Social Media Marketing Experiment
A 13-day self-directed experiment exploring content strategy, audience behaviour, and platform performance
Why?
I wanted to carry out this experiment to explore how I could apply what I have learned (through my digital certifications) to a practical study. This will provide me with insight into how creative decisions and marketing strategy intersect in a digital space.
The Objectives:
Awareness
Reach relevant people
Engagement
Encourage meaningful interactions
Conversion
Move interested viewers towards my services
Who was I targeting?
SAM
Small business owner in the UK
Aged 25-40
Wants to increase traffic on his online shop
Doesn't have the finances to hire a full time social media manager / marketer
JANE
Knows someone who owns a small business
Has an interest in marketing and psychology but isn't in the industry
Aged 18-28
Wants to help their friend improve their brand's social media
Content Pillars:
Marketing Psychology
Practical Marketing Advice
Brand Awareness
Content Creation
Marketing Psychology:
- Explain how marketing is used to guide and direct consumers, especially with decision-making
Practical Marketing Advice:
- Explore how small businesses can improve their own social media marketing in an easy-to-understand format
Brand Awareness:
- Showcase my knowledge and direct people to my services, where I offered marketing strategy packages
Content Creation:
- Geared toward non-businesses, evaluate how creators can grow their platforms with tips and tricks
The Experiment:
On Instagram, I started posting to a new account. However, these posts were not pushed organically by the algorithms. Having 0 views after 48 hours, I learned that new accounts struggle with initial reach. For this experiment, I needed measurable analytics and metrics, so I focused solely on my pre-established TikTok account moving forward.
Over the next 11 days, I posted daily on TikTok. Posts included all content pillars and were in 2 main formats: videos and photo carousels. Each post included a caption with optimised keywords and hashtags.
Results:
267% INCREASE IN VIEWS
555% INCREASE IN LIKES
150% INCREASE IN SHARES
154% INCREASE IN PROFILE VIEWS
- Performance of content was unpredictable
- Creating talking-head content, and using photos of myself, made my content more approachable and relatable.
- Overall, there was an increase in total views, comments, saves, shares, and likes across the account during the experiment
- The post that specifically pointed out my services performed poorly, likely due to the fact the length of the experiment stunted the depth in which I could have gained trust and brand awareness with the audience
