Post 2: Identify a specific target audience informed by an analysis of the Sensis data and propose a platform or platforms that is/are relevant to your target audience.

In this week’s production report, I will be discussing the target audience of our marketing campaign. Based on the data we have gathered, our target audience will include young people aged 16-30 and is non-gender specific. We would like to target anyone with mental health issues, and users of social media in Australia including International students. We have also been refining some survey questions for our target audience, as follows:

1. Do you feel social media has had a positive or a negative effect on your mental wellbeing in the last year? 
2. How often do you feel in control over the messages/posts that have been shown in your feed? 
3. Do you feel comfortable sharing your experiences with others on social media?
4. How much do you feel influenced by what you see on social media?
5. How effective do you feel these platforms are at providing resources for individuals to seek professional help? (Not effective, a little effective, average, very effective)

Based on the Sensis data, our group has determined that Instagram is a suitable platform to host our marketing campaign. We found that in a survey conducted through Glowfeed, the majority of 18-21 year olds (41.3%) believe that Instagram users are most prone to online bullying compared to other social media sites. Additionally, 18.7% of respondents answered Instagram in response to the question ‘Which social media platform do you believe people with mental health issues access the most? Informed by this resource, we intend to publish test posts to Instagram and measure how these are received (through likes, comments and other insight tools) on the platform. We may also potentially cross-post the same content to Facebook depending on the format and reception of each post on Instagram. 

Fig 1. Instagram account prototype

By making an Instagram account (@toolsforchange) for our group to publish our campaign content I considered the ways we could increase the reach on the platform. Based on prior knowledge of the networked quality of Instagram, I followed and interacted with accounts with similar names and goals (raising mental health awareness). Branding is also an important aspect of curating an Instagram feed and presence. We investigated the use of colour as a strategy to create consistency across posts. We will produce pictograms and charts to show data consistent with our account aesthetic, with the intent to target a young age demographic. 

References:

• Glow, 2021, Have your say on social media use in Australia, Glow, viewed 10th April 2021, <https://portal.glowfeed.com/shared-report/f17f4da1-ec50-4a22-a02e-28bb69e05562?token=300122154d0ebe13d8e9ebb6805413d5&gt;