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Research intention
How can we produce a social media marketing campaign that investigates how social media affects its users, and promote mental health awareness during the pandemic?
Tools For Change Instagram account:
https://www.instagram.com/toolsforchange/
Research intention
How can we produce a social media marketing campaign that investigates how social media affects its users, and promote mental health awareness during the pandemic?
During week 11, I had time to reflect on our research to produce mental health and family resources for our account. A concept I wanted to explore in depth is how mental health is discussed online, across several social media platforms. I noticed while engaging with other accounts on Instagram that there are a vast community of accounts dedicated to posting mental health resources. Ironically, they exist alongside the influencer and beauty community which is quite large on Instagram. Users of Instagram can engage with both types of content. Age demographic could certainly be a factor with engagement as younger audiences tend to look up to influencer figures, and posts concerning mental health don’t often appear every day on the timeline unless the user is a part of the mental health community. One method of distribution of mental health posts that is often seen is posts being shared on the stories of personal accounts (especially now that mental health awareness is a concern due to the pandemic). While authoring my story and carousel posts, I kept in mind potential ways to engage this younger audience through design and copywriting choices. This is reflected in our insights, which show we met our target age demographic (16-30):
Fig 1. Our age and gender engagement. Fig 2. Our story engagement for the last 30 days, which incorporates these design elements.
My understanding of social media has also grown during week 12. Our social media strategy for this week involves distributing mental health resources for international and LGBTQIA+ students in Australia. To expand our strategy beyond Instagram, I created a linktree website page with mental health resources for those who need them, targeting young people of all ages and genders. This is accessible through our Instagram bio and is part of our initiative to improve Australia’s mental health.
Fig. 3 Tools For Change Linktree website
Overall, this marketing campaign has taught me the importance of collaboration in publishing social media work. Communication has helped the team meet deadlines, produce effective posts, and create a friendly space for work to take place. I’ve learnt that peer feedback is important in developing concepts further, as it demonstrates what does and doesn’t work within a project. The importance of branding was also reinforced for me, as illustrated by Peck in his book Think Before You Engage: 100 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Social Media Marketing Campaign: “The avatar, your marketing message, and your general content are also a big part of how you brand yourself online. By establishing a solid and cohesive online strategy that aligns with your general marketing plan, you’ll ensure that what you do online to establish your brand matches what you’re doing offline” (Peck, 2011, p. 34). We believe our understanding of social media strategy and research-based approach has produced significant growth on our account within the last few weeks.
Fig. 4 Tools For Change follower growth. Fig 5. Tools For Change Instagram account.
References:
How can we produce a social media marketing campaign that investigates how social media affects its users, and promote mental health awareness during the pandemic?
As part of my team’s work in Week 8, we presented an informal pitch to our peers that outlines our social media strategy. Previously, we created 4 carousel posts on the topic of self care which intend to promote mental health awareness. The feedback on our pitch was helpful: one suggestion we received was to display practices of self-care in our routines through Instagram stories to incentivise people into practicing their own self-care. Taking this on board, our team conceptualised the message and overall branding for the account. We have moved toward a more gender neutral colour scheme and branding in order to speak to our diverse target audience.
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Fig. 1 Profile logo concept designs
In week 9, our team presented our research findings formally to Sensis representatives Tessa and Will. We received positive as well as constructive feedback on our work. The Sensis representatives liked that our account provides resources for international students, directs followers to a bio link and highlights the link between family and mental health. Tessa suggested incorporating our followers’ mental health stories as some content for the page and taking more of a personalised approach to the content. I responded to their feedback to create a detailed posting schedule by showing what posts are going up at what time.
Tools for Change_ Content Schedule – Posting Schedule
The schedule outlines the following topics:
Our team’s work in week 10 involved implementing this social media strategy by authoring posts on topics 1 and 2. Something I learnt while authoring content for social media through Instagram stories is that it is important to consider users who may be hearing impaired. For this reason, I included closed captioning while editing videos in Premiere Pro. This is fairly straightforward and is beneficial to our audience as it makes the content more accessible. The production and distribution of the work involved making highlight reels, cover photos, liking, commenting, following and interacting with other accounts.
Fig. 3 Tools for Change Instagram account
We were able to gather qualitative research from our audience on their experiences with social media by sending DMs to our mutual followers. The accounts @sarah_freedom_ and @coachuwellness gave us insights into how social media affects them; they replied that they were very self aware of their social media habits, and practiced self-awareness through meditation and mindfulness strategies. However, they did indicate that their social media habits are not perfect which also seems to ring true in the research conducted by Sensis.
I was able to analyse our account growth by looking at our insights using Instagram’s creator profile tools. These are our insights from the past week (Week 10). These demonstrate our audience and account reach as well as engagement with specific posts.
Fig. 4 and 5. Increased account reach and impressions- 500 impressions this week
Fig. 6 and 7. Post engagement is higher on educational posts that use a larger typeface. Our content is reaching our target age demographic (16-30), with a higher amount of women than men
In these past few weeks alone, I have been able to expand my knowledge of the processes involved in authoring social media content and collaborating with others. Moving forward, I would like to have more of Sensis’ findings inform the work that we produce and continue our research on best practices for mental health on social media.
References: