#Vanlife
VanVenture is an active team in Spring 2021. They are dedicated to providing resources, ideas, and connections to individuals interested in living a van life. We help users find renovated vans, services for customizing vans, DIY resources and videos, and connections for van rentals. We are based in Washington state but serve van lovers globally.
Team: Mae Beuthel, Austin Dempewolf, Mareenah Galang, Danielle Smith, Visili Varlamos
Team Charter
What does success look like?
Contribution
- Everyone has equal say
- Everyone does their part
- Everyone is flexible and willing to help each other out
Cooperation and Professionalism
- Be respectful and open to other people’s ideas
- Be on time for team meetings
- Make sure to participate
- Communicate if there are any questions or issues
Work Distribution
- Equal distribution of responsibilities
- Working together on things that need more “hands on” approach/attention
Quality
- Giving the needed effort and time for constant quality work
- Double check work before turning stuff in
Rewards and Recognition
- Recognizing a partner’s excellent work
- If they put more effort into a particular assignment, give them the easiest part on the next assignment
Team Contract
- We all promise to submit assignments on the day before or the day of
- We all promise to work ahead of time so that we do not have to rush to finish assignments
- We all promise to respect each other and provide constructive feedback
- We all promise to all hear each other's thoughts and ideas out fully before giving their own thoughts/ideas
- We all promise to provide our full attention to the task in order to be efficient and productive
Status Report #1 is all about revealing the semester-long project initiative. This is each team's chance to celebrate and showcase who they are, what they do, who they serve, and their visual identity.
Visual Identity & Messaging
VanVenture is a team of five students who attend Washington State University. Our team is based in Pullman, Washington. We are a travel-based organization dedicated to working together to provide an easy to navigate website for those seeking to find resources and information about traveling on the road/van life.
Van life can be intimidating and daunting at first. We want to make it easier for you to find any resources and information you need to start traveling on the road.
VanVenture is dedicated to providing resources, ideas, and connections to individuals interested in living a van life. We help users find renovated vans, services for customizing vans, DIY resources and videos, and connections for van rentals. We also provide road trip advice, trip ideas, and more. We are based in Washington state but serve van lovers globally.
Website Strategy
Primary Objective: To inform people about the benefits of traveling by van and persuade them to branch away from traditional travel. Also, to provide resources and information so that people can try out van life.
Desired Actions by Users: To educate site visitors about other forms of long-distance travel besides air/ground/train travel and to learn more about the benefits of #vanlife.
Design Goals: To create a unique design that has eye-catching colors, logical in format, and intuitive in navigation so we inspire the visitor to stay longer and engage in the site and our social media channels.
Note: Teams also connect their Weebly sites to Google Analytics and complete search engine optimization (title, description, meta keywords) on every page of their sites.
Each team records a 5min max presentation that showcases their website and social channels. The presentation should address the goal/purpose each channel serves, and the success measures used to track progress toward those goals.
The Blog
“Blog posts inherently boast the ability to share expanded content, text, video, audio, images, tags, links, to more effectively and deeply express, explain, and support the ideas and context related to any given topic.” - Brian Solis, Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
Each team creates original blog posts as part of their two campaign. All blog posts are promoted through social channels.
"There are several individuals on various social media sites that show off their lifestyle of living and traveling in vans. Our brand does the same thing as those individuals, but instead campaigns for more people to do it rather than showing off the lifestyle. We will show off the benefits of van travel by showing videos like these individuals do, but make them more persuasive in order to get people to start traveling by van."
Creative Brief
One teams have established the foundation of their organization or initative and set up their website, social channels, and metrics platform – they are ready to prepare for their campaign. In preparation for Campaign #1, they begin with campaign strategy and planning with the creation of a creative brief using models from top brands. The topic for the first campaign centers on building awareness about their initiative.
Editorial Calendar
Using best practices in social media engagement strategy, each team also outlines their editorial calendar for timing and placement of their original and curated blog posts, social posts, ads, and email. Campaigns run for approximately two weeks.
Influencers & Hashtags
Teams research who the key influencers are in their area of interest, as well as identify top performing hashtags.
