2. PROJECT DESCRIPTION
• Multi-chapter creative writing project posted online via WordPress
• Story of paranormal horror told by a University of Manitoba student
• Targeted to online horror fans of both genders between ages 20-30 and horror fans
residing around Winnipeg of the same age
3. PROJECT DESCRIPTION – CONT’D
• I wrote the plot outline, all character sketches, and all 13 chapters over summer 2015
• Launched the first blog post Oct. 2015 on thomasjericho.net
• Thirteen chapters total, chapters uploaded weekly until Jan. 2016
• Some chapters included photographic content
6. CHALLENGES
• Early reveal of authorship due to constant stream of private messages
• Thomasjericho.net was accidentally hidden from search engines by WordPress
• Learning additional skills after the project’s launch
• Audience segmentation
7. EVALUATION
• Objective I – To complete the story of The Files of Thomas J. Jericho by writing between
19,500 and 26,000 words across 13 blog posts, from the last week of October 2015 until
the first week of February 2016, with each post being between 1500-2000 words.
• Objective II – To have between 500-1000 page views on the blog by the end of February
2016
• Objective III – To obtain between 60-100 likes and 60-100 comments on the blog across
all posts, as well as between 100-150 followers by the end of February 2016.
Intent: For Thomas to appear as a real person posting on the blog, and to engage with readers’ comments and messages as Thomas
I wrote and posted the story under the guise of the protagonist, Thomas J. Jericho, as if he were a real person living in Winnipeg. The character is a U of M student who begins experiencing disturbing unexplainable occurrences, and he starts the blog in effort to reach out to others and ask for advice as the occurrences escalate. As a skeptic himself, he posts photos he’s captured of the things he’s been seeing, and encourages readers to contact him through the blog or via his Twitter account. The tone of the story was intended to be eerie, unsettling, and realistic, and the setting in Winnipeg was intended to generate additional local interest.
Did all the editing over September and the beginning of October
No two-week hiatus, also started posting earlier BEFORE halloween instead of first week to take advantage of excitement leading up to it when people are consuming extra “scary” content in anticipation of the holiday
Originally wanted thomasjericho.com but domain was taken
As I mentioned some chapters included photographs taken by “Thomas”, which I actually created in Photoshop using the silhouette of a volunteer in a Morphsuit to create the shadowy figures stalking Thomas – I was originally going to do these over summer as well until I realized the weather wouldn’t match the time when I started posting, so I did each photo the same week it was going to be posted on the blog
Facebook Advertising wasn’t in my original marketing plan, but I decided to try it anyway and it was actually my most successful tactic. I gained 156 Facebook followers for the project doing a combination of different promotions, for the website itself, the Facebook page, and for email signups. I targeted men and women between the ages of 20-36 (I was able to achieve more engagements by expanding the age range slightly) with interests in horror, the paranormal, reading, horror fiction, creepypasta, and scary stories. I also targeted fans of horror author Stephen King. Campaigns for Facebook page likes were targeted Canada-wide, but the majority of campaigns were targeted to people in and around Winnipeg within a 35 km radius.
Twitter Advertising also wasn’t in my original marketing plan, but since my protagonist Thomas was already on the platform I thought I should take advantage of promoting the account to gain followers. I ran two campaigns, targeting Twitter users using keywords such as: creepy, spooky, paranormal, supernatural, scary, blog, blogger, creepypasta, and Winnipeg. I also targeted fans of the television show American Horror Story. Twitter was moderately effective at directing traffic to the blog.
I was contacted by reporter Andrew McCrea of MyToba.ca who published an article about the blog on Nov. 1, 2015. This article was the third highest ranked referrer to the blog as indicated by WordPress statistics.
I did not submit a press release to local news stations two weeks before the final blog post, as I had originally said I would in my proposal. My main issue was that I uploaded the final blog post the second week of January 2016, which would have placed my news release date on New Year’s Eve. I believe my project would have been overshadowed by the news excitement around the holiday and wouldn’t have received much, if any, attention by the stations.
