Class requirement: 30% of your grade

You will produce a detailed strategic plan for an Internet campaign. You will present a draft during the sixth week of class (June 28), and receive feedback from your classmates. You will present final plan during the last class, on July 26th. If time allows, we can use role-playing for some of the presentations. For instnace, you could explain your plan for an Internet campaign to the campaign manager or, alternatively, to the technical consultants that your campaign has hired and that report to you. We will be discussing the project each week in class, and you can also send me an email if you have questions after reading the instructions below.

Deadlines for this project

Objectives

Your goal for this project is to learn the basic protocols for planning and managing an effective strategy using new media.

Project description

You will be assigned one of the organizations below, and will create a strategic plan for an Internet strategy for that organization.

The list includes incumbent politician websites, election websites, re-election websites, and advocacy websites. Some of the listed organizations are state-wide and some are local, but each will provide a case study for your strategic plan. All are based in the Commonwealth of Virginia so that we can have a common base of information.

At our third class meeting (June 7th), you will turn in a one-page dscription of your strategic objectives for the Internet campaign (see Jessica Burdman's "Collaborative Web Development." chapter 1, especially page 7).

Meeting milestone 1: Identifying your objectives

Before you can identify your strategic internet campaign objectives, you must do your research on your client, similar sites, and the opposition. Using the Virginia news outlets below and any other resources you can find, strategize how the organization can most effectively meet its goals. Here are some questions to get you started:

• What are the goals of your organization? (generally and then in detail)
• What are the strengths of your organization/officeholder/candidate?
• What are the weaknesses?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of other relevant organizations/candidates?
• What are the key issues you will face?
• What are the history and context of these issues?
• How will all this information guide your website strategy?
• How will all this information guide your email, blog or other new media campaign?
• How will all this information guide your offline/online synergy?
• Look at the website of the organization/candidate you have been assigned and describe the strengths and weaknesses of the actual online campaign that is currently on the Internet (update your analysis every week for at least four weeks).
• How would you improve the effectiveness of this organization/candidate's online campaign?

List of projects

Each student will be assigned one of the organizations below. It does not matter if you are assigned one that matches your own party affiliation, as this is an assignment focusing on effectiveness only. The proposed budget allotment for the online campaigns in each section is listed in parentheses.

Virginia Online News Resources

Other Research Resources