DM7924: Social Media Design and Strategy
The Client Brief
The social media design and strategy brief was to create a social media campaign over two platforms, aiming to create engaging content that promotes my client’s business.
You can view DottyPamS Jewellery through Pinterest, Instagram and Shopify through the icons below:
*Due to personal circumstances and health of the client – the store has been temporarily closed, this has occurred after the publication of the following project*
Roles that I carried out for this project:
Client Blueprint
The client I have been working with is ‘DottyPamS’ a retired lady from Dorset, with her jewellery business. Pam makes jewellery with gold, bronze and silver materials including metal clay. The use of beads and/or jewels are predominantly outsourced, with pieces that she casts as well. The client is particularly good at creating textures and prints of objects and patterns she finds interesting.
The client’s mother was a silver smith, in her will she stated that Pam was not to throw anything away until she had tried making jewellery herself. It took 10 years for her to finally try making jewellery, she ended up taking night classes and has not stopped making jewellery since. This is something Pam plans to also leave in her will to her two daughters.
The client is self-taught, with a love of creating and learning.
Client Purpose: To make pieces that she can wear and gift, selling is a bonus.
Client Partnerships: Would consider partnering with a place that could exhibit her work, however she had concerns for insuring the items and maintaining their appearance in sunlight and with cleaning.
What Difference: The client would like to make a difference in the industry by making it more accessible to learn how to make jewellery. They want to pass these skills onto the next generation. Jewellery making is also found to be extremely therapeutic and calming for mental health with a productive outcome. Furthermore, the part of the industry she wishes to change is the accessibility to education and knowledge, the client is fully aware that it is an expensive hobby and was extremely difficult for her to find classes and afford to do this.
The client’s business is micro sized as it is just her making and selling through word of mouth currently. Income wise since she is retired they would like to make more consistent money from the jewellery. Cost consideration include materials, firing, stamping, tax, posting and declaring silver weight etc. They are Dorset based and would ship within the UK only.
Client Goals:
- To get their hallmark stamp out into the world, so that items may one day appear on programmes such as antiques road show.
- To collect special hallmark stamps i.e., the new Kings head.
- To pass on their jewellery making knowledge so that learning is more accessible.
- Continuing her mother’s trade, a legacy.
- To be able to manage the socials and business herself more easily.
Pitfalls:
- Material costs
- Producing costs
- Shipping costs
- Fluctuating costs of stamping
- Gold is too expensive
- Where would taught workshops take place?
Insight
DottyPamS jewellery had both branding and social media requirements. I envisioned a brand that replicated my clients happy and as she put it ‘dotty’ personality, coinciding with a social media presence that expresses the natural inspiration of her textured jewellery.
Aims and Objectives
- To connect with the Dorset small business/creators community on Instagram.
- To create aesthetic pins that will generate shop traffic on Pinterest.
- To generate sales of jewellery.
- To create a consistent social media presence.
Whether these goals were successful will be covered in the analysis.
The client has used services such as Etsy in the past to sell their work but found it unsuccessful, they have also uploaded their work to Pinterest. As you can see from the images below the jewellery itself is very bohemian and interesting but the product photography is not very aesthetically pleasing.
Time Management
To enable myself to efficiently manage my time and my client’s needs I have used these methods:
- A Gantt chart of my weekly tasks outlining what I need to complete for next week’s sessions.
- A research table to organise my sources retaining the key highlights, quotes, and Harvard reference of each one.
- A semester timeline in Figma showing my three modules running alongside each other and any time away that I had booked.
- A timeline for client scheduling.
- A social media schedule to monitor the two social platform strategies I carry out. This can be viewed under the campaign strategy.
Journal
This semester I have also found it more manageable to journal alongside my workload rather than blogging. I have been annotating sketches and notes whilst keeping digital notes in Figma. It has been a more feasible way of keeping track of my thoughts and expressing my ideas as I go along.
