Post 1: Pre-Assignment Work
Assignment 4 Instagram Page Link
https://www.instagram.com/ja_drone_photography/
Post 2: Post-Assignment Work
Instagram Photos Link: Google Drive
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1OZTi_b9NIX2E1-ah-NS1kt0XRIasMFgq
After trundling through the results of my Instagram experiment it’s pretty clear that my strategy didn’t go entirely to plan. At least this gives me something to reflect upon and learn from my experiences. Being a statistics based studio and research project, I have plotted the yields of my Instagram experiment below:
There were two key reasons why I experienced a severe drop off in followers after the first few posts I have been able to identify.
The first is that I didn’t allow freinds to follow my account. This was a willing approach on my part as aforementioned in post 1 even though I knew it would help, and looking back I wish I didn’t put this in my guidelines as I feel it significantly limited my growth potential. In fact, upon setting up my account as a ‘business page’, Instagram gives tips to grow your following, and one of them was to get your friends to follow you as a means to push your account up the chain. Upon reflection, I wish I allowed this to happen. For comparison, I allowed 10 close freinds to follow my other Instagram photography account and I ended up with 32 followers off just 8 posts, compared to 16 followers from 25 posts this time around. The difference is that building up a rapid inital following amongst friends assumes to Instagram algorithms that your a rapid growth account, and therefore it encourages them to put your content in greater circulation, and I didn’t allow myself this opportunity.
Another issue was that I found myself using repeat hashtags due to limitations in being able to go out and shoot fresh content in unique locations. It started out okay when I was able to upload from different locations which was when I experienced the most growth, however, I very quickly found myself uploading images from same day shoots around the Geelong region. Ideally I would’ve liked to have a day where I went on a road trip and shot content all across Victoria, but this wasn’t possible. Extending from this, I also found it a real challenge towards the back half of the project to even find content worthy of posting given the limitations in place for flying drones at the time, which resulted in increasingly apparent downgrades in quality.
One positive of the experience was my reach, in which my numbers were actually quite high, and this tells me that my hashtagging was working to an extent. Likes were not massive but they were consistent amongst a loyal bunch of followers, which means the following I did have were consistently engaged by my content. But the best part of the experience is now having an account that I can link to potential employers to showcase my work to them. This is a powerful tool when it comes to finding work and having the backbone of a portfolio I can show off will be paramount to gaining future employment. The content itself I am really proud of given the limitations of the COVID-19 virus.
Social media is the backbone of modern communication, it wouldn’t be an understatement to say that literally everyone with an internet connection uses it in some way. Being able to make yourself stand out in such a saturated market is a skill and one that im certainly still working on. I learnt a lot from this experience, and the important takeaway is that I’ve been able to identify where I feel I went wrong. Heading forward, with a fresh thirst for content, I will get out and shoot more, and continue to push my creative boundaries, as well as share my account amongst friends to give it a real popularity boost into the future.
I’m an extremely grateful for the opportunity I have been presented through this studio to explore something that I’m genuinely passionate about and has real-world implications that I otherwise would’ve glossed over. I will continue to apply my findings long into the future. Thanks for a great semester Mark.
Assignment 4 will focus on the implementation of my research in A2 into a test Instagram business account, with the aim of building the largest following possible. My timeline for doing this will start today, Sunday, May 10, making a mother’s day post in the afternoon and will proceed to post twice a day for two weeks until May 24th. Here are my posting guidelines as informed by my research:
I will not be focusing on the image I’m posting in this blog, I will save that for the video. However, I will now explain how I will go about choosing my uploads. As aforementioned, I will only post one image per post in order to make that photo a centerpiece, I don’t want to post multiple photos per post and try to priorities one that should lead over the other. To me, thats just throwing away content and not using it to its full potential. That being said, every 6 posts I will post a montage, that consists of multiple photos in one shot, known as a photomontage. This can be done through the ‘Instagram: Collage’ app. Which allows for more insightful, thoughtful, and dynamic imagery. I say every sixth post because I to be sparing and rhythmic in this as to not lose their value. I’ve made a demo example below:
Instagram lays out content in rows consisting 3 uploads, so posting a montage every 6 posts will line them up at the start of every second row. Little details of symmetry like this add an extra layer of professionalism to my account.