I had planned to hang 250 posters around post-secondary locations, libraries, and haunted locations in Winnipeg, but most of these locations had rules against hanging promotional posters. I hung posters around Osborne Village and at the U of W (max. 15 for 2 weeks) as planned but was unable to hang anywhere else. The posters were more successful than I originally thought, as two commenters mentioned they had found the site that way. In lieu of hanging posters at the roblin centre, I created ads to play on the atrium tv instead so I could still reach that RRC audience. I intended to engage these users with the blog using the photographic content, since most submissions to r/nosleep are solely writing. However, the first chapter was not received as well as I had hoped, with an average of 6 upvotes and a total of 7 comments. The blog received a very small amount of visibility from this marketing tactic, although one user who submitted an email message to the blog mentioned they found the website through Reddit.
I created a Google AdWords ad to promote the blog from Nov. 10-Nov. 30, 2015, using key words and phrases (eg. paranormal, true scary ghost stories, scary stories, paranormal phenomena, scary ghost stories, horror stories, etc). This was moderately effective in gaining clicks to the blog, receiving a click-through rate of 1.02% with 94 clicks total.
Two people after the first post was updated kept messaging the page pressing for further details and saying that they had experienced similar things – didn’t want them to feel deceived, came clean and updated descriptions to reflect it as a fictional project with me as the author (didn’t make it super obvious – I was originally going to wait until the end of the story to reveal that it was fictional) – also contacted by a ghost hunting team who I thanked for their interest but let them know the story wasn’t real
On Feb. 2, I received this email saying that the site had been hidden from search engines until that date – ill never know if if had any effect on my readership since it wasn’t reversed until after the story’s end
I learned a lot more about how to use photoshop and how to develop functional integrated marketing campaigns this year – I believe these skills would have helped me create a more believable and more engaging project had I known them at the time I was developing and posting – eg. chapters menu on the blog, created vs. curated content for social media
Audience segmentation – in my objectives which ill talk about in the next slide I wanted to use Facebook and Twitter to drive audiences to the blog but instead I think a lot of people were following the weekly updates on those platforms instead (where I was posting links), which was something I didn’t take into account when I proposed the project
The total number across all posts is 25, 718 words and falls within the range I originally proposed. Most individual posts fall between 1500-2000 words, but there are several that ended up being over 2000. I believe this is an acceptable alteration to the proposal, since my protagonist was supposed to seem like a real person, and real people don’t normally have word count limits for things they post personally. None of the posts that went over the intended word count exceeded 2150 words, so I don’t believe the “extra” length of these posts deterred any readers.
As of Feb. 23, 2016, the blog The Files of Thomas J. Jericho has a total of 2,910 views and 1,545 visitors according to the WordPress Insights across all posts. I believe I have satisfactorily completed this objective as these numbers exceed my original goal for total page views. The statistics in this slide are as of Mar. 9, 2016.
This is the objective I was unable to reach – as it was stated by the original proposal. Across all blog posts - on the blog itself, excluding the Facebook Page and Twitter account – the story received one like and 12 comments (all of which I replied to as Thomas). The blog had 11 WordPress subscribers and 15 email subscribers (26 total followers) by the time the final chapter of the story was posted.
However, if I take into account the blog’s Facebook followers (156) and Twitter followers (120), I’ve exceeded my goal number of followers. Across Facebook Page posts (33 post likes and 3 comments), the r/nosleep post on Reddit (7 comments), email comments from followers (5 different people), and the blog itself (1 like and 12 comments), I didn’t reach the goal I had set for total comments. Even across platforms, the story only received 34 likes and 27 comments total. Overall, the story was not as successful engagement-wise as I had hoped it would be.
The original budget outlined in my proposal estimated the total cost of the project to fall between $159.84 minimum and $243.84 maximum, which I would pay out of my own pocket.
However, with the addition of supplemental marketing tactics, including Facebook and Twitter advertising and the cost of a booth at the IPP Expo, the budget reached a total of $550.57. I applied for and received several scholarships over the course of the school year and allotted some of that money toward additional financing for The Files of Thomas J. Jericho.