Curated Content
"Content curation] is simply sharing the content from others similar to you on social media. Sharing others’ content is one of the best ways to show that you’re not all about you, and that you value a variety of perspectives beyond your own.” - CoSchedule Blog
Teams engage in a series of curated content exercises to identify about 20% of content they will re-share as part of their social media strategy.
Campaign Content Creation
They begin with a series of welcome posts to introduce their initiative and feature team members. They continue with their campaign platform through blog posts, social channels, ads, and email. A few highlights...
Metrics
Throughout the campaigns and upon completion, teams monitor, adjust, and report on campaign metrics for their website and blog, social media channels, and email. In addition to monitoring and tracking metrics, they provide a reflection at the end of the campaign that articulates what they saw, what they learned, and what they would do differently going forward.
FINAL SHOWCASE
“Your [presentation/report] purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience." -Dale Carnegie, motivational speaker, and author
The final step in your semester-long project is to develop a padlet wall poster that summarizes what your team has accomplished in the course. A summary of what you completed in Parts 1-5 includes:
1. Identified the problem – Defined the challenges your semester-long project will address for a specific audience
2. Created a solution - Established a vision and goals for your organization or initiative, and identified who you are, what you do, and who you want to reach
3. Decided on a Name - Completed an exercise in naming your organization, which included taking into consideration keywords, urban slang, and trademarks
4. Established a Foundation - Identified your organization’s mission, philosophy, and tone, conducting a SWOT analysis and mini competitor review, and crafting core messages for your organization through 5W’s, key terms and phrases
5. Created an Identity - Designed a logo and visual identity for your organization
6. Defined your Customer - Created a profile of your ideal customer by outlining characterizations, level of awareness, goals and motivations, challenges and frustrations, and media usage habits
7. Planned a Strategy - Completed a customer decision process grid outlining an ideal customer’s behavior as they journey through stages of engagement with your organization (awareness > consideration > purchase > loyalty > advocacy). Then, established a plan and vision for your website and social media engagement strategy.
8. Established an Online Presence - Created and designed a website for your organization including top level pages (about, who we are, what we do, blog, contact) and the integration of Google Analytics, and search engine optimization on every page (title, description, keywords, and phrases). Established social media channels including about and bio information and images
9. Developed Your Campaigns - Designed two digital campaign strategies including the community of interest analysis, content strategy, campaign messaging, editorial calendar, and plan for monitoring campaign effectiveness through various metrics points. Implemented your campaigns including blog posts, social media posts, paid ads, and emails.
10. Managed Your Campaigns - Monitored and reported on metrics from your campaigns with an emphasis on Google Analytics, social media metrics, advertising, and email performance.
Outline - Final Report
A. Introduction outlining who you are, what you do, where you're based, your audience, what problem you are solving, what makes you unique, and your services and vision
B. Highlight your main digital channels articulating the main purpose, function and vision behind your website, blog, and social channels.
C. Summarize the main vision and purpose of your campaigns such as title/hashtag, theme, call to action and overall goals.
D. Showcase highlights from your campaign materials including website features, blog posts, social media posts, ads, HTML email, etc.
E. Summarize and showcase campaign metrics findings and outcomes (e.g. Google Analytics, social media insights or analytics, HTML email metrics)
F. Highlight changes you made between campaign #1 and #2 and what you learned most in the process of running campaigns and monitoring metrics
G. Close with reflections and insights – articulate what you enjoyed most about the class or campaign vs. greatest challenges. Share what you learned most from creating digital properties and executing a campaign. Share what you would do differently given the opportunity.
Course Outcomes
“The way the course is designed it is a great course. I had never taken a course that gave me so many applicable skills and hands-on experience. More courses should be designed like this one.”
- Students complete the course with new vocabulary and base knowledge in the conceptualization, delivery, and measurement of digital campaigns.
- They learn valuable skills in group dynamics and gain proficiencies in content creation for blogs, social media channels, and websites.
- They acquire critical skills in measuring campaign effectiveness and presenting ideas and results in front of large groups.
- Most students enter into the course with limited knowledge of digital marketing tools and exit with a suite of portfolio materials and foundations they can easily translate into the workplace.
- Success is evidenced by course evaluations, personal testimonials, marketability of students, and professional positions held by alumni.
Created by Rebecca L. Cooney, Scholarly Associate Professor
Credits:
Campaign content created by VanVenture