Public Relations Emphasis – Digital/Social Media Project
My most memorable experiences have been when I have served those I love, and my senior project was nothing short of an unforgettable accomplishment.
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Let me introduce you to my sister-in-law, Amanda Webb. She is a dedicated mother of two, talented artist, and the owner of Amanda Webb Studio. Amanda started her small business in 2020 after discovering her passion for woodwork. When she isn’t taking care of her kids, she’s in her shop designing, sawing, cutting, stapling, painting, and gluing. Woodwork makes her feel enabled. For hours she works on masterpieces that make her sweat and with tools that most people are afraid of. I’ve always admired her for that.
While Amanda found great satisfaction with creating and selling custom artwork, she quickly found herself overwhelmed with social media – the driver of her business. Through the grapevine of family FaceTime calls, I learned of her frustration and pitched my assistance. This was when the Amanda Webb Studio Campaign was born.
“Expand Amanda’s vision and provide resources for current and future growth.” That was my project goal. Because there was very little Amanda could incorporate in real-time (her two boys under two keeping her very busy) I wanted to provide key elements that could be utilized with ease as soon as she was ready. My work focused on the PR principle of stewardship.
The first thing I did was make a brand kit for Amanda Webb Studio. With a solidified brand kit comes consistency, recognition, and a purpose. I worked with Amanda to design new logo variations, a color palette, typography, and a vision statement.
Up next was the creation of a content calendar, a clear map forward. This friendly guide lays out important, yet simple, tasks Amanda can complete each day to grow brand awareness. The calendar also includes pro tips, such as “post between 6-11 PM to reach your target audience (mothers and homemakers)” and “use hashtags, especially with keywords”. Aside from pro tips is a list of Instagram reel ideas, admired influencers, and goals. I also went ahead and researched the best apps she can download to ensure a smooth content creation process.
Instagram users spend the majority of their time scrolling through videos, or “reels”. Reels practically run the platform’s algorithm and yet they are intimidating to create. Amanda found the task both daunting and time-consuming. To ease this burden, I created the Amanda Webb Studio Reel Guide. This guide contains 10 step-by-step templates of how to create reels with the most trending audio.
Everyone has someone they look up to on social media, we call these people influencers. Over the past four months, Amanda and I have worked to develop a relationship with several of them. We identified eight prominent users (both macro and micro, LDS and non-LDS) and took the time to interact (like, comment, and share their posts) with them. After much interaction, Amanda chose three influencers that she could see herself collaborating with. From there I wrote pitch emails to them. I strategically designed these emails to be extremely personable and from an admirer’s point of view. The goal of these emails is to get Amanda’s foot in an influencer’s door by offering a free Amanda Webb Studio product in exchange for recognition on their public feed.
Last semester I helped Amanda create her first website. From her website, she hopes to gain subscribers and tap into email marketing. To assist her in this ambition, I created an introductory newsletter that she can send to new subscribers. This newsletter contains information about Amanda, her business, upcoming products, sales, and social media. She will be able to alter this newsletter for future issues.
At this stage in Amanda’s business, every sale is precious. Because of this, I created an insert slip to encourage customer reviews, recommendations, and referrals.
Finally, I created an Instagram profile mock-up. This mock-up is a visual representation of Amanda’s potential. I truly believe that if she utilizes the resources I have given her, she will gain the awareness she desires, the income she needs, and joy from sharing her talent with others.
My most memorable experiences have been when I have served those I love, and my senior project was nothing short of an unforgettable accomplishment. I would never trade the time I spent expanding the vision of my sister-in-law, Amanda.
If you ask me what I got out of this project, I would say confidence. I didn’t know I had the ability to develop the caliber of resources I did with the time constraint I had. I wasn’t aware that I knew how to not only “tell” but “show” others how to expand their vision and find success.
I feel enabled, blessed, and excited to contribute to the professional world of public relations post-graduation.
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Time account below.