May 2020 archive

22
May
2020

Post Two: concluding the idea

categories: Social Media Study

POST TWO – ASSIGNMENT #4

Today concludes the last official day of my social media experiment and with that, my last reflection- and what a journey it has been! My ultimate goal this week was to not try anything new but wrap up nicely on what has been quite a successful few months growing my Instagram account to what it is now. And to cut to the chase: I made a sale! How ironic that I made a sale in the last week of this assignment. Although that was never the main goal, it proved to me that running a small business can take months of work before anything takes off and that nothing will just grow overnight. With patience and consistency, even a simple thrift shop run on Instagram can be successful!

Before I recap on everything I have achieved overall in the last two months, I want to reflect on some things that didn’t work out perfectly. First off, I realise that with my particular target audience and consumer base, video content performs worse than simple imagery. I think this is because, for my business anyway, consumers want you to cut to the chase and see what the item looks like – statically. However, my videos were quite rushed and not super engaging so maybe if they looked more professional they would be more appealing.

Another issue I constantly struggled with was having over 50% of my followers be Australian and local. Although this shouldn’t matter as I extended my business worldwide, I would have liked to have achieved this. However, you can’t pick who follows you. No matter how hard you try to appeal to local thrifters, Americans and New Zealander’s would follow me constantly everyday! I just had to accept that there wasn’t a huge amount of Aussie thrifters in comparison to other countries. (I did get super close, 48% were Australian).

Now let’s get into the positives! As we can recall from my first blog post, my main question I wanted to answer was:

How are current businesses using Instagram to brand themselves and connect with their consumer audience? 

I can confidently say I can answer this to an extent! Of course I could better explain this if I had more experience than two months running a thrift account, however, I completely understand now the business analytics of Instagram and how any tool on the platform can be mastered to market your business and up engagement. I am currently sitting on 600+ followers which many are supportive, made a sale and have reached thousands of potential consumers in such a short time frame. I have come a long way from starting this experiment “feeling lost” to now feeling confident I could run any sort of business on social media from now on. Although I may not continue this business in the future, this experiment was extremely valuable and I got so much out of it.

15
May
2020

Post One: reinforcing the idea

categories: Uncategorized

POST ONE – ASSIGNMENT #4

Coming into Assignment #4, I was eager to take Mark and others advice on how I can push my account further and experiment. Some of the ideas I brainstormed during this time and got inspiration from was:

  • Creating video content
  • Showcasing style tips
  • Asking other thrifters for advice
  • Using other platforms other than Instagram

Firstly, I never intended to make video content for this project as most thrift accounts opt for the simple image. However, after the consultations, I realised that video content could be heavily engaging and had the potential for more engagement. I recall Fan telling me after my presentation that TikTok was a powerful and growing platform that I could use to my own advantage. Therefore, this week I decided to incorporate venturing into video content with ‘showcasing style tips,’ and made my first TikTok! It has so far been viewed 70 times after being uploaded yesterday but only time can tell if it ranks up well compared to my photo artefacts.

Next, Mark encouraged me to interview other accounts in the thrift community in order to get any advice or knowledge. So that’s what I did! I interviewed an account who at the time had a lot more followers than me: @iTrive.au 

The sweet owner of this account is a fellow Australian who has supported my account since the beginning! I reached out to her as she had previously wished me luck with this social media experiment, and she was happy to help and gave me some good advice in terms of what platforms perform well with thrifting! The owner told me that she sells through 3 platforms, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram and eBay. She admits sales are low on Instagram with only an average of 1 per week, whereas she performs better on the others. She gave me both pros and cons for why she picked those platforms and claimed to consistently post on Instagram stories to keep up engagement, as well as have sales/special offers.

I sadly don’t intend to branch out my business to other platforms right now as eBay can charge fees and FB Marketplace seems like the easy route. With these platforms, you can’t exactly grow as a business, you’re more selling just as an individual. I enjoy how Instagram can be set out like a proper business page and you can experiment as you please – more free reign.

Lastly, I wanted to reflect on Trevor Young’s advice for reaching a niche audience and being passionate about your idea. In terms of my audience, I am quite happy with how I have achieved a following of people who meet my target demographic and show engagement on my posts. My audience was always niche to begin with too which was an advantage because I was able to target people efficiently. I am also proud to announce that I am now up to 48% Australian followers! Only 2% from my main goal.

Trevor also talked about being passionate, consistent and to make content that is in sync with one another. I feel like I have adhered to this as I have reached a good following (sitting on 550+ followers right now) and post at the same times every week (on either Sunday, Wednesday, Friday) and I get enjoyment out of what I make. I love the look of my account and although I haven’t made a sale, I am more enjoying engaging with followers and being a part of this community.