#formalreport

Research Report Structure: 

1) Preliminary Material 

Title of Report: Understanding Social Media Strategy: Growth Inhibitors for the Queen’s Journal 

2) Body of the Report 

Introduction:   include history of the journal (very brief understanding that the audience for the report are members of the journal themselves who are likely aware of the situation. 

-highlight items like how the organization is seen as very traditional, not innovative, ground breaking, or fresh. Additionally, the staff are frequently rotating and therefore new students take a hold of the social media accounts and website each year leading to difficulties creating and successfully implementing a growth strategy with consistency over time. 

briefly highlight strengths including:  -presence on multiple platforms  -concise copy  -consistency across platforms in branding (types of posts, voice etc. ) 

-Short 1-2 sentence discussion about the room for improvement they have on all platforms which could, with the right changes, allow them to concentrate efforts on activities which align more strongly with their target audience and increase reach. 

Topic Sentence: indicating three main areas for improvement – SEO, engagement, Overall Activity 

Analysis 1: Search Engine Optimization 

-limited use of hashtags and key words, does not frequently engage with others (tagging posts, replying on twitter etc.), actions do not encourage the creation of backlinks -non-descript hashtags (eg. Only using YGK or QueensU)  -all bios use some form of “Founded in 1873” which doesn’t provide enough information on the Journal itself – does not include keywords to find social platforms without searching “The Queen’s Journal” directly

Analysis 2: Engagement with Viewers/Readers 

 -Copy does not represent a call to action to encourage engagement (questions in posts to engage readers, pointed text)  -Does not make use of geo locations on any platforms  -Posts represent brand well through consistency but otherwise do not encourage engagement on more than one platform  -Engagement causes loyal followers which helps this information appear on their feed more often  -No engagement with users (eg. No twitter replies or personality in their posts) -Little to no re-posting/re-tweeting of content from other sources

Analysis 3: Activity on Social Media 

-The brand is next to inactive on Instagram and represents inactivity on twitter through the pinned post from nearly 9 months ago -Social icons on their website do not include Instagram at all  -All posts on Facebook and Twitter are simply links to articles - could include more variety  -Instagram would align best with the target market (University students - gen Z) 

 Conclusion and Recommendations

-Rephrase top sentence highlighting main points in the body paragraph (SEO, Engagement, Activity Online) 

I got an email today asking about what to look for with regards to the "Previous Work" section of the UWC lab.

My suggestion is to look into the history of Analytical Chemistry.  This is the branch of chemistry that (as its name suggests) uses chemistry to analyze compounds and determine their properties.  The stereotypical archetype of a chemist, a guy in a lab coat with colored liquids traveling from a beaker to a flask and such is probably closest to an analytical chemist, in real life.

Besides the stereotypical chemist though, Analytical Chemistry truly is all around us today, even in popular culture.  Many non-chemists I know enjoy the TV show CSI.  Well, forensic chemists are actually analytical chemists!  Yes, that's right, we're not lying when we say you CAN apply chemistry to the Real World\( ^{TM} \) !

I dunno about this guy though.  I guess you could say I need to do... ...more analysis.  That was terrible.  I apologize.

Anyway, hopefully this helps.  Remember that the previous work stuff isn't a giant section, so even though this (absolutely fascinating) branch of Chemistry has a long history stretching all the way back to the 17th Century, just mention briefly maybe some prior usage of some of the tests you utilized.

Many abstracts had too much background information.  Yeah, maybe one or two sentences is good about the background.  But the abstract should be primarily a condensed version of your paper.  Did you mention the objective?  Mention the objective.  Mention numbers.  Supposed to make a fertilizer?  A fertilizer with certain elements with given mass percentages?  A reader of this lab report won't know what you're talking about if you only mention "with certain elements of given mass percentages."  You have to say how much!  What did you do to achieve this objective?  Mention it!  Did you run solubility tests?  Did you run simulations?  Did you attempt to synthesize your fertilizer?  Did you fail, and then have to try synthesizing something else?  MENTION ALL OF THIS!  What did you conclude?  Did you conclude you cannot create the fertilizer?  Did you condlude that you can?  Whatever it is WRITE IT!  So you made a fertilizer?  What's in it?  What compounds?  Sodium phosphate, Sodium Nitrate, and Potassium Carbonate?  How much??  Acetic Acid?  How much?  What concentration?  You need all this stuff!