Initial Ideas
The initial ideas for the social media strategy was to focus on two aspects: firstly, selling the products and secondly teaching through posts and possible workshop advertisements. However, as the project progressed it was clear that I needed to focus on one overall objective so that I could work on giving DottyPamS audience a clear brand message. That her jewellery is unique, handmade and worth purchasing for its longevity.
Inspiration
When initially considering what I viewed as a successful account following for a jewellery page, I examined these three accounts:
Rust Jewellery – Distinct style of feed, muted tones, and greys. Comes across as authentic, vintage and luxury jewellery.
VIV Jewellery – Very colourful creator, constantly engages on a personal level with her audience. Lots of creative reels showing her working.
Ammé London Jewellery – Ethically and sustainable made jewellery, key terms used. Stands out as a trustworthy and known brand in London.
One of my client’s main inspirations is the work of ‘Art Smith’ a metalsmith from the mid 20th century. In his work you can see that he had an “instinct for the design of exciting structural form” (Wolf, n.d., [online]), within his bold and detailed pieces. This creator has been a dramatic influence on the client’s work who commonly creates large bold pieces, with textures that reflect on the surrounding natural environment.
After evaluating my client’s style I decided to take inspiration from bohemian and nature influenced makers such as Jonna Jinton Sweden and Studio Rua. There is a noticeable colour palette in both Instagram accounts, you can take one look and recognise their work instantly. This is an aspect that I will be trying to recreate with my clients work and aesthetic.
(Studio Rua, n.d., [online] [screen capture]) (Jonna Jinton Sweden, n.d., [online] [screen capture]) (Art Smith, n.d., [online] [screen capture])
These were the pins the client had already created a mood board with on Pinterest of their inspirations and work they had liked:
My key inspiration for the Pinterest was posts to create a natural jewellery aesthetic, giving an almost romantic feel to how the piece is placed in a natural landscape. For DottyPamS the natural landscape would be Dorset locations such as the beach, sea, the forest and other scenic parts associated with the area.
(Beth Millner Jewellery, n.d., [online] [screen capture])
(Etsy, n.d., [online] [screen capture])
Research
UK Jewellery and Small Business Market:
The jewellery market is extremely vast due to the broad variation of products, materials, styles and uses. In the UK jewellery market England is said to have accounted for the larger revenue share, with a considerable compound annual growth rate (Precision Business Insights, 2022, [online]). The predicted rate is about 13.1% for the time period between 2022 and 2028 (Precision Business Insights, 2022, [online]). This conveys that the jewellery market is a steadily increasing profit area with lots of potential for new brands and creators to grow their businesses.
Interestingly, the element that has positively impacted the small business market the most is technology, “particularly the internet, has changed the potential reach of many small businesses” (Mintel, 2022, [online]). This is why social media platforms and online shopping have become fundamental elements of business and marketing strategies. The “ability to reach a wider geographical area has been revolutionised by the internet offering both marketing and e-commerce opportunities” (Leggett, 2022, [online]). Through easy accessibility to social media platforms businesses can reach the wider consumer market, and potentially expand their entire business revenue.
Market Segmentation:
I brainstormed ideas surrounding the market segmentation of my clients jewellery business, some aspects will have been uncovered through experimenting with types of content I created for the social media platforms as I progress throughout the project.
Competitive Analysis
To enable myself to create a social media strategy that works well for the client I conducted a competitive analysis. This allowed me to find any “unique advantages as well as any potential barriers to growth” (bcd, n.d., [online]), hopefully strengthening my marketing and business strategy. Two of the competitor jewellery makers considered are not from the same county as the client, this because they travel to different areas and markets selling their work. This is similar to what the client has done in the past to make a profit from their jewellery. It can also be seen how prices vary from specific style of piece to the makers discretion, the prices are not restricted due to the material costs that fluctuate within the jewellery market.
