All Memos for Final Portfolio

7/30/2019 All Memos for Final Portfolio

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1. Intro MemoThe writings I have chosen for my portfolio, with the exception of the disaster case revision and

the two newest reports, are all pieces you have read before. Some I have chosen because they

represent me as a writer and some are bits of larger assignments from English 3745.

I feel as if writing for online environments is a very specific type of writing. It serves to meet the

needs of the writer or the writers audience. Its clean writing that is straight forward and

communicates ideas as quickly as possible. Writing online is different from writing through other

mediums. It has to be appealing visually and the content must be up-to-date and relevant.

2. Disaster Case MemoFor this case study, I looked up the history of Chick-fil-A and searched for some of the most

popular comments about their social media disaster via Twitter. I also checked out Chick-fil-As

Facebook page and went back to the dates where the event occurred. Lastly, I searched the

Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Times to get reliable sources on which I could build my

case study.

The revision I made for this case study were based off comments I received. I basically went

more in-depth with details of the company and specifics about the role of social media. I also

switched around the setup. I changed the placement of the executive summary and added a works

cited page. I read through the case study and looked for grammatical errors and awkwardly-

worded sentences.

3. Branding Yourself MemoOne-Sentence Pitch

Bridgette Lewis, professional writer and editor, specializes in both copyediting and technical

writing.100-Word Pitch

Currently attending Youngstown State University, I study professional and technical writing,editing, and creative writing. As a professional writer and editor, my primary focus involves

constructing and designing professional documents for companies and organizations. I also

write and edit creative short stories. In December of 2013, I will earn a bachelors degreefrom Youngstown State. In 2014, I plan to pursue a MFA degree, Masters of fine arts,

through the NEOMFA program, Northeast Ohio Masters of Fine Arts, for fiction writing.

Additional future goals include the following: working for a publishing company, write acollection of short stories, and teaching college creative writing courses.

250-Word PitchI am an energetic, hardworking person anxiously waiting to putting my knowledge in the

writing field to use. In 2010, I began pursuing a goal to graduate with a BA in professionalwriting and editing at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio. In December of

2013, I will have finally made that goal into a reality. With experience in the technical

writing program, I have handled writing memos, analytical reports, newsletters, instruction


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manuals, promotional flyers, findings reports, and proposals. In fall of 2012, I completed

over 200 hours interning with the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation

(YNDC). During my time with the YNDC, I have written findings reports, policy changes,promotional news articles, neighborhood descriptions, a grant request, and conducted

interviews for the YNDCs Green Jobs Training program. Technical writing, however, is not

the only writing in which I indulge. I also minor in creative writing with experience in thefollowing genres: fiction, screenwriting, poetry, and playwriting. In fall of 2014, I will beginpursuing a MFA through the NEOMFA program, Northeast Ohio Masters of Fine Arts; one

program intertwined through four colleges in northeast Ohio including Kent State University,

Youngstown State University, Cleveland State University, and the University of Akron. Aftergraduation, I plan on working for a publishing company. Currently, I am greatly looking

forward to an internship abroad in Wellington, New Zealand and working on an instruction

manual that guides and encourages high school teachers to teach creative writing. I am also

preparing a collection of short stories.

To me, the set of autobiographies were the most difficult part of the Branding Yourself project. It

took the most time and the most revisions. Usually 250 words do not seem like much, until you

are asked to write about yourself. I used the inverted pyramid I learned in journalism for this part

of the assignment. For the one sentence pitch, I used what I thought was the most important

piece of information. Then, I added onto that for the 100-word pitch. Lastly, I added what would

be at the bottom portion of the inverted pyramid; important but not necessary to understand the

story.

Creating a mock website took the most time, but finding a color scheme to fit my personality was

interesting. I used InDesign and created an outline for what I wanted my professional website to

look like. InDesign seemed to be the best program to use for the mock website because it gave

me the opportunity to make everything look realistic. I even included a fake scroll bar, which I

was not sure I could have done in Word.

The business card, also made in InDesign, was my strongest visual element from this project. It

was the only thing I created that I could see myself using in the future. I used simple design

elements like text boxes and lines, which still made for an attractive business card.


