Abstract
For this module I had planned to work together with AWOC Lincolnshire and provide them a social media strategy and produce engaging content for themselves on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This was to reach the target demographic of 50+ years old within Lincolnshire, as AWOC Lincolnshire wanted to improve their digital presence. However, due to faults between both myself and AWOC Lincolnshire, when I started to produce content, they had requested for all social media accounts to be deleted as they had changed their intentions on social media and timeline, thus this project did ultimately fail and is an experience for myself on how I should progress forward when dealing with organisations and corporate.
Live Client - AWOC Lincolnshire
Ageing Without Children is an organisation help to support 1.5 million people in the UK over 65 who do not have any children and work by:
Providing information and helping people who do not have familial support.
Raising awareness with businesses and agencies for when they are providing services for people ageing without children.
Advocating and being a voice for when there are issues in local policies that effect people Ageing Without Children.
AWOC Lincolnshire as a branch hosts fortnightly zoom calls for people who are Ageing Without Children a space to socialise and talk, there are also speakers who also explain their roles and how they can help. An Example was a previous speaker came in to talk about Lincolnshire trust for cats as they have a retirement scheme to make sure that for whatever reason if you were unable to look after your cat, Lincolnshire trust for cats can look after your cat after a single administration payment to make sure they continue to have a happy life and you don't have to worry about Vet bills or food cost.
They also are able to talk on the phone so that if there are any issue you have as a person Ageing without Children, be it Medical, Housing, or other concerns, AWOC Lincolnshire can help guide you to resources that can help you with your issues.
What do they want
Why do they want it?
CLARITY
A document I had sent to AWOC Lincolnshire, so that they had clarity on my expectations while I was organising the clarity of their organisation. This was the right thing to do but in hindsight I should have moved the may deadline above to the top of the document as that was the most import element of the document that later was overlooked.
This document below was sent on the 28th February, with the university expectations also attached as a reminder of the outline and my strategy and explanations for such a strategy. The email was sent two days before the second meeting with the AWOC leader and member who I would keep in contact with over the continuation of the module. This should have been revised Fortnightly minimum by myself and the organisation leader and refined the document further on how it had since changed and signed it off.
During the second meeting it was confirmed again the expectation of uploading content late March, that was agreed with the AWOC leader, with the social platforms being created the next following days.
During this meeting the organisation leader was unsure about Instagram and only wanted to use Facebook, primarily due to being unsure if people on her team would be able to use Instagram effectively for the brand, but agreed to the strategy and the platforms confidently. Upon reflection this should have been when I had removed myself from the organisation. This is because of the priority of what their volunteers can do as opposed to what was on my university expectations document. They also mentioned they skimmed through the strategy so in hindsight I am doubting that we cleared expectations at the very beginning due to this potential miscommunication of intentions for this project.
This was my initial social media meeting presentation I was prepared to showcase, however, on the day AWOC Lincolnshire's leader, who set up the zoom call, had removed the ability to screenshare or to present. This resulted in a poor presentation as I had to try and summarise the information without any of the visual information I had prepared.
@awoc.lincs Instagram content
The overall presentation and theme could have been improved greatly, one single variation on branding colours, there should have been multiple versions that could have been used where they would have brought a better theme together with the projects.
Unfortunately I made a misjudgement as after the scheduling and planned content was underway, I was unable to post as there had begun to be infighting withing the AWOC Lincolnshire Organisation. This is because they did not know if they should continue under the main branch of AWOC or to be an independent group. However, I made an incorrect decision to delay the content, as to make sure the brand voice stayed consistent. I assumed that it would only be a few days decision on the strategy, but when it was closer to 1 week I could not delay further and had to start posting content.
The lack of presented material for Facebook and instagram is because when finally posting, the organisation had changed their expectations and were not planning to post anything now until June. After I made a single post to warm up the account for the scheduled posts, that evening they wanted the live accounts deleted, stating they only wanted Facebook, despite the agreement and arrangement of setting up social media.
This was when I realised my crucial mistake as during the Easter holidays it was revealed that they were now considering changing their name and removing themselves from being a charity, and were unsure as a brand itself.
Earlier in the process I had included imagery of some of the logo designs and process I had made, as they had been unsure what design to go with. In this very same meeting not only were they unsure about if they could use the logo anymore, due to the fact they are a branch within AWOC. They were also considering a new logo for if they came up with a new name.
That evening after serious consideration and implication for this project I had no other choice as to explain to the leader that I was no longer involved with them for social media and that I will not be assisting them further. While I was aware that the organisation falling apart and that I would have no live content to showcase, I could no longer work with them or try to lead there social media for them in this scenario, as while I did not had a part on their sudden uncertainty of who they are and their brand voice, I did have a part that caused this failure so I cannot blame the entirety of the social media failure upon AWOC Lincolnshire as a client.