As informed by my competitor analysis and the AFL breakdown in A2, I will be aiming to upload content relevant to the upload climate. For my first post, for example, today on May 10, I will be uploading the image below from a canola field. The reason being the image pops with colors and flowers are a symbol of mother’s day. The accompanying caption will be in celebration of all the mothers out there. This is an example of how you can build a relationship and keep in touch with your audience by starting a two-way conversation as noted in A2.
My final assignment video will showcase all my uploads and content I made for this account (ja_drone_photography). One of the challenges I face is that drone photography for leisure isn’t considered essential activity so I have to manipulate the content I’ve got for the cause. My final post will reflect on the findings from this assignment.
Week 4 Production Report:
Week 5 Production Report:
http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jonah-ahearn/2020/03/31/making-sense-of-social-media-week-5/
Week 6 Production Report:
http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jonah-ahearn/2020/04/02/making-sense-of-social-media-week-6/
Week 7 Production Report:
Assignment 2 Summary Post:
Please note that this post is more a summary of the assignment research undertaken in the four ‘production report’ reflective posts rather than acting as the main part of the graded assessment. As a result of this, more production reports are more information-packed than a typical reflection to compensate. I then finish on a reflection of my experience doing this assignment in broader relation to the studio goals. This post addresses the following points:
Assignment Question and Aims:
‘How can I use social media to expand my photography business as informed by sensis data and further research’
. To develop a critical understanding of the inner workings of Instagram
. Understand usage and consumption habits of target audience (males aged 30-60)
. Analyses the activity of well and poorly implemented social media strategies from other companies
Use for Assignment 3:
. Use this information to construct a test business on Instagram for implementation into my actual business activity
Reflective Piece:
I’ll be the first to admit that this was a really wordy assignment for me, but I felt it was the most effective way I could accurately map out my thoughts. Overall, however, I got exactly what I wanted out of this assignment, I found it was something I could really dive into because I found it so relevant to what I wanted to get out of this course. It’s much easier to do things when you’re passionate about them, and sharing my work with the world is certainly one of those things. I’m only beginning to scratch the surface of what social media can do and I’m excited to share how I will use this research in assignment three. If I had my time again, I probably would have looked into a couple more photography businesses on Instagram, but it just became a bit too much in the end. What the assignment definitely taught me is that social media requires absolute dedication and commitment in order to be a successful marketing platform. Similar in many ways to YouTube, the most successful YouTubers will work up to 16 hours a day in the name of making content. Having the creative output that allows you to consistently upload new and unique content every day is a difficult task, but its what’s required to build and maintain an active following. In my scenario, to followers, it’s just a couple of photo uploads a day, but they don’t see all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes to make that happen. I’m in an interesting position whereby I can’t go out every day and find new things to shoot. But this just makes the research conducted in this assignment all the more valuable, because if I cant shoot new content, I need to use the data to be specific in my targeting. Social media doesn’t operate in a vacuum, the medium is incredibly mobile and active, and this research gives me the tools to be able to read it.
I’m excited to share how these takeaways will be used to effect assignment three.
Heading into the final week in which assessment two is due, and I feel I have an extremely solid understanding of where in heading with assignment three. I was fortunate enough to have enough prior industry experience to know who my audience should be, but my research over the past four weeks has been seriously productive in ironing out the imperfection in my targeting. This week I am conducting my final bout of research into upload frequency, and tailoring this to the usage habits of my audience as informed by the sensis data.
As I mentioned in week 5 based on a reading from The Social Media Handbook, the main gains for businesses on Instagram come from promoting awareness of your brand. One of the most prevalent ways that brands do this by maintaining an active presence through daily uploads. As someone who doesn’t follow any brands on Instagram, I personally question if followers would get annoyed if a brand uploaded too much, or if some people consider it to be spam. If this proves to be true, do the benefits of frequent uploads actually outweigh the negative perceptions I have about it?
