Social Media Profiles:ACP Concepts Instagram/
ACP Concepts YouTube/
LinkedIn
Semester two of our second year gave us the opportunity to develop important skills outside the focus of our specific course pathways. The best examples of this were the Transmedia event planning project and the Social Media Project, the latter of which I have documented here. On the face of it, this project rather was straightforward – create a social media account to show your work off to potential employers. As we would find out, a lot of planning and research goes into making a successful social media account.
The first step of the process was to understand what I wanted from my social media account and who my target audience was. This actually linked quite closely with the 3rd Year Study Plan that we had been working on in a different module. I summed up that I want a design role in the engineering industry. I have experience in precision engineering but would like to branch into different areas like product design. I would like to work for a medium or large company with a small design team. We had to ask ourselves how our social media accounts would help with this. In my case, I thought that a professional-looking account featuring my best work could be shown to people in the industry to showcase my work in a more casual manner than a CV or full portfolio. I decided that my target audience was primarily employers in the engineering industry, but I was also open to small-scale freelance work which is why I wanted to promote my portfolio the best I could. Ultimately, I wanted to direct as much traffic as possible to my portfolio website.
I will briefly set the scene with my social media history. I joined Facebook in 2009 as a way of keeping in touch with friends and family, which is still how I mostly use it today. I also joined Youtube this year and started making video reviews relating to my shooting hobby. I grew a small following over the years with over 4000 subscribers and over 1.6 million total video views. I would not consider that successful, but I do have a good understanding of the platform. I joined Instagram in 2015 and it quickly became the social media that I post on most frequently. I use it to post images of my hobbies, drawings, travels, and any other photos that I think look nice, plus I use the direct messaging feature frequently. I consider Instagram to be my preferred social media. I joined LinkedIn in 2019 while searching for new employment opportunities. I rarely use it but have made a few connections to people in industry over the last 2 years. I had to decide which of these I would use for my project; trying to run accounts on all of them would not be practical. I conducted research into each of the aforementioned social media platforms to determine which would be the most suitable for me.
LinkedIn was an interesting one; I had no doubt that it was a very useful tool for professionals, but I was not sure how a student could utilise it effectively. Sure enough, in my two years of using it previously I had never been inclined to post anything. It felt to me like a place for successful and experienced professionals to network. Regardless, I wanted to explore the platform and understand how I could use it. It is definitely popular, with LinkedIn claiming themselves to be 'the world's largest professional network with 756 million members'. One thing was certain - if a company exists, they are probably on LinkedIn! I researched a variety of different companies in the engineering and design industry and found that many of them used it in completely different ways.
First, I looked at companies in the precision engineering industry including the one that I used to work for. I found that most of these organisations used LinkedIn primarily to advertise career opportunities, which makes sense as a lot of people join it when searching for work. Some companies also used the platform to promote their services and expertise through images and videos. I think this is a clever move as prospective job applicants or potential customers can quickly get a good feel for what the company is about without having to follow any links or find them on a different platform. I also came across a number of companies, generally smaller ones, who simply used it to show who they are, what they do and how to contact them without any fancy visuals or any updates/posts. When used like this, LinkedIn acts like the Yellow Pages, providing the important details for people looking for a particular service. I decided that I would update my profile with my new personal branding (more on that later), but I was not convinced that posting content would be worthwhile. Next I researched Youtube.
Youtube is by far the most popular video-sharing platform worldwide. Most would agree that Youtube is the default method of publishing a video online and has up to 2.3 billion monthly users (Oberlo, 2021 - please see references for links to statistics). With 79% of all internet users having a Youtube account, it is the world’s second largest social media platform (Datareportal, 2019). So, there was definitely potential, but what kind of content could I post? I considered making instructional CAD videos, so I researched creators of this kind of content (see image above). The results were a little discouraging. I found that many of the best CAD content creators struggled to develop a large following of subscribers despite producing quality content that racked up millions of views. My theory was that people looking for CAD tutorials typically searched for a solution to a specific problem they were facing, and once they had found the answer, they would leave without subscribing or checking out any other content from that creator. I also noticed that the quality of these videos was very high, and the technical expertise a clear level above my own. I put the Youtube idea on the backburner and turned to Facebook and Instagram.
Facebook and Instagram are both platforms that I use frequently for different purposes. Regardless of my own biases, I researched each platform to see what would be most suitable for my project. I found that Facebook had more users, up to 2.8 billion active per month (Oberlo, 2021). In comparison, Instagram had an estimated 1 billion monthly users (Backlinko, 2021). Still a huge number but significantly less. I discovered that Instagram was growing much faster, however. As you can see in the chart above left, Instagram was forecast to grow more rapidly than Facebook in 2020, and the latest figures show that this was indeed the case (Marketing Charts, 2020). Perhaps even more importantly, I found that Instagram was the favourite platform for following particular brands and companies (Marketing Charts, 2020). I thought this was significant because it would give me the opportunity to tap into various trends such as by using popular hashtags. Hashtags on Facebook are not as effective.