I had outlined my expectations and requirements on my course, along with my strategies for the platforms during our meetings in February and March. My enormous mistake that affected both of these modules had been how I was too focus independently for a large part of March, as I believed expectations had been set and the 4 meetings I had covered all questions both parties had, and had the social media accounts set up ready for the content.
This was not the case as I had failed to account for distorted expectations over time and their views as an organisation.
I had been keeping fortnightly meetings with one of the members of their team but it should have been consistent communication directly to the leading member, as this issue would not have arise due to my mismanagement of information.
This lead to me continuing in the same expectations as of February and March, thus when I was preparing to schedule the content to be uploaded, I was no longer on the same page in regard to the expectations.
The next day after the discovery of how much discord was within AWOC Lincolnshire on their uncertainty as a brand, I quickly churned out a concept of a social media presence centred upon independent living. As opposed to a full charity this would be myself as it was a fictional account. This account was centred around independent living, by giving resources and information, similar to my strategy for AWOC in terms of informative content. However, instead of a more pet focus that AWOC had (Due to a majority of their current clientele and volunteers often only had pets as companions), Inde_dual would centre in on having an enriching life as an individual and thriving. An example of an audience demographic would be 28-40 years old, who may have newly moved into a new location and prefer their own company. When referring back to my initial strategy document, this would place Instagram as the largest priority of content. Originally the focus was on engagement, however, because of the small time limit, this was now focused primarily on the impressions the content had.
Impressions showcase the reachability of the content, and as such, focusing primarily to make sure audiences can reach the content became my number one priority, as following from reachability becomes the engagement. People cannot interact with a post that hasn't reached them Afterall.
However, I evaluated that it was too soon to suddenly restart with this platform as I clearly had not considered what this would mean for this new brand and their voice. As such I only evaluated what I did post but also considered a strategy for content after the module was over and how this could be taken forward.
Overly Crowded, and not effectively using content as the links to all the events were in the description but with the way Instagram works this would mean they would need to copy and paste into their own browser and that takes too much time for most people.
Overlaid Link seems like it is part of picture and less like a clickable link
With the rather overcrowded Instagram post regarding Eventbrite occurred, I decided to share event information over Instagram for Earth day. This was multiple events that would have been occurring during or after Earth day, and so I could include a live link on Stories and include them into specific playlists. An example of this could be a finance events playlist, and another around nature or relaxation.
This can also mean that the playlists can be managed, so when an event passes it will no longer be included within the curated playlist of useful events.
The reasoning behind this strategy is to create Instagram as a 'resource' hub so followers would be coming back to see new events posted - along with seeing regular posts too.
As Inde-Dual in the future would prioritise living independently, and focusing on lifestyle helping from it's social media content and directory to information that would be useful it it's consumers. Such as free online events that you can benefit on and feel a part without feeling like you are obligated to participate.
I tried bringing the link down at the bottom, as I wanted to showcase the event as the first visible thing, followed by the link.
The images of the websites that were mentioned within the post made these images look too cluttered and difficult to read because the word of the website were too distracting to the words about said website. On the image on the right you can see how shrunken down it makes the entire image practically illegible to read.
Despite this however, this post was focused around practice and useful websites, and when testing it out in combination to life hack hashtags, this post received 40 impressions, 37 of which were from hashtags alone.
This is rather interesting as not only is this more reachable for the initial contact, of life hacks and practice resources, but the post centred around Eventbrite only received 8 impressions. The key difference though is 5 of these impressions were from the profile, instead of via hashtags. This meant that while the life hack content had greater initial contact, the Eventbrite and events centric content is a secondary consideration that they stick around for more. This means that the idea of changing the Eventbrite content to Instagram stories would be a good idea, due to the direct links that stories can do. potentially there could be an occasional post when there is a featured Eventbrite event coming up and how it is useful.
I really like how the backgrounds have been more consistent in this version of the carrousel design. A modification I would make in hindsight is that the website should still be smaller so they are not directly in contact with one another, as the ratio is not pixel perfect and even more noticeable from the shadows.
While this project was objectively a failure, I now know there needs to be more reports written and objective agreements on exactly what the clarification of the project is, and furthermore, there needs to be this clarification consistently through the project. As I had failed on such a crucial moment, I should have had more professionalism for this project and that it was in written agreement that is reflected upon regularly by both parties.
I will need to have these documents prepared for my summer project so everything goes according to the schedule and that they do not go off track because of mismanagement. This flaw cost immense amount of time and priority to try to rectify, resulting in a knock on effect of a loss of time and priority in my Branding project and thus I am ashamed that these projects failed as badly as they had.