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4. Usability Contributions MemoFor the Magic Tree website usability report, I wrote the rough draft. Once our group received

feedback and comments, I rewrote and edited the final report. Additionally, I gave feedback for

the documents overall design and structure.

5. Social Media Report MemoOf the social media reports, I thought my first report following different entities on Twitter

showed my skills as a writer. I chose that report because I felt like the design elements were

strong. The writing was clear and to-the-point. It was difficult not to fall into the habit of

rambling or repeating myself, but I managed to keep the same structure for each entity without

being overly repetitious. In my opinion, the introduction and conclusion were strong and the

content between supported the reason for the report.

6. Strongest Social Media Posts Memo


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The screen captures above shows my strongest social media posts this semester. I picked thesethree based off what Erick Deckers and Kyle Lacy, authors ofBranding Yourself, stated different

tweets were supposed to accomplish: engage and begin conversation, create retweeting, and

share information.

My tweet about quick reads started a conversation with a random follower of mine. She ended up

liking the story I specifically suggested, which led to another conversation about good reads later

on. The tweet aboutBefore and Afterlivesby Chris Barzak was retweeted and favorited on

Twitter. Later, a few people told me, via Facebook, that they actually purchased the collection of

short stories, which was great because the author teaches at Youngstown State University. The

point of the tweet was to encourage my followers to support local talent and I felt like my tweethelped achieve that goal. My final tweet that I considered a top choice in strength was a link to a

site explaining how to edit PDFs, including those that did not support the feature. It was not

directly successful through Twitter, but because I tweeted it I was later able to refer back to it

when someone asked how to edit a PDF. The person who asked did not have a Twitter account

but I still used my own account to help share information.

7. Website MemoI used Wix to build my free website. It let me view a few basic options for design and also had a

setting that allowed for me to treat my website as a blank canvas. I started with the blank canvas

idea until I realized it was eventually going to end up looking just like one of the templates that

was already set up in Wix, so I used that instead. A universal design was the best way to go for

the audience I wanted to attract. Also, I wanted to make sure I was building my website in a way

that allowed me to easily progress with enhancements instead of starting very in-depth and

working backward. After I named each tab, I used Scribd to upload documents that I wanted my

viewers to read.


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The readings I found most helpful dealt with accessibility, usability, and sustainability. Our book

put a lot of emphasis on websites being easy to use, simple in design, and avoiding lots of text.

When I was making my website, I took that into account. I wanted it to be simple but for what I

wanted my audience to read, I needed a way to avoid walls of text. To get what was, in my

opinion, a happy medium, I made all the text on my website very simple and to the point. As our

book suggested, I tried making good use of headings and lists.

In order to test my site, I opened it in different web browsers and asked my sister to navigate

through it. She was able to use all of the features such as links and tabs. She did comment on the

long URL name, but with using Wix that part of my website was out of my control. They

instantly use your email as part of your domain.

For sustainability, I basically just kept everything organized and in formats that allow editing. I

double checked to make sure I didnt repeat myself and all of my content was easily located

within the correct tabs. All the documents I used are also saved in multiple places ready to be

edited.

Overall, I thought the part of my website that projected a polished image of me as a writer was

the links to Scribd. By having my writing in more than one place, I establish a sense of

professionalism. Linking my writing to Scribd also helped me avoid placing massive chunks of

texts on my website. The less bombarded my audience feels with text, the more likely they are to

read the descriptions of my stories. Also, since most of the writing I linked to exceed ten pages, I

didnt want my audience to read a lot of text just to get to more text.

Other than the home and contact pages, my tabs distinguished what sort of creative writing

particularly captured my interest. I decided to mainly focus on fiction and screenwriting becausethose are the two forms of creative writing I concentrate on the most. I made the tab titled

blurbs so I could insert more writing that didnt fall under screenwriting or fiction.

Overall, I think didnt regret using Wix for this assignment. The site was user-friendly and

offered free video tutorials. Wix definitely made things easier as far as time was concerned, but I

didnt like their choice of generating a free domain name.

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All Memos for Final Portfolio