Social Media Campaign

I researched the best times for gaining the most impact from posting on Instagram from a website called "when is the best time to post on Instagram in 20222 made by Influencer Marketing Hub on March 25th, 2022. At the start of this campaign, I had intended to keep a consistent posting time for a Tuesday lunchtime. However, the studies from the website showed that the best days and times to post are on a Thursday between 2-3 pm, or 11 am on Wednesday and 10 am on Friday. This was also confirmed by the Lifewire website, and they recommend that the best times to get the most feedback and attention for posts are 5 am, 7-9 am, 11 am-2 pm, 3-4 pm and 5-7 pm (based on American central time). This reflects the periods that people are most likely to have the time to check posts on their devices around the commitments of their daily lives (for example, school/college and work routines). This encouraged me to experiment more with posting timetables.

I created a logo and a brand to assist with marketing my designs and promoting myself. The logo has a background of light blue with a white mist at the bottom which is covering the statue of King Alfred shown as a black figure. The main object in the logo is the statue of King Alfred the Great in Winchester, which stands in the centre of Winchester. Alfred was the king of the West Saxon kingdom of Wessex from 871 to 899. Winchester was the capital of Wessex. The font for the writing is gold with an Arch Castellar font style, which gives the impression of a historic style of the text. The colour scheme is similar to that used for Edward the Confessor's coat of arms, considered England's last king from the house of Wessex.

The title used for the branding for my social media is "Jackson's In-Venta Designs". My name highlights my interest in design and history. The main theme of the brand is the location, Winchester as I have studied for my degree here. Everything in this logo and brand name has a connection to the city. Venta is taken from the name Venta Belgarum which is the Roman name for Winchester. The name means Marketplace of the Belgae, after the local tribe in the area the Belgae. Venta Belgarum became the regional capital before it changed to London in the 12th century. In-Venta is also a play on the word "inventor".

Before university, I had little experience with social media except for messaging, posting pictures and scrolling through feeds from people, pages, and companies I follow. I had not considered how it might be used to research organisations related to my chosen course of CAD in terms of progressing my career or building a network of useful contacts. I used mind-mapping to explore how I could use social media platforms effectively, including how to promote my brand and the best types of posts to make.

fig.1 - Mind Map

This initial mind map, used on MindView 7, reflected options for approaching this project and how to present the work. I thought of what would go into the project and how best to make my platform noticeable. The most thought went into the branding of my work. I also focused on building my target audience of CAD designers and engineers who are working in the industry. I thought these groups would be more interested in the types of posts I make than a general audience and would be a starting point for building a network of contacts that may lead to employment offers. The work I want to present is my university work in Computer-aided design (CAD) as well as any personal projects I have taken. My CAD work has developed a range of models from different areas from mechanical engineering, creating furniture, product design and starting to expand into architectural designs.

In the future I see myself working for a small company rather than being self-employed. I want to continue to grow my skills and confidence to take on bigger employment roles. I am focused on the next few years rather than the long-term as I find it harder to visualise that far ahead, and also my work may require considering moving to a different geographical area. Although I am not sure about the specific career path to pursue, my core interests are design and mechanical engineering, particularly making 3D models.

Using CAD can benefit the world in many different ways, from making car parts to architecture. An example would be the offer I have received of a summer placement with an organisation that manufactures body armour for the police and security forces. With the advancing technology of CAD designs enabling precise manufacturing combined with 3D printers, production can be much speedier than when plans were being hand-drawn.

The following paragraphs describe research into the different platforms and the context for this project:

When researching social media platforms, I found recent figures from Simple Learn on March 29th, 2022, stating that Facebook is the most popular social media platform (2.3 billion users) whilst Instagram is number 6 in popularity (1 billion users). Although Instagram has fewer users, it appealed to me as it is used by many organisations for professional marketing and has the benefit of being more mobile-friendly. I was also more comfortable using it as the platform for my work as a positive space as I had experience in its use, and I thought the hashtags could help discover a wider audience. The right hashtags can help grow the platform and reach the right people. This can be from the message I would want to send, the brand, the types of products I want to show and posts I want to upload. I, therefore, selected that as my platform.

I also found that a point to be careful of is 'follower fatigue'. Ideally, I should upload at least one weekly post, with additional posts if there is a particular focus, like an "interest week". More frequent posts could give followers the impression that you are spamming your content to their accounts.

Another issue is the competition I will have to face from other social media accounts that show their CAD work. There were a few videos on Instagram that show the creators recording themselves creating their work with music in the background. This is something I will explore in the future. I may then also consider YouTube as another option for videos of my work.

Some social media platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat are not widely used for marketing. Tiktok is accessed by international audiences usually for entertainment purposes, and the Snapchat feature of disappearing content and lack of tools such as hashtags does not make them my choice for networking. WhatsApp Marketing is an extension of WhatsApp, but I did not consider a messaging tool the best option for promoting my work as the size of the audience it could reach would be limited.

