Brief

For my social media project, the brief given was “A 12-week project in which allows students to promote their work via the creation of a live social media campaign to attract visitors to their stand at the Transmedia end of year exhibition held in Week 13.

With this project you need to find elements within your chosen area of specialisation or one which you wish to enhance / explore and create engaging posts on two different social media platforms, one is LinkedIn the other is your choice. There will be a presentation of your campaign ideas (design critique) before going ‘live’, with your posts and development work added to your design portfolio website.”

I took this project as an opportunity to connect with potential clients and 3rd year placements and people in my industry. As a designer its very important to have a social media presents as most of the industry is digital now therefore everyone uses these social media platforms and many people in the industry connect with each other’s and communicate through these methods. By giving myself a presence on social media it means that I’m not excluded from joining in on finding other in my desired industry. From the brief I have chosen to use Instagram and LinkedIn as my chosen 2 for this project.

LinkedIn was a mandatory platform, and this is good because LinkedIn is great for connecting people in similar industries, and the other platform I chose was Instagram. This is because being in CAD it’s a very visual discipline therefore because Instagram is a visual platform they go hand in hand and they work very well together.

Objectives

For this project I set myself a couple of objectives using the S.M.A.R.T goals method Boogaard, K. (2023). How to write SMART goals. [online] Work Life by Atlassian. Available at: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/how-to-write-smart-goals#:~:text=What%20are%20SMART%20goals%3F. this algorithm stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. To summarise the meaning any goals set must be clearly layout out with a way to measure there success and also be relevant and within reach and they must also have a time limit set. With this in mind my goals are

•to gain 100 followers before week 13

•to have 25 Instagram posts with increasing account activity

•to have 100 industry relevant connections on LinkedIn

I believe all of these goals are achievable and relevant to the brief as the project is about expanding my social media reach and building my own platform and presence. These goals are all easily measurable and they have been clearly stated.

Research

When deciding my focus for this project I decided to make a mind map as its very visual and easy to just get ideas out onto a page.

I didn’t need to research various social media platforms to discover which would be best for me as I was already familiar with most of them and already had my heart set in Instagram as I’ve used it for years, but I’ve never used it to post professionally. There was never any question when it came to choosing my platform because of Instagram’s huge audience and its visual aspects there was no contest for other platforms. Over the past few years Instagram has become more accepted as a professional platform as its not only for teenagers to post there life pictures but its also recognized by businesses and professionals in the industry as many of my competitors use Instagram as a live portfolio.

Branding

When beginning this project, I didn’t have my personal brand set out yet. My webpage had consistent house colours, but I didn’t really have a logo or anything distinct to me. I set out to create my own logo at first and give myself some new house colours. I began by sketching my ideas.

Once I had my concept sketches, I then used a site called coolors Coolors.co. (n.d.). Coolors.co. [online] Available at: https://coolors.co/119da4-0c7489-13505b-040404-d7d9ce [Accessed 7 May 2024]. I had a few different examples of colour palettes I liked (as shown)

After creating these designs paired with the generation of my colours, I began to create a posting template that would help to make my Instagram page consistent. I went on other Instagram pages similar to my own to gain some inspiration and this is what I found.

After playing around with a few designs I found my branding colours and applied them to the logo I create in photoshop. I also used these designs to create a boarder for all my posts and an end card to advertise myself through all of my posts.

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Time Planning And Posting Plan

As far as time planning when I created a posting schedule. For this i researched the best days and times on both platforms to be posting as I wanted my posts to get the most reach possible. I used Keutelian, M. (2024). The best times to post on Instagram 2024. [online] Sprout Social. Available at: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-instagram/. With this source I discovered that Tuesdays Wednesdays and Thursdays with most days recommending that you post early such as 9am till 11am. I chose to be consistent and post at 9 am every day because of the simplicity however I decided to change the way o did things halfway through and test if my posts got more engagement if they were tailored towards the statistics I found. Because of these statistics I’ve discovered that posts in the weekend aren’t as effective as ones in the week therefore I stopped all weekend posts and used Instagram’s reschedule tools to change when they go out.

