NYU Digital Media Intellect (GY)
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Exploring the most effective & engaging strategies for social media content creation & optimization

Updated Scheduling Note: Meetings will be held in Brooklyn on Thursdays from 4:30-5:30pm; please apply if this fits your schedule.
This project-based course will form teams to explore best practices for creating, executing, and optimizing social media content, targeting multiple audiences – including prospective students, current students, faculty, and alumni – across different channels and content types, with a focus on Instagram and TikTok.
This team is designed to help students develop marketing, design, storytelling, analytics, and teamwork experience that is complementary to more technical engineering skills they learn in other courses by having students create content to grow followers and engagement on real social media channels. These skills can help students distill and communicate ideas more effectively and benefit entrepreneurial initiatives and career advancement, while also providing a user-oriented framework to apply beyond marketing to product development and other areas.
It is related to the Tandon Emerging Media Area of Research Excellence
Goals are to:
- Identify clear strategic objectives for the team
- Develop a framework for outlining the target audience(s), desired outcome(s), and key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Create an editorial calendar and experiment with various content types against the calendar across multiple digital platforms, including images and video
- Analyze results against the established goals and KPIs, and rethink and refine their approach and execution accordingly semester over semester
Skills explore are:
- Strategy & messaging
- Design
- Video Production
- Copywriting
- Creative code
- Data Analysis
Tools, programs, and subject matter covered could include:
- Data analytics
- Visual Culture
- Photography
- Graphic Design
- Digital creative tools including but not limited to:
- Canva
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Filmmaking and animation tools (e.g., Premiere, After Effects)
- Creative code
- Native app tools (e.g., trending audio or filters)
Please note that no prior software or coding experience is required. Anyone with an interest in social media should feel comfortable joining.
Subteams/Areas of Interest
- Tandon Social Media
- IDM Social Media
- Video Production
- Data Analysis
- Editorial Strategy & Messaging
Majors and Areas of Interest
- Marketing
- Digital Media
- Data Analysis
- A/V Production
- Graphic Design
- Data Visualization
- All majors welcome
Methods and Technologies
- Marketing strategy
- Scheduling & hosting technologies including HootSuite and Buffer
- Social platforms including Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Medium, YouTube/Vimeo, Snap, etc.
- Analytics platforms including Google Data Studio and Google Analytics
Partners
- NYU Tandon School of Engineering
- IDM
- Potentially other centers and labs in need of help managing social media
Primary Instructors
- Lauren Ptak (NYU Tandon - Chief Marketing Officer)
- lauren.ptak@nyu.edu
- Rebecca Leopold (NYU Tandon)
- rml444@nyu.edu