Reading changed my life. Now, I want it to change yours. In my childhood, I was an avid reader. One of my favorite things to do was to go to the library and pick out new books to read. Watching the movie, Matilda, certainly left a lasting impression on me. As I got older, the books I read were assigned to me by my English teachers, but I still loved it. To this day, The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye are some of my favorites. I loved reading my high school English books so much, I even got a “No Coincidence” tattoo quoting A Prayer for Owen Meany. Once I got to college, reading went from fun entertainment to strictly educational. As a busy college student, I stopped finding time to read for pleasure. This continued into my post-grad years, as life got busier and responsibilities got bigger. Who would’ve thought that social media would be what brought me back to reading for pleasure?

#BookTok

TikTok became all the rage in the world of social media after the pandemic. I spent a lot of time entertaining myself with the various kinds of videos that TikTok offered. Eventually, videos about popular books for young adults began popping up on my For You Page. This community was referred to as #BookTok. Through these videos, I found so many intriguing book recommendations, so I decided to take a trip to Barnes & Noble. They even had a display titled #BookTok! As I read more and more, it quickly became a regular part of my routine again, and I remembered how much I once loved reading.

Adults Reading for Pleasure

A lot of other adults out there can certainly relate to my experience. For whatever reason, adults just aren’t reading for pleasure anymore. The Library Research Service shared a graph that shows a steady decline in adult reading from 1992 to 2017. The increase in technological advances in recent years definitely plays a role. Now more than ever, we can access any entertainment we want at the click of a button. Why would we read when we can have the instant gratification of watching an episode of TV or a TikTok video? This is where my project comes in.

Ready, Set, Read!

For the purpose of my project, I coined “Ready, Set, Read!”, a nonprofit that wants to encourage people to read. Specifically, I am focusing on creating a social media campaign that persuades adults to read for pleasure, as well as educates them on the benefits of reading. Research is a crucial part of this project because I need strong evidence to support why adults should be reading. I also need to understand the best ways to get my message across. I began my research journey by creating a bibliography, which I can use to aid in my project. After completing the research, I determined what exactly I would be creating. Using articles from Hootsuite and Sprout Social, I successfully created a proposal for my project. Now, it’s time to start creating.

Project Bibliography

Ready, Set, Read! Social Media Campaign Proposal