Linked-in was mandatory for this project as an extra platform on which to establish a profile and gain connections as it is used by many professionals and can also be used to advertise availability for work.

fig.2 - Most Popular Social Media Sites in 2022

fig.3 - Age and Gender Statistics

fig.4 - Leading Social Media Platforms for Marketing 2021

According to Statista in January 2022 the age groups that use Instagram worldwide are 18-24 and 25-34 with the leading gender being male. Knowing the type of target audience means that I can attempt to design a profile that will appeal to them, keeping the focus on models.

The current usage of social media is shown in the graph below. I would expect it to continue to grow overall as technology continues to become ever more accessible especially on mobile platforms.

The leading benefits of using social media in marketing are that you can reach a wider range of audiences than ever before, and it is easily accessible. I plan to continue to use Instagram as my primary tool for marketing my work and building up my connections.

Instagram contains the following useful features:

• Instagram live which is a video facility that allows streaming to engage with your followers.
• Hashtags are a string of words and symbols which will then link to related topics with the same tag so users can follow their interests easily. It is also an easy way to reach an audience for that topic.
• Algorithms use people's data to feed them information that links to their previous search history.
• Analytical tools help to understand how effective your profile and posts are like the number of views.

fig.5 - Autodesk Instagram Page

The above image is a commercial Instagram profile from Autodesk, the main supplier of my CAD software. There are a few features that this profile has.

1. The name has a blue tick next to it to show that this is a verified account.
2. The description has the name of the individual/company, a short paragraph of what their intentions are and their website link.
3. This part shows the short stories they posted

My Instagram account for this campaign (as shown in figure 8) clearly shows my brand, logo, and my profile. I kept the format the same as the example above, but my page will not have been verified like Autodesk. I may switch it to a professional account if it would open to more business opportunities, particularly if I become self-employed.

Following this research, I discovered that the successful features of Instagram are a logo; a brief description; and using a wide range of hashtags to attract many followers.

My brand developed after deciding on the link to a location I knew well based on my interest in history and Rome. Colchester was my first thought as I grew up in Essex, but then I changed it to Winchester.

I always wanted a central figure in my logo. My first thought was to feature a building and I had ideas of using the Westgate from the centre of Winchester and then considered using the Cathedral but that was already adopted by the university. I, therefore, used another landmark instead and decided to use the statue of Alfred the Great. I have also reflected on the historical theme of my posts on Instagram. The visual impression is such that the figure of Alfred the Great is rising from the mist into a blue sky.

fig.6 - Initial Design of the Logo

fig.7 - Final Logo

fig.8 - My Instagram Page for this Campaign

My Instagram account explains who I am, showing my logo and branding with a quick introduction and profile outlining my skills and the "Call to action" link for people to access my website. To provide a more personalised approach, I also decided to have an "interest week" where viewers can learn more about my background and how I became interested in engineering and design. This has the benefit of regulating the flow to my account and widening my audience through hashtags. I concluded that my posts will be of more interest if there is a story alongside describing behind the scenes or a bit of history about why I ended up producing the CAD models.

To progress my social media campaign, I stored my files in my Year 2 folder named social media, and also keep favourites from searches using Edge. I have stored work from previous years at university on an external drive. As my number of projects increases, I intend to use a file structure to group them and will utilise university server space or consider google drive.

My overall plans are shown on the Gantt chart below, followed by a description of the timeline and a summary of tasks. I also found that I worked best by also keeping a further breakdown in weekly lists of tasks electronically, and colour coding them in red for priority tasks, blue for notes and green when complete. This allowed me to keep track of progress and focus on certain areas and also enabled discussion on progress with my mentors. I have also experimented with using outlook for tasks and reminders.

fig.9 - Gantt chart for this project

Total Campaign = 15 weeks

The plan above shows that my first task was to note initial thoughts and expand on them by creating a mind map which took slightly longer than first thought with additional ideas on branding.

The timescales for planning my posts were extended due to other projects. I chose the subject for my first post, which I decided to base on one of the products that I had designed, with a video of the wooden unit. I also decided that if traffic was not increasing with other model posts, I would have an "interest week" to encourage followers.

The "go live" implementation started with setting up a separate Instagram account for this project, which would keep it separate and avoided having to change my existing account. I would also have the option of changing it to a professional account. The link for this did not work so I require further advice on this to use this option in the future. At first, the account would not accept my chosen name as it gave an error message that a number or a special character was required. However, my name did include this, so I persevered and eventually, it worked. The LinkedIn implementation also required an extended period due to more work on my CV.

