1. Choose your platform, and explain why you think this platform would be effective for the GSR and your submission. Consider choosing the platform that you are familiar with, but that will also address a specific audience of the Greenspring Review. Who might be interested in reading your piece, and what platforms do they interact with most?
I mostly chose Twitter as the platform for my mockup because I knew my way around the website, and it’s significantly easier to post on a desktop/laptop than websites like Instagram. Also, I know a lot of my friends and peers use Twitter and have a profile, as well as Stevenson and their library. This allows the promotion of my drafted submission, as liking and retweeting the post would share it to their followers. Students from Stevenson specifically may be interested in reading, especially ones who are involved with the Greenspring Review or the English department.
2. Craft a pitch that fits the constraints of the platform. Consider the common conventions for that site. Will you use text as a caption or an overlay? Do you have a character or space limit? Can you manipulate the font or color of the text? Should you include emojis and punctuation?
There is a rather restrictive character limit for tweets, but instead of describing what my creative work was about I was able to post an image of an excerpt from my submission, along with the first picture that is embedded into my work. There are no font options, but there are tags you can add to the post so that when someone searches for a specific word like #creative or #COVID19 they will see the post as they scroll through. Even though the character limit is small, most users aren’t very receptive to walls of text, so I incorporated spacing and two short sentences to get my point across.
3. Craft media for your post. Should you use an image? A video? A screenshot? A GIF? What works best for this platform?
Adding the pictures may prompt the user to click and scroll through them so they can read the excerpt, and posting the link to the Greenspring Review will attract more attention to the website itself if users are interested. Images are practically a staple for Twitter, especially as a workaround for the limited characters you can have, so the screenshot of my excerpt is very useful in describing what my work is about. This can also attract anyone interested in photography, as the first image in my mockup and the images in my submission are pictures I took myself.
4. Consider when and how often to post. What time of day does your audience use this platform? How can you increase likes and comments? How can you get more views?
For my audience, which is mostly anyone who is affiliated with Stevenson University and the Greenspring Review in any way, or anyone who is a photographer or author themselves, I would say that early afternoon in Eastern Standard Time would be best. That way, across United States, and other time zones across the world that are during the day at this time, would be able to see this post. It might be more beneficial to post this on other sites like Instagram or Facebook as well, since Stevenson University also has a following on their profiles as well. There’s also a possibility that Stevenson might post/repost/like/retweet my post to reach more people, because their social media accounts are very interactive with their students.
I chose Instagram because it has a larger character limit so I thought it was interesting how you chose to overcome Twitter’s character limit! It was smart to post an excerpt of your piece as an image to allow users to see what your work is about and peak their interest without needing a long text caption.
I like all of your tags and hashtags for this tweet it will be seen by many! If I had more room on my own I would’ve also added #quarantine since its a word that is probably second most used after COVID19.
I like that you added your story’s cover photo and an excerpt! The excerpt could definitely draw some interest. Incorporating hashtags into the text is good because you’re right, most people don’t like walls of texts or lists of hashtags on Twitter. I think adding your story’s specific link would be more helpful so potential readers don’t have to find your work.
I think you have made good use of your text especially since Twitter has a character limit. You had some great hashtags in there that could help bring attention to your piece. With Twitter it is always nice that you can add a link to a page directly on the tweet. On Instagram when you do a post you have to direct them to your bio where there is a clickable link. Because of that extra work people might not take the time to do it. Smart use of your post!