Jason Jones Jewellery
Elly Harvey Silver
Lauren Silver Boutique
(Jason Jones Jewellery, n.d., [online] [screen capture])
Sterling Silver Bangle – £280.00 – Based in North Devon possibly as most images taken from Putsborough Beach in Croyde. Facebook and Instagram.
Secondary/Indirect Competitor: Those who have different products, services and target audience but within the same category.
This business has a different geographical target audience, their services are more broad because they travel to other areas currently. Their products are not that dissimilar but they do not use artisan beading like my client.
(Elly Harvey Silver, n.d., [online] [screen capture])
Hammered Earrings – £30.00 – Dorset based. Personal website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and has been featured in various online blogs/articles.
Direct Competitor: Those who have similar products, services and target audience within the same geographical area.
The business has similar products, a targets the same Dorset audience.
(Lauren Silver Boutique, n.d., [online] [screen capture])
Hammered Sterling Silver Earrings – £48.00 – North Devon based. Personal website and Facebook.
Similar to Jason Jones Jewellery, this business may be seen as a indirect competitor for the same reasons.
Substitute Competitors: Those with different products and services but the same target audience within the same geographical area. For DottyPamS business this may include other handcrafted products that are directed towards a target audience that values individually made items of longevity and are unique, predominantly sold in the Dorset area.
Brand Development
Ideas for the logo centred around using the DPS hallmark stamp of the client as this is how most jewellery makers are recognised. The client was also open to new alternatives. After further discussion with the client we decided to stick to DPS or DottyPamS as this also linked to the hallmark stamp. I also considered how I could integrate the texture of the jewellery into the logo, to create a distinct and unique brand for them.
After narrowing down the name to two possibilities I returned to sketching the logo out, as I was unhappy with the digital progression I started.
The digital progression of the two final options:
Jewellery images from (Militza Ortiz Jewellery, n.d., [online] [screen capture]) and (NorthBeachGems, n.d., [online] [screen capture]).
I used silver jewellery images to give the client a full impression of the branding concept. I then presented the DottyPamS logo to the client as this was the logo I viewed as more successful.
Jewellery images from (Militza Ortiz Jewellery, n.d., [online] [screen capture]) and (NorthBeachGems, n.d., [online] [screen capture]).
Client Feedback and Amendments:
Thankfully the client liked the concept and only wanted one important amendment. This was to change the simple jewellery illustration to one of her actual pieces. I asked them for three possible earrings and then turned them into the logo. The client choose the first as it is one of their favourite shapes. This added a personal attribute to the logo and pulled the branding together.
Final Branding Outcome:
User Personas
The user personas created in Figma reflect on the possible customers that may find DottyPamS jewellery through the social media accounts. I have incorporated Jung’s archetypes to give depth and variation to the user personalities.
(Conor Neill, 2018, [online] [screen capture])
Sustainability
The United Nations (UN) sets out in the twelfth sustainable development goal “to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns” (United Nations, 2022, [online]), as unsustainable patterns in areas such as business enterprise contribute to the “triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution” (United Nations, 2022, [online]). In relation to my client this could range from the methods they use to create their jewellery, the packaging they in or the advertising methods they utilise. However, the UN encourages people to “seize the opportunity to work together to improve resource efficiency, reduce waste and pollution, and shape a new circular economy” (United Nations, 2022, [online]). This led me to consider how I could enable my client to have a sustainable brand and hopefully encourage sustainability amongst their social media following in the future.
Unfortunately, this goal was difficult to achieve as the client had only recently begun to use social media and Shopfiy to market their small jewellery business. It became clear that the client needed to use the resources for postage and packaging that they had already collected over the past years. This was to prevent being wasteful and to not disregard the money they had invested in the part on materials. The client was amenable to aiming to be consciously sustainable moving forward with their business when they were able to afford to do so.
Recommendations for sustainability moving forward:
- Packaging should be made through a company such as ‘Wrapology’ that specialise in using materials that are plastic free, naturally degradable or home compostable. Wrapology even ensures that they know where materials are from so as not to contribute to illegal deforestation, as recycled does not always mean sustainable from their experience.
