This semester I ran an Instagram account for a client. I posted images and reels that promoted his company as well as provided value to the audience. The goal of this project was to promote my client, build his presence on Instagram, and create content that informed his target audience.
The Process
I started out by having a meeting with my client to talk about goals and branding. I let him know what I would be doing, which was three posts a week as well as responding to comments and DMs. I then asked questions about fonts, colors, target audience, tone of voice, the type of content he wanted, and how he wanted followers to feel when they saw his account. After this meeting, I created a style guide and some sample posts to send over to him. Every week I created the posts for the week, sent them to my client, made revisions, got approval, and posted them. When I posted I made sure I had a captivating visual and caption, and appropriate hashtags. Once posted I monitored the post for any comments or DMs. I had weekly check-ins with my client to let him know how it was going and made sure he was updated.
Challenges
The first challenge I ran into was the visuals. My client lives back in my hometown, 2000 miles away. Luckily he had some pictures already taken by a photographer from a few months earlier that he gave to me to use and design with. My client is also very busy, so if I needed specific information I went to his blog first and repurposed that information.
When it came to reels, I gave him a list of specific ideas for him to do. Every week he sent me the video, I made sure the framing, sound, and other aspects of the video were good and turned it into a reel with trending audio and hashtags.
What I learned
As I posted every week, I learned that reels are very successful! Instagram is favoring video content over images, as they are trying to compete with TikTok. My normal posts weren’t getting nearly as much reach as the reels. I wasn’t sure if I should keep posting the normal posts or only do reels. After talking with another professional, he said that it is still good to have normal content on the page for when people discover your account via reels. So I continued with what I was doing.
Something I learned and noticed from this experience is that social media users want their information quickly and easily. They want immediate answers, instant gratification. The most successful reel was short and quick, as well as personable. Social media users also connect with content that is personable and shows the face or person. They will connect with a brand and follow it when they are able to relate to it or get something from it.
In the past few months, as I posted, I grew the account by 80 followers. 21.1k accounts were reached, and 539 accounts engaged with the content.
Inserted below are some of the posts I created. If you would like to see more, the Instagram handle is @painreliefkc.
