Social Media
Introduction
Goals
Profiles
Timing and Scheduling
Interactions
Research
Influences
Pros and cons
Instagram
Pros and cons
Linkedin
Posts
Paid advertising
Conclusion
This module focused on building a personal brand and portfolio on LinkedIn and a social media platform of our choice, we had to have a regular posting schedule and a plan of how we were going to use these social media platforms.
The two that I chose were LinkedIn and Instagram as it is more focused on visuals compared to other platforms.
When starting this project, I set my self achievable goals for both the social medias (Instagram and LinkedIn) my goal for both projects was to have a good following and to get consistent likes on my posts, along with keeping a schedule for when I would post.
I believe that in some ways I failed and achieved these goals.
Here you can see how both of the profiles look
On my social medias I showcased the graphic posters that I was making, including my passion project where I was making an F1 poster for every race.
The posts were categorised into 3 main themes, cars and motorsport, Lego and Music.
I typically spent around 2 hours per post and would post them every Tuesday and Friday (Instagram) and every Friday (LinkedIn) between the hours of 8:30 and 9:30 in the morning. These were the most successful days and times for me after testing other options.
During this module, posting on both Instagram and Linkedin I got a few interactions with people from different areas and backgrounds. The first came from a post I made in January of a popular American rapper called MF DOOM, the account commented on the post and after a bit of back and forth he started to follow me, this post was also the first to get likes and interactions from people I did not know, and people from the USA, after this post I made a few like it and started to use similar hashtags to see if I could get the same results on other posts.
What I found out though is that this same post would get more interaction months after I posted it, I had 3 people DM me about how much they liked the post and the rest of my work a few months after I posted it.
On Linkedin it was very different, when I started posting on Linkedin I would get around 12 to 15 impressions on my posts and appeared in 3 search results but as I started posting more I gained a lot more connections, appeared in 100 search results as of April the 1st and have had some people contact me, interested in me doing some work for them, for that reason I would say that Linkedin was much more of a success that my instagram page.
Instagram was my main form of social media for this module, I have 32 posts on there, posted twice a week on Tuesdays and on Sundays.
My page included all of the design work that I did and documented my journey of re learning photoshop as I had not used it for a year prior to this semester so I though it would be fun to re learn it and document it, showing how my skills have improved over time.
I chose to use Instagram as one of my social media platforms for two reasons, one being I know how it works and have been using it for years, second reason is that it is very easy to show of your work, if someone goes onto your profile they can see everything by scrolling down.
The name for the profile is "rbs_d3signs" when thinking of a name for the account I could of used my full name or a brand name, something like "d3 designs" for example was something I thought of using but ended up using "rbs-d3signs" for a few reasons, I used it through out my time in school and into college, it represents me and what I do, I had a few good ideas for a logo which I did not have with other names I tried and I used it during my 1st year at uni as well.
LinkedIn was unfamiliar territory for me as I have never used to before this module, going into LinkedIn I was aware that it was like Instagram and Twitter (X) but more geared to businesses. Despite having very little knowledge when it came to posting schedules and how the algorithm worked, I gradually learned the ropes through research and observation.
My posting schedule was every Friday between the hours of 8:30 to 9:30 in the morning, a timing that I discovered through experimentation.
I would mirror the posts that I was posting on my Instagram page from that week.
Over time I noticed that the likes, connections, search results and interactions where going up, a standout moment was receiving a job offer for a new brand as a designer.
When it came to research the main things I was looking at where the best times to post, how to use hashtags and key words. To do this I used a few websites to help me, I also spoke to some friends that have had some good success on social media and growing a personal brand.
The sites that I looked at for my research were...
- https://www.storyblocks.com/resources/blog/instafamous-the-top-hashtags-for-designers-on-instagram
-https://buffer.com/resources/linkedin-algorithm/
For most most of the hashtags I looked at some of the big design pages I followed on Instagram and LinkedIn and took inspiration for what tags they were using, this was the same on LinkedIn.
When it came to people and accounts that influenced me when creating my Instagram account, I was influenced by a few design pages that I have been following for a while and I wanted to get the same feel and style of their work and their page, these accounts where, @its.hugx @marca.stu @jimibiscuits and @hajimersorayama...
The things that influenced me from these accounts was the style of their posts and how they laid their pages out, another thing I took inspiration from was their hashtags and which ones they were commonly using, the ones that they were frequently using I started to use in my posts.