Due to a busy schedule, I hadn't had a chance to post the main problems that I noticed in people's formal reports.  Due to the large number of sections, this may take a few days, but expect these to come.

During the LF lab, I got a number of questions concerning what "limitations of data" means. 

Recently, a humorous and interesting article was published by the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine examining the correlation between amount of chocolate eaten per capita by citizens of a country, and how many Nobel prize winners that country has. 

While this article is mostly intended to be humorous, the "Study Limitations" section shows a very good example of the limitations of the study carried out.  Check it out here!

I encouraged you to read through the sample papers posted by Dr. Driessen in the Moodle.  I keep referring to them in these posts.  I again want to encourage you to read through them if you haven't already.  I especially am a fan of the silica nanoshell paper.

Notice that the tone is generally clinical and detached.  Note the passive voice!  Despite what you might've learned in prior English classes, THIS IS OKAY!  In fact, I encourage this over the style favored by the DNA paper.  The reason that many papers are full of passive voice and lack first person usage is that the science is the focus here, not the scientists.  Thus, try to be clinical and detached.  Note that even though the DNA paper uses 1st person, it is also still clinical!  For instance, the sentence "The FRET data also help to shed light on the mechanism underlying the switch in hole transport efficiency across the three-way junction" is in the passive voice, and full of information.

Scientific papers are all about passing along information.  Don't try and be fancy.  Unlike what you learned in English class, scientific writing is vastly different.  Don't follow old habits.  Your paragraphs should not start with an original thesis.  Your hypothesis should be in your Introduction section.  And it doesn't have to be the last sentence.

Also, make sure to label your different sections. 

Alright.  This is one of the most important sections.  Yeah, it's only 5 points.  But it's still important.

The reference section is like the bibliography of an English paper.  Like with English papers, you must cite sources for anything you obtained that you did not come up with.  Many people have asked me what could be used for references.  Well, I understand many people used a solubility chart, right?  Well, did you come up with that yourself?  No?  Then cite that*.

While I keep mentioning high school English papers, because I (assume) you have familiarity somewhat with these (apologies to foreign students.  My suggestion here is to ask me or your group members if you have questions).  However, while your English papers might have used MLA, APA, or Chicago style for references, scientific papers do not use those styles. 

For your references, you must use the ACS style.  (ACS is the American Chemical Society, publisher of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a high-impact chemistry journal.)  The references in the sample papers use ACS style.  The full ACS style manual is available here, but this quick guide is pretty good too (and probably easier to understand).

Notes about the ACS style:

When the rubric says "Use[s] superscript numerical references," it is referring to the fact that in the main body of text, your citations should look like something like this: "The solubility table\(^{5} \) indicated that this was not possible." 

The rubric also mentions "compile in numerical order." Unlike MLA format, your references are not ordered alphabetically by author name. Instead, they are ordered in the order that you cited them. The first reference shoudl be the first citation, the second reference the second citation, etc.

Note, of course, that the citation section itself is just a list of the sources.  Look at the examples, they do an excellent job.

Another thing.  Wikipedia is not a good source.  Do not cite it.  It is perfectly acceptable to use Wikipedia as a starting point to obtain information.  However, Wikipedia itself is editable by anyone, and might have incorrect information.  So here's my suggestion.  Wikipedia articles are REQUIRED to have citations!  If a statement is unverified, it will say "[citation needed]."  Otherwise, it will have a link to the citation.  Obviously, once you read something on wikipedia, what you can do then, is find the citation, and look at the original source material!  Then you can, presumably, cite the original source material.