To interrogate this point, I created a poll in one of my Facebook messenger group chats. The question was ‘does it bother you if a brand you follow posts on a daily basis?’. I was sure to emphasize this question in relation to Instagram. I received 26 responses:
Yes: 9
No: 17
The results of this poll parallel statistically quite well with the following sensis data into peoples trust in social media-based companies:
The above data stats (filtered for my target audience), reveal that 53% of Instagram users trust companies that update their content regularly, only 18% disagree. Using my Facebook poll and this sensis data, I can determine that people are not fussed by regular uploads and are actually viewed with trust associations. My theory on this is that regular uploads could be the mark of a more dedicated and committed company, whereas those who upload once a month could be a sign of a lack of interest or care for keeping consumers in the loop. A mate of mine commented in response to my poll, saying:
“If I was engaged enough with a brands content to want to follow them, I would probably want them to post lots”
I think this comment summarises these points quite well. Also of note from the above sensis data is that 54% of Instagram users trust companies that interact with their customers on social media (e.g. respond to comments). Martin (2017, p. 52) describes this as a two-way engagement designed to ‘reward’ further conversation. He considers this process to be the most effective ’24-36 hours after your post goes live’. Responding to comments like this builds up a personal relationship between the company and clientele, increases trust and confidence in the business’s ethical and moral standing. Put otherwise, it gives the business a human voice.
So posting daily and engaging with the audience is clearly a good thing. The above graph depicts the times of day my target audience is most active on social media. The clear outliers are ‘first thing in the morning‘ (58.3%) and ‘in the evening‘ (59.6%). Given the age of my audience, it is safe to assume they are probably working full time and therefore ‘first thing in the morning‘ is most likely before 9am. A post at 8am will therefore place my content fresh on the Instagram feed when they wake up and give it the best chance of being seen. As for ‘in the evening‘, given the general clock off time of 5pm, posting at this time will also provide the best chance to be seen.
I observed a reduction in the frequency of posts from pages that rely on content shot externally to stay relevant, photography is a prime example of such. Flashback posts and reuploads are become increasingly popular but require a pre-existing audience who remembers the initial post to have any sort of relevance or effect on that audience. I notice this particularly with the AFL’s Facebook and Instagram streams. I went back through the AFL’s Facebook archives noting every flashback or reupload post they made comparing the last four weeks to the month prior. The results are noted:
February 18 – March 17: 2 flashback posts, 0, reuploads
March 18 – April 17: 64 flashback posts, 11 reuploads
. Increase of 3750% month on month
Example of a flashback (right) and reupload (left):
Statistics such as these are an accurate reflection of the current state of the broader media industry and therefore directly relate to me. As I’m setting up a new test account, I am fortunate not to be burdened by this as I can post selective back catalogue images as if they are current. Posting directly to an established account would remove this privilege. Another point of note about the aforementioned upload frequency, the AFL uses these flashback posts to maintain, on average, four posts per day (3.89 per day for the month of April thus far). The effect of this is that the AFL maintains a stringent social media presence even when business is down. This is less-so about feeding the public engaging information, evidenced by a slight but notably uniform decline in ‘likes’ and ‘reacts’, but more so about maintaining relevance. This is an important distinction to make when I consider my reasoning behind each upload, in which presence is vital when kickstarting a page like I am.
Please refer to the main assignment post for a collaboration of my findings for the month.
Reference:
Martin, Gail Z. 2017 The Essential Social Media Marketing Handbook : A New Roadmap for Maximizing Your Brand, Influence, and Credibility, Career Press, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/RMIT/detail.action?docID=4807028 (Links to an external site.).
Split teaching week this week, always a weird situation when they split the week in two rather than just have a full week off but anyway. Prior to going on break, we had our catchup class on the first Tuesday, discussing assignments and ironing out any queries we had as usual. This class proved extremely valuable in giving me direction for further research ahead. I was going to discuss upload patterns and associations with brand trust this week but I’m going to push that back to week 7 whilst the ideas discussed in this week’s class are still fresh. During our breakout groups when I was talking about my idea, Emily Collins suggested I look into the social media strategy of other photography businesses on Instagram. It was later brought up in class discussion the importance of Instagram’s hashtag system, so I’m going to be exploring both of those topics this week.
Please note that I am talking about stuff today in terms of upload frequency that I am elaborating on next week. Apologies for the confusing order of things.
The first business I’m looking at today is Barwon Drone Photography, who are direct competition based in Geelong and operating across Victoria. They are the closest source I have to my own work, and I know them personally as they live across the road from my nan and pa. It is also noteworthy that they’re a very well established and successful photography brand, so it will be interesting to view the effectiveness of their social media marketing strategy.