The style of their posts was also something that inspired me, a lot of the styles that they used I had never done before so it was very fun to create posts in different styles that were alien to me.
Pros- The posts that I were making were very well made and high quality, this is backed up by comments that I got from friends, family, piers and people commenting and sending me messages.
-The schedule for me worked well, I was able to create posts in a constant manner and schedule them easily, the times also worked getting interactions from people.
-During this time I enhanced my photoshop and illustrator skills during this period which was a big pro in my opinion.
Cons- Writing about the posts was a bit of a challenge, I did not really know what I should write about the post and I ended up using AI to write for me.
- Likes were something that was not constant, my posts were reaching around 100 people but not getting nearly as many likes.
-Emotions did play a small part in this project, I felt that the posts I was making were very high quality and I was putting a lot of time into them but they were not getting as many likes as I would of liked which made me feel very de moralised and not very interested in social media.
Pros- Posting the same posts as on Instagram so it meant that the quality was the same quality.
-The text I would add to the post was informative and told people about the post, in my opinion it worked a lot better than what I did on Instagram, I would write more and add more detail than what I would add on Instagram about the same post.
-Interaction was very good on Linkedin, constantly getting new connections from people I knew and people from all around the world which was a very nice feeling, I was also appearing in a lot of search results and getting a lot of impressions on my posts which was a big high.
-The profile I made was very good, from what some people have told me the banner was very eye catching and grabbed their attention along with my bio and profile picture.
Cons- The schedule has not always been consistent, my aim was to post every Friday around the hours of 9:30 to 10, I would keep this up but would sometimes forget and put more of my focus on posting on Instagram.
-I had some issues with verification where I was locked out of my account for a week, this was due to me not reading the messages telling me to verify with a work email.
-During my time posting on Linkedin I did not reach the audience that I was aiming for on some specific posts, I have a big passion for motorsports and cars and I did a few posts with the target audience being those industries.
Here you can see 3 of the most successful posts from my Instagram page, this is in terms of likes and interactions in the form of comments and private messages.
This is all from natural growth (people coming from hashtags and recommendations)
This was one of the earlier posts on my page and was easily one of the most successful, not in terms of likes but interaction and over all growth of my account.
The post is a poster for a popular New York rapper called MF DOOM, one of the things that made him stand out from others in his field is the mask that he whore making him easily recognisable. I had the idea that if I created posts about him it would grow my page, which was kind of true. This post has received 3 DMs from some musicians and a comedian based in the US, it gained me 3 followers, all of which from the USA.
This poster of a SAAB was my most liked post, with this post I managed to tap into the SAAB owners club as most of the people that liked this post were a part of a club. This was due to the hashtags that I used and the key words in the description of the post.
Out of all the post that I have made this is not my favourite nor is it my best but the hashtags that I used managed to get it to the right people who are interested in cars and in SAABs and they seemed to like it, I have not made any other posts in this style but is something I would like to do, to see if I can get a similar result in terms of likes.
This is one of the many posts that I have put onto my social media pages, this is a poster for the Australian Grand Prix which is part of my passion project for my social medias, where I am making a poster for every race, when uplaoding these I would put a lot of focus into the hashtags of the post trying to capture a particular audience, sadly I was unsuccessful in doing this. What was a success for these posts was the use of the location option, adding the location of the race meant that people there would see it, and they did, I got a lot of views from people in those locations.
I flirted with the idea of paying for one of my posts to be prompted, the lowest you could pay is £5 so thats what I did, I chose to do my Miami Grand Prix post which was my most recent at the time.
I decided the let the post run for 2 days to see how it would do.
When I posted the post it had 4 likes and I had 25 followers, after the post and after I paid for it to be boosted it now has 23 likes and I have gained 5 followers bringing my follower count up to 30.
After this experiment this is something that I would consider doing it again in the future.
In conclusion, my social media journey was a mixed bag of highs and lows, while I found satisfaction in creating my posters, I often felt disheartened by the lack of interaction that they were receiving.
Looking back I would tweak my approach and pay more attention when it comes to post descriptions and hashtags.
Non the less, this module has allowed me to improve my views of social media and how it can be used to grow a personal brand and has helped to enhance my skills in Photoshop and other Adobe apps.
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