Project Purpose and Objectives
Project Purpose:
The purpose of this Instagram page is to promote events and activities that the 45th Young Single Adult Rexburg Ward hosts. When I first met with the bishopric of the 45th ward they mentioned wanted to modernize the way they communicated with the ward. Originally, the ward had a Facebook page where activities and announcements were being posted, however, the announcements wouldn’t be on the ward members feeds when they would open the app. They noticed not everyone used Facebook daily and don’t interact with the app, whereas with Instagram the ward members use more frequently.
Project Objective:
My goal was to increase the number of people attending these events, promote the event in a way that attracts the ward members, capture the events photographically, and make sure important announcements reached the ward members in time.
The Project!
Event Announcements:
Project Process
I had a lot of fun working on this project and really enjoyed getting to meet so many people through the events and meetings.
Creating Event Posts:
- Every two weeks I would meet with the bishopric of the YSA 45th ward, to go over upcoming events and announcements that needed to be made and how we can increase the number of attendees.
- I would then meet with the activity directors and make sure I had all of the information needed for the activity/event that was happening. We would go over what they wanted exactly the post, from colors, fonts, size, to the description and more.
- I would create a draft of the post and description by using Canva. The activity directors and I would go back and forth with the draft going over what needs to be changed, added or if the information needs to be changed.
- After about two days of going back and forth with the directors I would then post to the Instagram page and repost to the story in hopes more people would see the event announcement.
Creating Event Recap/Reel:
- I would take pictures at every ward event, the bishopric and activities directors let me have complete control of what I wanted to capture. I wanted to capture everyone being in their element, lots of truly candid shots, lots of sport/action shots. I wanted the pictures to show the event in sequential order.
- The events would be between 3 to 4 hours, so on average I would have taken about 500 photos. I would go through each one and hand pick the ones that shared what happened in the best way possible. Each photo that was handpicked would then be edited as needed.
- I would choose the type of recap/reel that I wanted, for some activities the reels would feel more like a family reunion, whereas others would feel like a vlog of the event. I would just depend on the pictures I took and the type of event that was held.
- Following all of this editing, I would upload the reel to the page and tag as many people from the pictures as possible to increase the number of views on the reel.
Experiences I Had
Some of the experiences I gained from this project was working with a team. I had never experienced working with a team before, I had only worked with myself when it came to content creation. I absolutely loved working with multiple people and getting different perspectives, and opinions and ideas. I feel that because I received all these different points of views, I knew how to direct the page specifically for the Young Single Adults. I noticed the interaction and attendee number had increased and the ward members were enjoying the event a lot more than previously.
Challenges I Encountered
However, working with a brand-new team and set of people who had never worked together before there were some challenges in this process. We were starting this page from scratch, we all different visions on how we wanted this page to look so it was a little bit difficult to come to an agreement on what the page looks like now. Communication was another big challenge, for a few of the events the information was not correct when it got to me. Unfortunately, we didn’t catch the misinformation until after I had already finalized the post and it was longer to redo the post and fix the information.
We also had to reevaluate our goals for the page. Originally, we wanted the page to have the same number of followings as the Facebook page had. However, about a third of the way into this account we realized that because the spring semester has a smaller group of students, we were not going to have a big number of followers and views. Instead of the goal being the number of followers, we wanted to make sure the events, invites and announcements got to every member of the ward.
Takeaways
Working with the 45th YSA Ward has taught me so much and I am very grateful for the time I had to work with them. Here is a short list of the takeaways I gained from working with them:
- Utilize as many opinions as possible, not only with this help the content you’re creating, but also with the trust you are building with the team.
- Speak up! Although you are working for them, you want to give them your best work. If this means asking for a meeting just for clarification on specific details, information, etc. Speak up!
- Trust yourself and your work! Although you want to make sure the team is getting the content the need, if you think adding or taking something away from the content do it and trust the knowledge and experience you have.