For LinkedIn I did the same, I create a Gannt chart to help visualize and plan my posting schedule. I also used the internet to research the best and worse posting times for LinkedIn. Keutelian, M. (2023). Best times to post on LinkedIn in 2023. [online] Sprout Social. Available at: https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-linkedin/. Using my source, I discovered that it’s pointless posting on weekends as these days have very little engagement from users, this is because the research shows that LinkedIn is mainly used on break times for people who work in offices on 9 till 5. Research suggests the best times on LinkedIn to be posting is 10am on weekdays. Because of LinkedIn’s demographic being mainly corporate offices, it makes it a great place to connect and scout new employees as the platform is very business orientated.

Both platforms have an amazing feature called schedule meaning you can create a post but control when it goes out so if you forget to post at a specific time, you can also pre plan posts, so you never miss the recommended posting hours. I found these tools to be great use to me as most of my posts had been scheduled.

Instagram

My Instagram posts are a lot more casual and very creatively similar to each other. They all have the same house colours and creative feel therefore this is both a positive and negative as this can make everything on the Instagram page look like a big clump of content however it also adds to the recognizability of my content as whenever someone sees a post, they know that is mine because of the styling. Because of Instagram’s newly emerging professional side its very important to be professional when it comes to business however there must also be a level of casual interaction to allow your personality to shine through and help people to connect with your content as well as you as a person. By also having a level of personality and likability other people are more likely to follow which inter grows the account and expands the reach, expanding reach intern will expand opportunity.

Design Thinking for Instagram Posts Understand Your Audience (Empathize): Research your followers’ needs, preferences, and challenges. Consider their interests and pain points.

Define Your Purpose (Define): Clearly state the purpose of your post. Decide whether it’s for inspiration, education, entertainment, or promotion.

Generate Creative Ideas (Ideate): Challenge assumptions. Brainstorm unique concepts. Explore different post formats.

Create a Draft (Prototype): Develop a rough version of your post. Experiment with visuals, captions, and hashtags.

Analyze and Adjust (Test): Post your content. Monitor engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares). Make improvements based on feedback.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a lot more professional, and business orientated then what Instagram is which is why its important to interact with others in the proper manner. Whereas Instagram is a lot more visual LinkedIn is a lot more explanation and text-based meaning as well as having high quality content there must also be a detail engaging explanation about the post. The average Instagram user will scroll through posts at a high-speed meaning the key is to be eye catching and intriguing however LinkedIn people are a lot more interested in their business and industry connects so they tend to take more time when scrolling through posts. I didn’t really have a posting style with my LinkedIn posts and the majority of my posts were reposts and Instagram shout outs as Instagram is my living portfolio.

Analysis

Instagram

As seen the posts gathered love engagement. However, that being said my account was getting around 200 views a week. The figure is over the past 90 days however only in the past moth did these numbers shoot up. Also, the views and interactions on my post correlate with the quality of the posts. Theres a clear observation that my lower quality posts that have low quality renders don’t get as many views likes or comments. My like count isn’t very high, but I believe this is due to my account being very small with my account growing I believe I will see a higher number of likes as my reach will expand. Because my account is active, I believe that the algorithm will start to filter me in therefore I’ll be getting more interaction from non-followers.

As seen, most of my reach comes from reels. Knowing this information, I’m going to prioritise reels in the future as these can easily get over 100 views looking at my posts the highest view count of a non-reel is 30 and my lowest reel view count is 151 hopefully soon I’ll be able to reach more people with them. I think the key to a successful reel would be to make it bright colourful and engaging. In this article, Socialinsider Blog: Social media marketing insights and industry tips. (2023). Instagram Reels Hacks: How to Get More Views | Socialinsider. [online] Available at: https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/instagram-reels-views-hacks/. It said that Instagram analytics only count a reel view as someone who’s stayed watching the reel for over 3 seconds. This means that to get the view count higher the first 3 seconds are what matters the most therefore reels must be engaging from the beginning.

LinkedIn

My LinkedIn analytics also don’t have high numbers. However my content is reaching the correct people as my lead industry is mechanical engineering and product design, this is definitely the way id like my content to be heading especially with my demographics being design based areas. Its also great to see that some product design companies local to Hampshire have been view my profile. This means that potentially if I post good enough content, I could get noticed by them and it could potentially lead to a job or even some new connections or experience.