The chart above also supports the idea that Instagram is a platform that people use Instagram to follow trends, brands, and lifestyle pages (Facebook IQ, 2016). I think that this makes it a good platform to post creative design work. In addition, it is easier to gain a following on Instagram compared to Facebook without spending any money. Facebook can be a very effective marketing tool, but it is hard to get anywhere unless you pay to promote your posts. Instagram was clearly the way forward for me, so I had a look at a variety of design pages for inspiration.
The profiles above were three of my favourite design student accounts. I liked how Alice Turner (@aliceturner_design) mentioned her previous internships and linked straight to her portfolio in her bio. She also effectively utilised stories and highlights to introduce herself and show what inspired her. Tom Dixon’s (@tomdixondesign) account had a very clean, professional look with each of his projects viewable as a story. I liked that he put ‘looking for internship opportunities’ in his bio, clearly stating what he wanted. Bendjoh’s (@bendjoh) page impressed me because he showed every stage of the design process in detail, from the sketches through to the finished renders. This was something I really wanted to incorporate into my account; I think it’s very important that a potential employer or client can see that you understand every stage of the design process. I began to plan a posting strategy, leaving weeks 1 and 2 clear for me to create the accounts and design branding.
My initial plan was to post single images of my projects multiple times a week, so throughout the week the project would come together and I would post the final renders over the weekend. I had also planned to post a Youtube video tutorial once a week. I started working through my previous projects to find suitable images to post and soon found out quite how time-consuming creating content can be. I wasn’t satisfied with some of my earlier work and found myself making a number of new renders; I wanted my accounts to show off the very best of my portfolio. I altered my strategy to focus on fewer, higher quality Instagram posts and a single Youtube video per week.
As I neared the start of my posting schedule (Week 3), I set about creating the accounts. I started with Instagram which would be my primary platform. Many of the designers I had researched had their own branding, usually some kind of logo with their name integrated into the design. I thought this gave the accounts a professional look, so I decided to make myself a logo. To give this a bit of a CAD spin, I opted to make the logo using 3D CAD software instead of a design program like Adobe Illustrator. I used Fusion 360 to create a Vernier calliper measuring instrument, the kind I used frequently when I was working in engineering. The unique logo construction and link to my past gave me something to talk about in my first post too.
I used my new logo while setting up my Youtube account and started to record some video content to post. A few hours into this, I decided that creating Youtube content would simply take too much time. As I referred back to the videos I watched for inspiration, I could see how much effort had gone into them for comparatively little reward. I also realised that I was not qualified to make instructional videos that would really benefit others. I created the account for future use but did not utilise it during this project.
Next, I revamped my LinkedIn account with a new banner and updated information, including all the skills I had learned so far at university like HTML coding and image manipulation with Photoshop. I thought that the profile looked professional and would direct viewers to my portfolio and contact details. I still wasn’t sure what kind of content to post though, and I found it difficult to make meaningful connections with other users.
Finally I got to the central element of my social media project, my Instagram mini-portfolio. The first few posts I made tested the water in terms of what format would work best for me, and which hashtags I should include to help promote them. I soon figured out a posting style that worked really well – a selection of high-quality renders and a video showing how I built the model. Including these videos into my posts helped boost their reach, and the positive feedback I received mostly related to these build videos. Below you can see a recent screenshot of the account, and below that a diagram that shows the post structure I used most frequently. I think that my account is a good example of a professional-looking mini portfolio with an emphasis on quality over quantity.
As my account grew steadily over the course of the project, I maintained records of each post’s performance and viewed the account statistics every week. I found that a number of factors influenced the reach a post would achieve, and I was able to utilise this to promote my posts more effectively. Here are some of the factors that I found would improve reach:
Utilising the success of popular trends and brands
I first encountered this effect when I posted my ‘laser gun’ project. Since it was inspired by a Star Wars style blaster, I tagged Star Wars in the post and used Star Wars hashtags. This kind of brand association is very different to copying protected content or promoting somebody else’s work as your own; I simply took inspiration from a popular franchise and used this connection to give my post a boost. Compared to my previous post, the results were immediate and very positive as the statistics below show:
Increasing the visibility of videos and animations
Much of the positive feedback I received centred around my build animations, so I tried to include one with each post I made. A few people did note that having the animation come after the images meant that a lot of users would not know there was an animation there and not bother to swipe to view it. Based on this feedback I decided to make a post which was purely an animation, no still images. This was a bit different to my usual style ,but others who had also posted videos had some really good results, videos playing automatically on people’s feeds catches their attention. As the data below shows, this worked really well for me and I attained the best reach seen in my whole project!
Promoting my posts through my other accounts
Another method that had worked well was to promote my posts through my other accounts. I have a personal account and a hobby account, neither are particularly popular but they still helped increase my reach and profile visits. I did this my sharing some of my favourite posts through the ‘Story’ feature. I didn’t want to spam my design content on people that weren’t interested, but on the occasions, I did share my posts the results were worthwhile. Note the use of Star Wars themed stickers to decorate the post, using a popular brand to help boost my content.
Overall, I have been pleased with the growth seen on my account. The latest figures show that my reach has seen a huge 608% increase over the month previous, and post interactions were up 86%, no doubt due in part to the strategies highlighted above. Profile views are increacing with each post, meaning that more people are looking at my page - this was one of my main goals of the project as any one of these viewers could be the person who wants to hire me or collaborate on a project.
