About Snow and Violets
“Snow and Violets” is an online brand dedicated to providing a platform to smaller poets and writers on Instagram. During its first campaign, Snow and Violets focused primarily on brand establishment and content creation. In this campaign, we aimed to focus on the original goal of connecting with and uplifting the voices of smaller online creators. Due to lack of posting prior to this campaign, the account was underperforming in all target areas. Over the past few months, I succeeded in increasing the account’s reach, engagement rates, and followers while also developing and executing a successful influencer marketing campaign.
Objectives and Goals
- Increase reach and engagement rates by 15% by the end of the campaign
- Partner with at least 3 creators on Instagram before the end of the campaign.
- Increase following by 10 before the end of the campaign.
The Project
Over the last 10 weeks, I have been consistently reaching out to influencers and posting a mix of original content and influencer content. I researched micro and nano influencers who would benefit most from partnering with a small account like Snow and Violets, as well as macro influencers who could provide a larger platform for my message. I posted four days a week over seven weeks total and partnered with about 13 different creators.
I decided to post a mixture of original content and influencer content, provided to me by my partners. I did this to increase reach and engagement rates on the platform. Posting influencer content helps me gain new audiences on social media, but it can limit certain KPIs from being achieved. Posting original content as reels helps my platform have higher reach while also filling in gaps in my content calendar.
Although most partners were found through outreach processes, I had one creator reach out to me themselves after seeing one of my posts. It helped me to know that my content was reaching my desired audience. It also helped me better understand what possible partners were looking for when partnering with brands and other creators.
Challenges Encountered
The main challenge I encountered over the course of this campaign was finding and establishing partnerships with influencers. I created a spreadsheet of possible partners and reached out them twice a week about partnership. While those who responded accepted a partnership with me, most didn’t even look at the message.
There were many weeks when I didn’t have a new partnership to post. In these weeks I posted content from previous partners who agreed to let me use any piece of content with proper accreditation. Doing this helped me fill any holes in my content calendar, while also maintaining my original posting schedule.
Outreach can be tiresome sometimes, especially when you don’t hear back from those you reach out to. That being said, perseverance, patience, and research often allows you to find what you’re looking for regardless of the hiccups that happen along the way.
Project Processes
Outreach
Outreach was one of the primary processes of this campaign. In order to have partnerships with influencers, I had to contact those I thought would be a good fit for the brand. As I did research on influencers, I compiled their names and information into a list so I could keep track of who I contacted and if they responded.
I also created different outreach templates for what I would say to these influencers. I had a script for the initial outreach portion, as well as follow-ups and responses to acceptances and rejections.
Posting:
The first step of posting on the Snow and Violets account was to establish a posting schedule and content calendar. I decided that I would post four times a week: influencer content would be posted on Mondays and Fridays, while original content would be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I reached out to influencers on Monday mornings and Wednesdays to give myself as much time as possible to schedule influencer content.
While my content calendar is a bit messy, it provided me with all of the information I needed to keep track of my posts and their information. I included the days and weeks each piece of content would be posted, as well as the type of content, the link to the content, and any notes that were important to keep in mind when posting and creating the content.
In addition to influencer content, I also created reels featuring my own poetry from previous campaigns. I repurposed this content because it had been about a year since it was originally published, and I could reformat it into reels without saturating my feed with repeated content. I decided to make reels because the Instagram algorithm pushes reels more than static posts, which would theoretically increase reach and engagement rates for the page as a whole.
Analytics
Although I did not spend a lot of time measuring the analytics of this campaign, I did notice that there was an increase of followers, reach, and engagements over the last seven weeks.
Over the course of the campaign, I was able to reach about 630 new accounts, which is a 7,787.5% increase to previous months, according to Instagram analytics. I have also had an increase of 1,125% in profile activity and profile visits during the course of the campaign. This increase correlates to the increase in reach, engagement rates, and followers.
Overview of Experiences
I have never maintained a social media influencer campaign before. I created an outline for one in a previous class, but reaching out and posting influencer content is entirely new to me. It was nerve wracking at first, but the more outreach I did the easier it became.
Posting content and managing a social media page is not a new experience for me. I have done this for many different brands and businesses over the years. It can be mundane work, but it’s also very fulfilling to see the results of my hard work.
Insights and Takeaways
Influencer marketing is the future of social media marketing for businesses. Influencers carry a lot of power in the digital world, and their approval can make or break a business online. By creating and executing my own influencer campaign, I now have experience in influencer marketing. This can help to set me apart from other people in the field and job applicants, as well as other people here at BYU-Idaho.
Influencer marketing is not usually taught at school, and by participating in this project I was able to fill a massive gap in my knowledge and education. I hope that, moving forward, I will be able to continue learning and developing this school and that the Communications department would consider including influencer marketing in the Digital and Social Media emphasis curriculum. By doing so, we would be helping to better prepare graduates to enter the workforce and give them additional experience that would benefit them in their careers after graduation.