PERSONAL PROJECT
Social Media Tips, Tutorials And Resources Project
Brief: Given that I am interested in this topic for myself, my personal objective is to keep up with all the newest developments and trends in social media. The goal of this project is to create a social media-focused brand that will assist social media managers by providing them with free advice, tools, and resources. It also aims to create a community that anybody can join to succeed in the social media industry.
My partner (Krizzia) and I contribute with conceptualizations and copywriting for this project. She’s another eye for design in case I missed something. As only two people, it’s a lot of labor.
Software Used:
I utilized all my software expertise, but mostly:
Figma – used to layout the website and organize social media posts
Adobe Illustrator – logo and branding, design elements (3d icons)
Adobe Photoshop – mostly for image edits for posts
Adobe After Effects – motion graphics
The Challenge
For this project, I intended to make advantage of not only the most common but also some of the less common social media platforms, such as Pinterest and Tiktok (which is kinda new during that time). So, it’s an endless cycle of study and experimentation, but one that I’ve learned a lot from and had a great time with it.
The constant blogging, community administration, and occasional updates make this a tedious side gig. The social media landscape has evolved rapidly in only a few years. Each algorithm would benefit greatly from keeping up with their respective creators and incorporating the latest improvements.
In reality, we’re not doing this for the money; we’re just trying to lay the groundwork for a future network of people we can tap into for knowledge and potential business opportunities.
Animated Social Wanted logo
Creative Process:
I started by putting together the branding (logo, color palette, typefaces, etc.) while designing and building the website using WordPress (with Elementor as the builder). This took a few days because I wanted everything to look good and work well on different devices. My partner and I talked about ideas we thought might be interesting, and we came up with the name “Social Wanted.”
We settled on the name Social Wanted for a few reasons:
• We wanted to include the word “social” or “social media” because this is the main service we provide and the topic of our work.
• We considered using the term “wanted,” which means “a desire to accomplish something,” and were also influenced by the contentious phrase “most wanted,” which is used on persons with criminal records; this phrase was somehow adapted into the brand design of a most wanted poster (which can be seen in the logo).
• It can be easily said and remembered because of how catchy the phrase is.
There was at least a month’s worth of content that we worked on daily for at least a week before we made it public. We did several teasers and made sure everything looked good and was put up properly.
Under the “resources” section of the site, we offer a variety of helpful Adobe Photoshop and Canva templates, including a constantly updated cover photo sizes template, to assist social media managers.
Some original carousel templates resource
To spread the word about these no-cost assets, we set up a Facebook page and, happily, have been able to grow our following organically through the provision of free advice and tools that we were certain would be useful to them in their pursuit of social media success.
We used to maintain a hashtag calendar, which was quite well received and was useful to many individuals as they developed their online material.
Hashtag calendars
We used a variety of free online resources to streamline the process of coming up with posts, hashtags, and ideas for making an effect in the community. Some examples are as follows:
Trello was connected to our mobile devices, allowing us to be productive even when we didn’t have access to a computer.
Hootsuite was utilized to schedule posts in advance so that we could still interact with the community and our followers at the time of the post.
Flick were incorporated into the current technique for hashtag generation. We made sure the then-current hashtag ladder was properly applied in the algorithm so that we could reach people without paying for ads.
Since Microsoft Excel (via Google Drive) is free in comparison to Hootsuite’s paid features, we use it to polish our posts’ designs, captions, and hashtags before uploading them to the various networks.
Sample Instagram post
10 slide carousel post with animated design
CAPTION:
Have you taken services from social media businesses who offered to buy you thousands of followers?
Ever followed someone and then unfollowed them after they followed you back?
Stop right now! These practices have a bad impact on your growth!
If you’ve just started, don’t look for shortcuts to gain engagement – none of them can benefit you in the long run.
Instead, post valuable content that your audience can relate to/benefit from and build a genuine community from there. That’s when the algorithm starts to work in your favor.
Don’t forget to follow Social Wanted for FREE tips and resources in graphic design and social media management.
Hashtags Used (algorithm as of July 2020):
10 slide carousel post with animated design
Ongoing Practice:
as we keep making posts and interacting with the community, we keep figuring out what works and what doesn’t, and we keep refining our approach to ensure we’re always providing the best we can in every respect. Details like timing and layout for each platform are crucial.
At random intervals, we’ll add a little something extra to the mix, like making a Giphy brand account so our fans may utilize IG stickers we produced from scratch.
Our Tiktok account grew to 30k+ followers, and we redirected our audience to our YouTube channel, which now has 1k subscribers, by making Adobe software design tutorials, which we find both informative and entertaining.
Instagram promotional video
Positive feedback from other content providers and the growth of our community in less than a year have left us feeling fulfilled with our efforts. This has helped me attract new customers, expand my knowledge, and stay abreast of the latest developments in the world of social media.
Some of our platforms have established communities:
We eventually minimize creating content to the platforms as we focused on paid projects, but the website and social media are still live and in use today. Regular revisions to the templates’ specifications in response to platform improvements have helped me sell my resources tab designs to a wide range of content creators.