Rational
Introduction of my content campaign
The client of this project is Hertfordshire Business School (HBS). I am creating a portfolio of 3 different content designs which include 3 social media posts, a blog, and a video to showcase my abilities of what I can offer. My 3 pieces of content based on one theme which is ‘Stress and Mental Health’, with a particular focus of how to manage stress around exam/deadline season. This topic is extremely relevant to university students. UCAS (2021) found that 3.7% of university applicants declared a mental health condition, albeit the number is thought to be even higher and before considering the pressure and stress that occurs during exam season.
In this campaign I conducted secondary research into the Universities brand guidelines (University of Hertfordshire, 2022) by finding out what fonts, brand colours, promises, values and tone of voice they have. Then I implemented these into all my content designs to make it consistent to the objective.
Explaining my creative strategy
The objective is that each piece of content will attract and leave an impression on the target audience, potentially increasing HBS’s followship. When planning my social media posts, I considered how I could best reach my target audience: current and prospective students at the University of Hertfordshire Business school. It has been found that 98% of people aged 16-24 have an online social media profile in Britain (Gjorgievska, 2022). As most university students are aged around 18-21 (Adams, 2022), social media posts seemed like the most effective method to spread my message across to the target audience. It is imperative to consider the online presence of my target demographic to ensure a wide range of students have obtained this information. To guarantee that my content is viewed by my target audience, I have used 3 different online social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn) that way I have a wide range of coverage.
As my theme is based around mental health, I split my content into specific topics. These included: giving advice to my target audience, some tips around what to do during exam season and providing important information such as where students can go and who to contact if their mental health is impacting their daily life. I obtained much of this information from Hertfordshire’s Mental health and Student Wellbeing website pages (University of Hertfordshire, 2022). This allowed me to collate and formally present the information to students in a place which is more accessible to them.
Design and planning of my social media posts
For my social media posts, I first decided that I wanted to create just one consistent design and to use 3 different platforms to get a wider coverage when conveying my message to my target audience. The platforms I used were Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
An important decision was the design on the posts. I wanted them to look professional but maintain a simple elegant looking design, which clearly displays the meaning of the post without having to look at the captions. I used short relevant captions, as they are less overwhelming and more engaging to viewers (Gotter, 2019). Moreover, when designing my post on Canva I decided to use the University of Hertfordshire’s brand guidelines (University of Hertfordshire, 2022), especially when it came to the brand colours. I used the specific hex code for bright purple (#9A5BB3) and typography (Helvetica). Since the client is HBS, it only made sense to use the brands values, colours, and fonts on the post. This is to ensure consistency and to enable a greater awareness and association to Hertfordshire (Dawson, 2013).
By using 3 different platforms, I then had to further conduct research into the characters/word count. I found out that the limit for a caption on Instagram is 2200 characters while the limit for Twitter is 280 characters and the limit for LinkedIn is 3000 characters (Zote, 2022). Overall, this is important as it allows me to plan my captions and what type of copywriting I will use on each platform. Having good copyrighting is important as it can help create a good brand image and help organisations attract the right audience to engage into what there are trying to promote or inform (Prakash, 2020).
When it came to the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for my content, I found that a lot of people searched for phrases such as “Mental health” (Google trends, 2022). This helped me plan my posts as I turned these phrases into hashtags. Using hashtags in my content is important they can make it easier for the target audience to access the correct content and can also increase the total number of people who view your posts (Grauschof, 2022).
Design and planning of my blog
As my theme is based around ‘Stress and Mental Health’, I planned on designing my blog by breaking it up into subtopics such as showcasing different tips when trying to reduce stress levels within the university. For instance: joining a society, going to the gym, attending social events and other activities to do on campus with friends. By splitting the blog into subtopics, it allowed for me to categorise the relevant information I collated into more organised and readable sections. This also makes it easier for the viewer, as they can go to the section that they find most important or relevant without having to read the entire thing, which in turn would improve viewer engagement to the post.
Within each topic, I added hyperlinks which were connected to the correct pages on Hertfordshire’s website. Thus, when my target audience interacted with my blog, they will be forwarded to the right page for additional information instead of manually searching for It. I decided to add lots of relevant hyperlinks within my blog, as hyperlinks can be used to increase the volume of traffic for a website (Ernst, 2020). Other advantages of including hyperlinks are: increases credibility, assists with calls to action and improves SEO (Indeed, 2022).
