job keeping its goal plain and simple, explaining how social media has changed how viewers
shop for new clothing, share latest fashion trends, and more importantly, communicate with each
other. As Jose de Cabo of Olapic said, people are now wired in a different way. They are used
to seeing authenticity online. By embracing that, brands can build a stronger connection with
consumers (Scott). Connecting to its audience, New York Times layout is plain and simple,
using very basic, but chic colors such as white colored background that contrasts perfectly with
the black lettered words, making it very easy to read and elegant to look at. In addition, pictures
of fashion trends such as Katespades Instagram photo featuring Anna Kendrick shopping are
also provided within the piece, giving readers excellent visual aids to connect to its message
(Scott). Other things to notice in regards to the layout is the the share section, containing
shortcuts to Facebook sharing, tweeting, and even pin it, keeping it very twenty first century
and current compared to the scholarly articles that has none of the functions. In other words,
depending on the situational and cultural context, there are times where using scholarly articles

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as references will actually diminish ones intended understanding for a new fashion trend due to
the complexity of the published articles.
Social media itself, is still a fairly new concept in our world. Like one of the scholarly
articles mentioned, there is still a lack of samples and studies to clearly establish the meaning
and effects of the social media. Nonetheless, these current available articles dove and explored
the topic of social media of its usage and function with great clarity. Although the articles
examined different aspects and effects of social media, such as becoming a part of
communication between customers or product placement in social platforms, they all applied it
to the practicality of the trend. Whether it is from an academic standpoint, a business standpoint,
or consumer standpoint, the different applications and writing strategies employed in these
articles help clarify the importance of the social media phenomenon, and applied its function by
drawing comparisons between using it as a research subject or brand marketing.

Commented [16]: Well said, Dennis! :)

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Works Cited:
Boyd, Janet. Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking). Vol. 1. N.p.: n.p., 2011. Print.
Carroll, Laura Bolin. Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Step Forward Rhetorical Analysis.
Effing, Robin and Ton A.M. Spil. The Social Strategy cone: Towards a new framework for
evaluating social media strategies International Journal of Information Management.
Vol. 36. (2016): 1-8. 2016. Web. 14 February 2016.
Go, Eun and Kyung Han You. But not all social media are the same: Analyzing organizations
social media usage patterns Telematics and informatics Vol:33 iss:1 (2016):176-186.
Web. 14 February 2016.
Scott, Mark. "Luxury Brands and the Social Campaign." The New York Times. The New York
Times, 02 Dec. 2015. Web. 17 Feb. 2016.

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Writing 2 Feedback Matrix for WP2

Table of Textual Features and Qualities

Thesis Statement
Use of Textual Evidence from
Genres
Use of Course Readings
Analysis
Organization/Structure
Attention to Genre/Conventions and
Rhetorical Factors
Attention to Moves
Sentence-level Clarity, Mechanics,
Flow
Comments and Grade

Did Not Meet

Expectations
X

Met
Expectations

Exceeded
Expectations

X
X/XX
XX
X
X/XDennis,
Solid work here. To improve this paper for your
portfolio, my #1 suggestion is to tell me more
about these pieces -- what specific data did they
collect? Whatd they find? Whats going to be
done with their work? I dont feel like I learned
anything new about social media/advertising from
different perspectives -- help me understand what
theyre trying to teach us about this issue. Get
into the data. Get into their RQs. What does it
seem like each perspective values with regard to
understanding this topic?
Id also like you to consider: how can you lay out
your argument 1 (small) piece at a time so your
reader can best understand how your argument
plays out? Think to yourself: OK, what are some
ways (plural) to lay out this paper, and which way
(singular) would be the best for me and my
readers?
Z
7/10

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