After receiving feedback from SENSIS, Mark, and our peers during the presentation, we took in every feedback we received and discussed what we could improve, remove, and add to spruce up our content and profile presence as a whole on Instagram. The people from SENSIS recommended that we should showcase our faces more on the Cyber Stompers profile. They alerted us that showing our faces will help to increase the follower’s loyalty to our profile as there is a face to relate to when talking about serious topics such as online bullying. While we thought that it would take away attention from the issue we are trying to raise, adding more personality onto our page will help us to connect emotionally to the users and build a trusting relationship to discuss online bullying. After the presentation, we decided to include more of our members’ faces in the content, such as the ‘Meet The Members’ post, where we created a carousel post introducing ourselves to the community. We also took to the ‘Story’ feature by recording a 15-30 second video of ourselves talking about our personal experiences on online bullying to our followers. Although stories only appear for 24 hours, we then saved them onto a story highlight that is available on our account’s profile page for users to re-watch it.
Speaking of ‘stories’, we also agreed on implementing a weekly Q&A session on our Instagram story every Wednesday. The concept is to have Cheryl as the correspondent to respond to the questions from users. By having a person talk instead of a graphic post, we were able to create a sense of connection between us and our audience. By using the open question feature on Story, it made it easier for users to type in their questions, and for us to respond to them immediately on the Story. We identified that this would be a more encouraging way for users to communicate with us, as the responses are anonymous. We can also either respond to the users directly or publish it to our Story if it is relatable and beneficial for everyone.
Furthermore, the people from SENSIS also advised us to reference where we got our sources from for the informational content. We amended and added the source references to our previous and new Carousel posts so that our users know where we get our information from, providing them with a form of transparency. As for the static posts, we ditched the informational content and focused more on emotional/personal content, such as giving members hotlines, websites, and tips on what to do if users are experiencing online bullying. We also emphasised Cyber Stompers as a community by reminding our audiences to share and tag their friends/family on those experiencing this issue. In addition, we also created a ‘linktree’ link present on our profile bio that directs our users to relevant sites such as ‘R U OK?’ and ‘Headspace’ to learn more about online bullying.
In conclusion, this project has been very challenging but worthwhile. Working in a group building an Instagram profile from the ground up required good communication and work ethic. Working together on creating content and finding ways to improve our engagement was a fun process. It allowed us to share our ideas and work collectively on building a successful page that raises awareness about online bullying to the masses.
Cyber Stompers Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/cyberstompers/