They do not have a Facebook presence, and after inspection of their Instagram account, I can see there is much room to improve. They upload very infrequently, and when they do, it’s in sets consisting of whatever work they had done since their last upload. For example, their most recent posts were on the 7th of April 2018. On this day, they made 11 separate posts, one after the other in quick succession. They made three posts before this in July 2018, and prior to that, there most recent activity was 5 posts in June 2016. I have compiled their upload history below:
The inconsistencies in their uploads are extreme, we no apparent patterns appearing. As informed by next week’s research, routine uploading skills should be developed whereby your content should be spread out into a constant stream. Whilst it is apparent that they haven’t uploaded enough to build and then maintain any sort of viewership, the bundling of information into big clunks is an ineffective method of engagement, so what work they are uploading isn’t being utilised properly.
A good way of thinking about it is like a Facebook upload consisting of lots of photos in one post. People are not willing to go through and like each picture individually, they will just like the main post and move on. The same applies to people’s interest in that post. If you make a Facebook post with 13 pictures in it, it’s unlikely each individual photo is going to have the same effect on the consumer as one photo uploaded by itself, since each photo, particularly those towards the back of the album, get lost in an overflow of information. The same principles apply for Barwon Drone Photography on Instagram, their followers are getting lost in a sea of 13 daily uploads once a year whereby posts lose their individual impact and don’t garner the attention they probably deserve. As I discuss in the next post, this is an extremely ineffective strategy.
Likes are consistent across the range of their posts, averaging out at about 8 likes per post since they don’t post frequently enough to build an audience. I would like to focus on the post below in particular, which gathered 30 likes, making it their most liked upload.
Nice photo for sure, but there’s more to it than that, and it leads nicely into a brief analysis of the Instagram hashtag system and the influence it can have. The hashtag system is used for categorising content and making it more discoverable. A recent development for Instagram as of 2019 is that you can now follow hashtags, which means if it’s of interest, picking the right hashtags relevant to the social climate of the time can now have a big effect on whether or not your content gets discovered. Using a long list of copy and pasted hashtags for each post is a bag idea too, as Instagram’s Community Guidelines state that “posting repetitive comments or content” is not okay. A good idea is to set up my Instagram account as a ‘business profile’, which gives me access to post insights which tell me how many impressions I have received from hashtags. Have a range of hashtags from broad in scope to specific is a smart idea in my experience, as it has the potential to keep you in mainstream circulation whilst appealing to those with a niche interest.
In the case of Barwon Drone Photography, they tend to only use one or two hashtags per post, one of them always being their company name, which no one’s looking for anyway because they don’t upload enough. This particularly ‘popular’ post was unique for them because they had #queensland in there. This may be jumping to conclusions but their location hashtags in other posts tended to be too specific, so I believe this hashtag gathered more attention to this post. I would love to see their views for this post compared to the rest.
There are a lot of lessons for me to learn from here.
As someone currently operates and provides aerial photography services, I have already come to understand who my target audience is. Whilst client gender is often varied, the initial point of contact tends t0 be a male averaging young-middle aged (30-60 roughly). Since drones as a general interest tend to be more popular amongst males and are therefore more likely to seek the service out directly. What I aim to learn from the sensis data is the specifics of how I should be marketing to my audience.
Of note is that my business is targeting commercial and retail sectors across Victoria as a means to stay open to Government projects.
I made a filter targeting Victorians who are active Instagram users, keeping it fairly broad to maintain data accuracy as well as a filter that simply monitors the behavior of males aged 30-65. Using these broad filters gives me a large range of data, and drawing conclusions from both together will ensure relevance and accuracy to my chosen field.
I determined that roughly 50% of all Instagram users in my target demographic follow brands on Instagram and a further 83% on Facebook. The reason why I’m targeting Instagram over Facebook then is practical than the statistics can show. Instagram is a creative platform, whereas Facebook is an information stream. Creative works such as cutting edge drone photography, in my personal experience of using both, gain far more leverage on Instagram simply because it’s eye candy, and Instagram is fundamentally a display platform for showing off your talents. Works such as mine are more likely to find their audience on Instagram, whereas people have to seek it on Facebook. So in this sense, 50% of all Instagram users in my target demographic following brands is a positive statistic.
Martin (2017, p. 53), while questioning Instagram’s ability to actively sell products, describes Instagram as king when it comes to ‘building brand awareness’, and that making photos ‘striking, memorable, and unusal’ will make people want to share your content. This is ideal for a media creator such as myself, in which building a digital portfolio is a vital step to developing brand trust amongst consumers. Critically, aerial photos in their very nature tend to be striking and circulate very well on Instagram, which I will elaborate on in a later post. For all of these reasons and more to come, Instagram is a fantastic channel for a creator such as myself to promote brand professionalism.
