A Final Look At WEPO

Yesterday concluded the final round of group presentations in my WEPO class for our final project, and I really enjoyed seeing how every group conducted their own composing process. For our final project we had to work in groups and contact different local organizations so that we could create three different texts for them. My group, for instance, decided that we wanted to work with a nonprofit organization. We worked with Young Life Tallahassee, which is an organization that teaches children about the gospel of Christianity. For our composing process, we had to create three texts to inform high school students about an event Young Life was hosting, called Signing Day. This is the day that those interested in their summer camps would sign up to attend them. Last Wednesday and this Monday, we were able to see how each group created their texts for their organization and how effective those texts were. Overall, I believe that I learned a lot from my classmates.

All of the teams operated in a similar process. Each person was responsible for one text and when they designed their texts they spoke with not only their group members, but the organization itself as well. I also believe that each team thought deliberately about all of the choices they made when creating their texts. The groups also thought about most of the keywords that we have discussed in class this semester. Design, audience, circulation, exigence, and network were very important to the groups, and genre was also mentioned.

Design was the most mentioned keyword. The groups thought long and hard about the design of each of their texts and how it would resonate with or grab the attention of their audience. They considered which audience they were targeting, where the audience would be, and what the audience would most interact with when designing their texts. This lead them to use social media for a lot of texts or designing their texts in a way that would speak to specific audiences. These two terms, audience and design, go hand in hand. The audience determines the design and the design keeps in mind the audience. Circulation was another prominent keyword, since were also tracking the circulation of each text. They chose areas and ways of distributing their texts so that they could reach a large range of people. Exigence was discussed as well. Some groups had a specific exigence that they were responding to, such as the League of Women Voters of Tallahassee, who were trying to get people to vote and registers. Other groups didn’t have an urgent exigency and were just creating promotion for their organizations.

However, as with everything, there were constraints that the groups faced. For instance, one constraint that my group faced was that our event occurred after we presented, so we wouldn’t be able to track the effectiveness of our texts. Our group also faced the constraint of the Thanksgiving holiday. During this time not many people were on campus and a lot of people were out of town and celebrating with their families, this prevented my group from reaching those people, and another group mentioned this as well. Other groups faced constraints that came from the organizations that they worked with. One group worked with older people for their project, which created communication issues. They also faced a generational gap, in a way, because the women they were working with did not understand Facebook that well and one of the texts they were creating was a Facebook page for the organization. Another group completely lost communication with their organization, which constrained them because they weren’t able to authorize them to circulate their texts. A couple groups also believed some texts would be more effective for their organizations, while the organizations disagreed, which could be considered a hardship. Sometimes the groups had ideas that their organizations disagreed with, so they had to shelve their ideas even if they knew they would be successful. Regardless of their constraints and issues, each group carefully considered each keyword while creating their campaigns. Each choice was deliberate, and played a part in the overall text.

After viewing the presentations of my classmates, I think I learned to think outside of the box when creating texts in the future. I also learned to not limit social media marketing to just Facebook and Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat are also great tools for promotion. I would also consider incorporating QR codes into my future texts and snapchat filters. I also liked how one group used Instagram to detail their composing process, I would consider documenting my process in a similar way in the future.