- Business cards and or stickers should be made from biodegradable materials.
- The social media platforms should highlight any sustainable changes to the business to encourage viewers to be mindful of their contribution to waste.
Aspects of sustainability already implemented:
- ‘Slow Fashion’ and up-cycling of materials. One of the great qualities of the client is their love of reusing beads and odd materials for her jewellery pieces. Finding new use in old materials instead of throwing these away. This is something that was highlighted in an Instagram post.
- Repurposing materials, the client cuts up fabric to use a polishing cloths for customers to care for their jewellery with. This was highlighted in a customer review received.
Campaign Strategy
The social media scheduling that I carried out can be viewed here:
The first platform chosen was Pinterest because it is used for inspiration and creating mood boards, sharing ideas and thoughts. This enables the jewellery aesthetic to be a perfect component for creating pins and sharing the clients work. The client already had a personal account on Pinterest so this was the starting point for moulding into the DottyPamS brand. They had already established different mood boards and shared their previous work.
The primary concept behind creating pins was to establish the DottyPamS aesthetic, “if you sell bohemian jewellery, your audience is most likely interested in a bohemian aesthetic throughout every aspect of their lives” (Golden Age Beads Blog, n.d., [online]). The DottyPamS aesthetic that I aimed to create was nature inspired landscapes highlighting textures and organic elements of the pieces. This then fed into how I presented the workshop, tools, and material pins to strengthen the idea that this is a small business that cares about creating beautiful, handcrafted jewellery.
Posting Times:
For Pinterest the recommended posting times was “between 3 PM and 6 PM […] second most popular time is 6 – 9 PM” (Needle, 2023, [online]). The best days for posting are Fridays and worst Sundays. I took this recommendation as the starting structure for the posting schedule but chose to post every day of the week so that I could reach my goal of 40 days of posting a minimum of one pin per day.
Pinterest Academy:
I started working through the initial Pinterest Academy badges but did not consistently work through these, as I started prioritising other elements of the project. I ended up spending more time going back and forth with the client in person to then carry out the product photography shoots. I realise now that I should have spend more time on my digital progression, I am now returning to this for future professional growth.
I chose Instagram as the main social media platform because of how it is “entirely image and video-based” (Goodman, n.d., [online]), making it a powerful tool in highlighting the clients jewellery pieces and creative skillset. It was also conveyed that the platform has a presence that “builds trust and brand recognition amongst your potential customers” (Goodman, n.d., [online]), which will enable DottyPamS to create a firm customer base. Also setting out to utilise features such as ‘stories’ which are said to increase as many as 58% of users to become interested in the brands they view (Goodman, n.d., [online]).
Further to this, it has also been shown that on average “users spend 30 minutes per day on the app, and 50% of those users have made purchases after viewing products” (Goodman, n.d., [online]) on the platform. My main objective was to direct these users from stories and posts to the Shopify store, the more that viewed the products the more likely I could reach the 50% that would make a purchase.
Key components for success:
- Visually appealing feed
- Strong bio that summarises the business and any links
- Clear call to action
- Consistent branding across platforms
- Consistent tone of voice
- Stick to the colour and design scheme
- Commit to a “clear and unique brand image” (Goodman, n.d., [online])
Posting Times:
I set out a goal of 40 days of posting with a minimum of one post per day at a specified time, additionally for Instagram I would also create stories on some days to add to the highlights. One article recommended the average best time for posting “across industries are mid to late afternoon, specifically from 6 PM – 9 PM, 12 PM – 3 PM, and 3 PM – 6 PM” (Needle, 2023, [online]). Stating that the best days are Saturdays and worst is Mondays. Although this article made a strong case for these being appropriate times and days, I decided to follow another recommendation as it became more appropriate to my target audience.
