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?

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:

1. Self-awareness of our mental health
2. Mental health and family support
3. Support for international and LGBTQIA+ students

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:

• 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;