Design and planning of my video
As the theme of my video was about ’Stress and Mental Health’, I took a subtler approach when creating my content. By making a simple, short video which is straight to the point, informing my audience about tips and different activities to reduce stress levels. Research shows that shorter videos have higher retention rates (Herman, 2020), thus I produced a short video as I felt that it would be better at capturing the viewers’ attention.
I chose to use YouTube as my media platform when broadcasting my video as 24% of YouTube users within the UK are aged between 16-24 (Shepherd, 2022). In turn, increasing the chances that my video would be viewed by the appropriate audience and help with HBS’s followship. The duration of my video is 1 minute and 39 seconds. According to Gupta (2022), 5% of users tend to stop watching your video after 1 minute and 60% of people stop after 2 minutes, thus I kept my video short.
Within the description of the video, I decided to add links to the correct websites as a call to action. By doing so, my audience could then engage with my video after to gain or to learn new information if interested. Another important method to help aid my SEO and to attract the correct audience was by adding hashtags within the description to ensure that the right people have an easier way of finding the right content (Grauschof, 2022).
Theories applied to my content
PESO
The main theory that I implemented into my pieces of content (my blog, video and all 3 of my social media posts), was the PESO framework (Dietich, 2014). PESO stands for Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned media. According to Dietich (2014), paid refers to sponsored social media ads, earned refers to trading content for an established authority’s audience, shared indicates amplifying content through your own audience and owned means publishing content on owned channels. These groups are all discrete but at the same time are intersected.
This framework is vital when creating content on different types of media channels and is something that I took into consideration while designing and planning my campaign. I created content and published it onto my social media and LinkedIn profiles (Owned Media), the LinkedIn profile was a paid campaign and money was spend promoting it (Paid media). Subsequently, I shared my content on the company’s social media platforms (Instagram) as a post (Shared Media). If the target audience finds this useful then they may start sharing it with their social network, leading to more visibility and reach (Earned Media). Using the PESO framework helped aid my content as it allowed to me to figure out what which of my pieces of content were most effective. Further, it highlighted the importance of each method and what they could achieve when reaching our objectives.
3H model
The 3H framework (Google, 2015) was another method that I used within all my pieces of content. The model contains of 3 different things that people search for. These are: Hero (people that browse), Help (people who search) and Hub (people who subscribe). When designing and planning my campaign, I considered how I would implement parts of this model. I decided I would make frequent posts on my Instagram account. This would be my Hub whereby relevant content is posted regularly and followers (subscribers) could view. The content of my posts is related to the ‘help’ and ‘hero’ branch as they are where the audience can see inspiring yet also relevant content. The aim is that the content is relevant to my target audience yet inspiring for them to get help and find their next step. It is imperative that all three Hs are used to achieve a healthy balance of content and product (Hymes, 2017).
References:
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Google Trends (2022) Terms searched: Mental Health. Google trends. [Online] Available at: https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=mental%20health&geo=GB (Accessed: December 7th, 2022)
Gotter, A. (2019). Should You Use Short Instagram Captions? Available at: https://www.socialmediacollege.com/blog/use-short-instagram-captions/ (Accessed December 6th, 2022).
Grauschopf, S. (2022) Hashtags: What they mean and how to use them in social media, LiveAbout. Available at: https://www.liveabout.com/what-does-hashtag-mean-and-how-do-you-use-one-892814 (Accessed: December 6th, 2022).
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Hymes, T. (2017). Google’s 3H Approach to Content Marketing: Hero, Hub & How To. Available at: https://tonyhymes.info/2017/01/13/googles-3h-approach-to-content-marketing-hero-hub-how-to(Accessed: December 7th, 2022).
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Prakash, A. (2020) 5 reasons why good copywriting is important for your business, Godot Media. Available at: https://www.godotmedia.com/blog/5-reasons-why-good-copywriting-is-important-for-your-business (Accessed: December 6th, 2022).
Shepherd, J. (2022) 21 essential YouTube statistics you need to know in 2022, The Social Shepherd. Available at: https://thesocialshepherd.com/blog/youtube-statistics (Accessed: December 7th, 2022).
UCAS. (2021). 450% increase in student mental health declarations over last decade but progress still needed to address declarations stigma. Available at: https://www.ucas.com/corporate/news-and-key-documents/news/450-increase-student-mental-health-declarations-over-last-decade-progress-still-needed-address (Accessed December 7th, 2022).
University of Hertfordshire. (n.d.) Brand Tool Kit. [online] Available at: https://brand.herts.ac.uk (Accessed: December 6th, 2022)
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