These times can be viewed in the table here:
Since the goal I had set out included all days of the week this article was more appropriate as it provided a more comprehensive breakdown of what times were more successful on specific days. It was also highlighted that as the content creator you “need to consider your target audience and your content intent” (Davey, 2023, [online]), as it is not worth posting when your specific target audience is not available to see it.
(Davey, 2023, [online] [screen capture])
Hashtags:
I decided to use between 3 to 5 hashtags per post as this was said to be the common amount used on Instagram whilst remaining effective. In the beginning I made sure to use key terms such as ‘beautiful’, ‘nature’ and ‘smallbusiness’ (Newberry, 2021, [online]), as these were recorded by one article to have the highest rate of interaction. I then incorporated these with key terms that I could associate with each post as I went along, I would choose hashtags that showed a high number of interactions in the millions range. However, in the future I will be increasing this to 11 hashtags per post to see if this will further improve the user reach.
Product Photography
The content creation for the client mainly consisted of product photography. This meant displaying the jewellery in a way that was both beautiful and practical in the sense that details of the pieces were clearly visible. The client feedback I received part way through the campaign was to ensure that users could see the pieces on people and have reference for size. The photographs were then edited in Adobe Lightroom and placed in Adobe illustrator to crop to either 1080 x 1080 (Instagram) or 1000 x 1500 (Pinterest). The Pinterest images then required a logo watermark to create a consistent signature pin.
Pinterest: Focus on artistic presentation of jewellery so that views would be more likely to create mood boards and share the pins created.
Instagram: Post multiple images starting with the placement of a piece in a natural environment followed by the piece being worn or closer up.
Shopify and Meta
As a part of my client’s needs I set up a Shopify account for selling over social media. This was the most cost-effective choice as it was the least expensive and as a starting point the easiest way to build their e-commerce.
However, when embarking on the client project I did not realise how many aspects of the business the client would need assistance in setting up. This has been a huge learning curb, discovering how to financially enable my client’s jewellery business and launch the brand entirely. Aspects such as the Meta Business suite and linking Shopify to Pinterest and Meta. I was able to learn as I went along whilst also reassuring my client this was the right pathway for their business.
An issue that I came across was linking the Shopify to the Meta suite. The account has been in a prolonged review stage, unfortunately this is something that I will have to keep checking until it has surpassed the reviewing window and may even need to contact Meta support for. This has prevented the Instagram account from having product tags and direct post to Shop links. The call to action was negatively impacted as I then had to send users to the store link in the bio.
As you can see from the Shopify analytics above the sales rates have not dramatically increased, one sale was also made in person and will not be shown here. The results do show that the Instagram page accounted for the majority of visits, and by sharing the store opening on the clients Facebook page visits did increase. Although the Pinterest account has been fully set up to link to the store, this was the least effective strategy.
Analytics Analysis
Two days prior to the first post being set to launch, with the store up and running, the client reached out concerned that they were not prepared for sales. As a way of still meeting the social media posting target I had to temporarily hide the Shopify store from the public but keep posting the images without a call to action for purchasing. Instead I highlighted in some posts the upcoming launch date of the store, then did a store launch date post on both platforms.
The monthly views consistently went up during the campaign, the viewings reached above 400 from 0 at the beginning of the campaign. The following count remained at 20 from start to finish. I did find it quite difficult to find appropriate accounts to follow through Pinterest as I would search for certain types of pins but the creators would not always be listed, it was mostly ‘Etsy’.
Overall, I found that this account was less successful due to several factors. Firstly, I misunderstood how to engage with Pinterest as I should have been actively pinning other creators and investigating this further in the Pinterest Academy lessons. Secondly, the client did not want to pay for advertisements, this could have opened another layer to the account making their posts more widely visible.
The positives of using Pinterest was how easy it was to link the pins to the Shopify store. Images take users directly to the store meaning there was a consistent call to action of each pin. It was also a great way of displaying the clients jewellery in an artistic and aesthetic way that made them stand out.
