This course will explore the broad economic issues affecting today’s media landscape. Investigates principles and practices of digital marketing, with a focus on branding strategies and digital channels such as mobile and new technologies. The course develops and implements digital strategies and digital marketing objectives. Topics include but are not limited to social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, etc.), video, behavioral targeting, ethics, legal aspects, campaign management, segmentation and click-through.

Writing, speaking, listening, reading, and presenting well are the keys to advancement in any profession. Thus, this course pushes students to hone these communications skills in business and professional contexts for both professional/technical and non-specific professional audiences. Students analyze their audiences, determine the appropriate medium oral or written they require, and compose, edit, proofread, and present communications in professional settings. By participating in peer reviews, students hone their skills in analyzing, critiquing, and revising communications. Class members also learn to collaborate on projects, working as part of a professional team. Throughout the course, students develop problem-solving strategies for communicating in both national and international contexts.

Web 2.0 & 3.0 technology has enabled the development of a wide variety of social media; including, but not limited to Facebook(TM), Twitter(TM), Pintrest(TM), SnapChat(TM), Tik Tok, Linked-In(TM) and a myriad of topical blog sites. Communications professionals must understand the nature and scope of these media as well as the strong likelihood that these media will soon morph into new forms as the Internet continues to evolve. This course allows students to understand the strengths and weaknesses of all forms of emerging media as well as the need for next generation capabilities.

This course provides students with the necessary background to investigate legal and ethical issues in digital technology and culture. Additionally, students practice digital literacy as an application of these ethical issues. This class offers topics including, but not limited to copyright, authorship, attribution, civics, vernacular creativity, Free Speech, filesharing, piracy, libel, access, participation, modes of control, net neutrality, etc., in order for students will come away with a sense of the ethical issues within today's culture.

Marketing campaigns have always focused on target markets and the media preferences of the membership of these markets. But as Web 2.0 and 3.0 technology-based media become user-friendlier, their usage is becoming more pervasive. That said, the rate of adoption of the various forms of media is not as predictable as one might imagine. This course informs participants of the current media preferences of selected target markets as well as the factors that are impinging upon these preferences and initiatives underway to influence these preferences.

The major impact of growing information technology, whose core is innovation, has resulted in the great change it has caused in the way the world now conducts business. Students in this course study and apply three different strategic approaches to innovation: From a historical perspective, students learn about the major issues and developments in technology and their various effects in the market on individuals, organizations, society, and culture. From the analytical perspective of the innovators dilemma, students learn about both incremental and radical innovation in both service and manufacturing industries. And finally, from a creative perspective, students learn how to bring to market a revolutionary new business concept that forces most organizations to change their ways of seeing and conducting their businesses. Information technology’s impact upon organizational and societal structures sits at the heart of strategic innovation, and students emerge from this course knowing how to identify, analyze, and apply it to both historical and contemporary ventures while maintaining legal and ethical values.

Marketing campaigns have generally focused on the problems, interests and needs of customers in a given target market. And the goal of MARCOM has always been to persuade customers to make an increasingly stronger commitment to a brand and its related offerings. Social Media is disrupting this paradigm; perhaps best exemplified by the strong likelihood today that many customers will check out what others are saying about a brand or its offerings before making further commitments/purchases. Campaigns must be designed to capitalize on this trend in order to be successful. This course provides case studies that demonstrate the successful incorporation of early adopters and thought leaders into campaign development strategies.

While social media has become an increasingly significant factor in the buying process, perhaps to the point of being a dominant influence in some target markets, it is less significant in others. Traditional media (TV, Radio and Newspapers) still accounts for upwards of 65% of all media advertising. It follows that marketing managers must carefully coordinate their campaigns across all forms of media in accordance with the media preference of their sometimes-diverse target markets. Communications professionals must understand the language of all forms of media as well as the preferences of their target markets in order to optimize the MARCOM strategy.

Explore marketing theories and application of digital storytelling for the purpose of engaging an organization's consumers and stakeholders. Regardless of the medium, creators need to be good story tellers. This course will explore emerging media storytelling both for the theoretical and practical perspectives. Students will investigate concepts such as transmedia, interactivity, and convergence while experimenting with storytelling methods in the digital media of choice.

Google was only the first to provide data about the decision-making processes of consumers. Now, virtually all social media sites provide data about the behavioral preferences of their followers. This course explores web site optimization, web site submission, link-marketing strategies, pay-per-click advertising campaigns, email marketing tactics, affiliate marketing, traffic patterns, customer web logs, banner ads, and landing pages. Other topics include Google analytics, mining, real time analytics, predictive analysis and text analytics. Other digital formats, software options for web mining, analyzing click-stream data and key metrics for measuring consumer behavior are addressed with current analytical and next generation tools.

This course is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for interactively visualizing data. The major goals of this course are to understand how visual representations can help in the analysis and understanding of complex data, how to design effective visualizations, and how to create your own interactive visualizations using modern web-based frameworks. We live in a data rich world in which seemingly simple representations draw attention to or obscure complex realities. Data has the potential to inform decision making and influence public or corporate policy. When situated with appropriate context, visualized data has the power to change the world. Increasingly, nonprofits and agencies ask workers to compile data and design visualizations as a way to advance a cause or spread a message.

Prepare your portfolio for prime time. Applying your own creative and individual brand, you’ll work to align your professional reel, your personal web presence, and social network with the professional practices today’s media industry demands. Students will also be able to select their existing company, or competitive company, as the focus for their final project.