I posted one video and 2 models initially onto Instagram, and then added posts over a week of my various interests, explaining any link to engineering and design. My posts are ongoing, and I am tracking their success through the number of followers.

This campaign concludes with a writing-up and insights gained. The last Gantt chart task is to place this work on the portfolio.

After first setting up my Instagram account, I had 4 followers for my first posts. During the middle of the Easter break, after not posting on my Instagram page for two weeks I decided to dedicate a week to just my interests so that people will know what I liked and how that helped get me to where I am. The first posts I completed were about the Ironbridge in Shropshire, cathedrals, castles, the Romans, trains, and stations. The following weekend I posted about my interest in sci-fi and inventors in history. The followers increased during the week: by Wednesday I had gained 15 followers with the number rising to 21 on Friday, 22 Saturday and by Monday it was 25 and has increased since to 29. Doing this has also broadened my audiences to these specific categories as well. The readers of these posts can see what has inspired me over the years, where my interest in mechanical engineering grew during my college years, and how I used CAD to design some work and found I enjoyed it as much as the practical work itself.

I did not have a Google Analytics account and the Instagram professional account setup at the beginning of the postings so I cannot show any charts of data on the website or on the account. The insights gained from my own analysis is that posting multiple different subjects gave me access to a wider range of audiences to view my account and gets me noticed. The most popular post was the sci-fi post which received 37 likes and 2 saves. The second highest likes are from the cathedrals, castles and the roman buildings posts, which each received between 10 to 13. I believe this higher number of likes resulted from the hashtags I used to get the traffic to my account.

While I did miss a few hashtags for most of these posts I can say it is a great start for me getting into social media and is still a work in progress.

See images of posts 1 - 3 below:

The first posts were aimed to be on my original schedule of Tuesdays. The initial one was uploaded on Tuesday, March 8th, 2022 (the number of views was lower than the figure shown with only 4 in the first week). This also has been my only message from a viewer since I started posting.

This is the second post I posted on Instagram. This was delayed from a Tuesday to the following Sunday (20th March 2022) due to problems with the model. At that time, I also forgot to implement the hashtag system, so it did not go out to a wider range of audiences.

My third post was on a Tuesday. The following week from the last. This is from my first exercise using Fusion 360 software.

See images 1 - 7 below from my "interest week".

The "interest week" allowed me to experiment more with the timings of posts, increase my content and produce more substantial analytics. The subject of the first of these posts was the Ironbridge.

This was the second post of the "interest week", about cathedrals in Britain. This was a popular post with the most likes of all my posts at this point.

The third post was about castles in Britain.

This fourth post was about the Romans in Britain and their architecture. So far, the most likes and followers I have gained are from posting about the buildings and history I have liked throughout my life.

This post was about my RSA and my recently expanded interest in the history of the railway.

My most popular post on this platform by far has been my sixth post on my interest in sci-fi with 37 likes alone.

The last post of the week was about the inventors of history, as without the inventors throughout time, famous and unknown, we would not have the most amazing devices and gadgets in history.

This project has been quite a steep learning curve for me. Through this campaign, I used LinkedIn, Google maps, emails, and personal contacts to locate companies with CAD usage, as well as posting through social media. As a personal style, I prefer a direct approach rather than relying on social media, especially as before this campaign I was fairly inexperienced with posting on social media and its benefits. However, during this project I realised how posting about my interests and work on Instagram has increased my coverage and that this way of networking may prove useful in the future.

I have aimed to highlight through Instagram my interest in working in digital media, specifically CAD with the potential to apply it to mechanical engineering, with options for exploring product design and mechanical design. This could result in employment in manufacturing and/or product design.

I think it was wise for me to focus mostly on Instagram rather than trying to keep another platform such as Facebook updated at the same time, as that would have impacted my time available to add posts.

Another positive is the continued development of finding the most effective ways to stay on track with tasks. However, I could probably organise more effectively by creating folders for each topic for quick retrieval. In the future, I will also ensure that I document a weekly snapshot of achievements.

At first, I struggled to become fully invested in this project, as it was difficult to see the relevance to my CAD degree. However, introducing my interests helped me focus and opened my eyes to the benefit of having social media connections. Through this, I have realised that it is important to me to shape projects to build on my strengths and personality, whilst linking that back to CAD and engineering.

My overall reflection is that the campaign provided insight on the value of social media to make connections with potential employers, clients and other designers. This network can be beneficial to offer support, answer questions, and gaining inspiration through sharing information. Having a 'network' of connection also means that word can spread about what I can offer in a professional capacity. In this way, social media is marketing my skills, so it is worth making regular posts to maximise on this 'free advertising'.

Autodesk Instagram Page

Leading social media platforms used by marketers worldwide as of January 2021

Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2022, ranked by number of monthly active users

Distribution of Instagram users worldwide as of January 2022, by age and gender