Overview of the Instagram analytics showed that a total of 144 accounts were reached gaining 71 followers from an initial 0.
Part way through the project I took advice from a professional marketer that I had made contact with, they stated that I should follow a minimum of 50 accounts in the beginning to bring up the following and engagement. I had noticed that the accounts engaged had started dropping and this advice could make the difference. I engaged with 50 accounts, majority being jewellery makers mostly based in the Dorset area but not exclusively. I then increased my activity commenting, liking and engaging with other accounts. Whilst I would always respond to comments on posts, I then made personal efforts to encourage people I knew to follow this account. Also sharing the client on different platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
This made a dramatic difference as can be viewed in the account engagement shown in the graphs, jumping from 95 to 112 from the original 50 or so before.
The recent engagement of following other creators led to interacting with a Dorset community page. Through commenting and sharing the DottyPamS brand as a new small business other creators then followed and engaged with the client.
Another key element that provided further reach of content was using reels, I was only able to create one during the campaign but this gained 96 views. If the client had been able to send more videos of their making process this would have made a big impact on their account reach. In the future I will try to help the client make these videos more easily, so I can then turn them into successful reels.
Feedback
Peer Feedback:
The peer feedback I received was extremely positive. They had stated that they felt I was noticeably active on the platforms and that each post I created had a natural element to it. I have been able to create consistent brand imagery, that was recognisable to them. The instagram account is emotionally engaging with personal anecdotes of the client, delivering a clear message about her personal story, and the logo was perceived as handmade and sketchy as it is more personalised.
One suggestion that I took on board was the need to personalise the product names on Shopfiy, as they were quite basic and descriptive of the pieces. This clashed with the emotive branding I had been building. I have since amended this.
(WhatsApp, 2023, [online] [screen capture])
(WhatsApp, 2023, [online] [screen capture])
User Feedback:
Through communicating with some of the followers I know, I came to understand that although people would discuss the products seen on Instagram, they would not necessarily interact with the posts either commenting, liking, or sharing. However, it was made clear that some were preparing to purchase the products despite not interacting.
Client Feedback:
Questions asked to the client:
- How did you find the communication throughout the project?
- Do you feel that you were able to give your opinion and be heard throughout the process?
- Were you satisfied with the branding of your business?
- Overall, how would you describe your experience?
Their response was that they “found the communication spot on. Yes, I was able to give my opinion and be heard. Yes, happy with the branding. The whole experience was painless! And straight forward! Thank you for all you have done” DottyPamS (03.05.23).
Next Steps
I have agreed to keep working with my client on managing their business and social media, and have established the next steps for their business:
- Develop the Facebook business page as some of the clients previous customers remain on this platform only.
- Finish linking Shopify to the Meta Business Suite, contact technical support to get this done.
- Work with the client on creating video content, helping them set up a readily available way of recording themselves.
- Reach out to their previous customers to get more reviews to add to brand legitimacy.
- Once making more sales, invest in advertising features to promote products.
Reflection
On reflection, I would have planned to keep the campaign going for a week or so longer. I had not done so as I wanted to provide enough time for concentrating on writing the assignment and analysing the accounts used. The client being in Dorset has meant that I was not close enough to then change my mind and go create new content without planning ahead of time. I did ask the client to send more personalised content such as videos of the creation process; however, they did not get back to me with anything which was frustrating. It was fortunate that throughout this project I acted as the product photographer, as I was able to get quality content for the majority of the project. This was planned ahead on days where I could reasonably get to areas that were nature based and had good weather conditions. I was also very lucky that the client was happy with my style and vision for their pieces. Conclusively, I noticed that the Instagram account was the favoured mode of social media and would be the primary focus of promoting the clients business moving forward. However, I will be engaging with Pinterest Academy lessons to develop myself professionally as this may be more impactful in the future for my client if I work on adapting to the platform better.
References can be viewed here: