Update – Becoming a Social Media Manager and my quest for #FlexibleWorking

My social media campaign for Collective works is coming to an end. For the past 8 weeks I have been running the Twitter and IG accounts for Collective Works.  After weeks of careful planning I created and executed an 8 week campaign to raise brand awareness and to promote our residential architectural services. I targeted our audience on both IG and Twitter using the campaign hashtag #OnTrendExtend.

So what have I learnt?

Well it’s been an interesting journey that’s for sure! My Digital Mums training involved running a real campaign for a real client and that was the main reason I signed up for this particular course.  (Digital Mums Advance Diploma in Social Media Marketing. This is a great way to learn as it puts your new skills to the test immediately. 

In order to manage an effective multi-platform social media campaign I have learnt how to:

• Develop social media strategies with clear measurables (KPIs)for clients
• Set up and optimise social media platforms
• Use paid social media advertising
• Find and engage with key influencers
• Design and execute a competition on social media platforms
• Develop content strategies to reach my target audiences
• Report on KPIs for clients
• Audit my clients’ and competitors’ channels

One aspect that surprised me was the sheer amount of content we had to produce to reach our optimum posting levels. For the past 8 weeks I have posted every single day on IG and at least 5 -7 times a day on Twitter. This required getting to grips with schedulers fast – quite a steep learning curve! After experimenting I found my feet with Hootsuite which I used  for Twitter but I found Later was much better for IG

Selecting material, both created and curated, was very time consuming at first but it’s really important to offer content that is of interest to our target audience and not just talk about our brand.

Running a competition was an important part of our campaign and a lot of work as I had to consider the mechanics in fine detail. For example how we were going to run it, what the entrants needed to do to enter, what would be a suitable prize and how best to select the winner etc. It was essential I complied with the individual platform rules and had all the necessary terms and conditions and GDPR in place.

Delving into social media advertising was a great fun – there is so much you can do and so much to learn. It’s really rewarding when the results are good and this is an area I’d love to develop my knowledge further.

I found Metrics and analysis the most interesting part of the campaign – fortunately I enjoy working with figures but I can see how some might be overwhelmed with the sheer amount of data.

As for those pesky algorithms I’m afraid I still haven’t sussed them out! It is a constant challenge figuring out what works and why – whilst is not possible to crack the system it is part of my role as a SM manager is to continually test and refine to ensure our content always gets the best result. 

How successful was the campaign?

My campaign achieved its goals and I exceeded nearly all of my KPIs. Highlights include: 

• A hugely successful organic post on IG in week 2 earnt us 17K impressions and reached 14.6K accounts 97% weren’t following us. It achieved 302 likes, 13 comments 4 calls and 84 saves, 276 profile visits, 10 website clicks, 1 email and 23 follows! And was the top post on several hashtag pages including #dontmoveimprove
• Getting followed by an influential diplomat on Twitter with 200K+ followers and engaging with some key influencers who liked our content enough to share it
• Receiving emails and calls as a direct result of my campaign – some of which have led to fee proposals
• Increasing IG followers by 15% over the 8 weeks (an extra 185 followers and still rising) One week alone we gained 64 followers organically
• Increasing weekly IG  impressions from 1,209 to 44,708 a 97% increase
• Managing a successful competition. Congratulations once again to @shottley our lucky winner of a Homeowner Consultation worth £4oo. Good luck with your exciting plans to extend your raised height kitchen in a grade 2 listed building in east london!
• Running successful ads on both IG ad Twitter and split testing to see whats most effective
• Increasing weekly engagement on Twitter by more than 2,500% and on IG by more than 1,700% 

Flexible working 

I loved the flexibility of working from home. This is something Collective Works believes in so there were no issues working in this way.  We quickly established a pattern of weekly video conference calls and email updates. But it was still lovely to meet Siri and Alasdair in person and be introduced to the rest of the team. I was able to balance my work and family life such as attending my son’s sports day and picking him up early on his final day at school. I was also able to deal with emergencies, like when he broke his arm, all without impacting the campaign. 

What next?

I’ve enjoyed the whole experience and I have learnt so much. I’d like to say thank you to Collective Works who have been so helpful and such an important part of my learning.

As for the future, I’m looking forward to putting my new skills into action as a freelance social media manager and excited to continue my journey. Whilst there are many metrics that are used to measure the success of a social media campaign, there are also many intangibles. You may ask ‘Can I afford to be on social media?’ but the real question is ‘Can I afford not to be?’

You can reach me on IG @graceyjayney and Twitter @carolinegracey