Whilst I already operate under a brand name, making a test account gives me the opportunity to experiment with naming strategies as informed by my knowledge of the target audience. In a discussion with Mark in week three regarding my line of work, he opened my eyes to the importance of brand naming I hadn’t previously considered. There is more to a brand name than simply sounding sophisticated. Mark opened up on his knowledge of drones and suggested that the word ‘drone’ be in the brand name rather than things like ‘aerial imaging’. The take away from this is that brand recognition is more important than sophistication, and that doing this will isolate my target audience and make them feel out of reach of my services.
For proof of concept, I conducted the following poll with people in my extended family, with each participant being between 30-60 years of age (6 males, 5 females). The poll simply asked them to identify which two keywords are more instantly recognisable as brand services:
. Drone Photography: 9 votes
. Aerial Photography: 2 votes
. Drone Imaging: 0 votes
. Aerial Imaging: 0 votes
These naming strategies extend beyond social media. For example, if I started up a brand website for people to contact me through, the poll suggests that they would be significantly more likely to find my website if ‘drone photography’ was used rather than ‘aerial photography’. This seems like an obvious naming choice then but it wasn’t something I was aware of until Mark pointed it out and I conducted this research, so I’m thankful for that.
Briefly expanding on my idea of splitting the task across assignments two and three, I have this week decided that assignment three will revolve around the establishment of my test business on Instagram as informed by my research in assessment two. I was planning to establish which content I was going to use/edit in this assignment but it seems like thats going to be too much and I should keep the media creation side of things for later to balance things out.
Reference:
Martin, Gail Z. 2017 The Essential Social Media Marketing Handbook : A New Roadmap for Maximizing Your Brand, Influence, and Credibility, Career Press, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/RMIT/detail.action?docID=4807028
Week four was an unsurprisingly challenging week for all students and teachers alike, as we had to come to terms with the transition to online learning. For this reason, no formal classes were held for this studio, proving problematic given our work for assignment two was set to get underway this week. In many ways, however, my work in this studio is even more relevant, as we as students and content creators are more reliant on social media now than ever before to communicate and share ideas. The importance of staying connected is reflected by current government television commercials, whereby they encourage us to set up social accounts for elderly relatives as a means to encourage interaction and stay in touch. The irony of all this is that we are constantly being told that we use social media too much, and in the current climate if you’re not using it, you’re not socially connected at all.
What this demonstrates is a reliance on social media in the present day, and it makes the logistics of assignment two all the more intriguing as an opportunity to expand my business’s social media strategy as has been discussed in prior reflections.
Having only dipped our toes in a 40-minute zoom tutorial and going over the details of assignment two, I began to elaborate on a strategy for how I would use assignment two as a research project to springboard my production work in assignment three. I refer to a pitch of my idea to Mark via email (heavily modified to a formal level):
I am to submit a series of production reports (blog posts), each dedicated to a specific branch of research that aims to answer the question of ‘how can I use social media to expand my photography business as informed by the Sensis data and broader research’.
Being a sole trader specialising in photography for a few years now, I have always tried to have a presence on social media, particularly Instagram for reasons that will be discussed next week. However, until partaking in this studio, I have never understood the true benefits as a content creator to maintaining an active social media following. Resulting from the vast availability of data resources in this studio, I recognised this assignment to be a one-time opportunity to genuinely grow a passion outside of this course. Working in tandem with my elective subject ‘Managing a Communications Business’, the time is now to consolidate a fresh business plan and marketing strategy by creating a test business separate from the current name I am working under. Using my learnings from assignments two and three, I aim to implement the effective outcomes into my own professional career.
I am very excited to see what I can continue to dig up.
Post 1: What is your interpretation of the term ‘social media’? What have you learned from the Sensis reports?
http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jonah-ahearn/2020/03/10/social-media-assignment-1-post-1/
Post 2: What examples of social media do you find inspirational or challenging?
http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jonah-ahearn/2020/03/10/social-media-assignment-1-post-2/
Post 3: How will your own work in this studio be informed by your understandings of social media, the data from the Sensis surveys and your examples of social media mentioned above?
http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jonah-ahearn/2020/03/10/social-media-assignment-1-post-3/