Classmate: "Hi Howie, I saw your video on Elgydium social media channel." Howie: "Thanks! I was wondering when they were going to post it!"
Rewinding back a few months to July 2024, I had just completed the MD4201 module in "Social Media Marketing". What I liked about this module was that it challenged students to apply the skills and knowledge from class to a real-world client. In fact, Elgydium's staff (Mr. Joshua) managing their social media channel came down to do the briefing! In a nutshell, our mission was to increase a company's brand awareness via social media.
Continuous Assessment 1: Analyse Elgydium’s Social Media Channel
Assignment Intent
The first assignment was to suggest ways to increase Elgydium's brand awareness as a premium brand in oral care. Our lecturer, Ms Nas grouped the class into teams of 4-5 people. My team sought to understand how Elgydium is performing among its competitors, as well as our target audience’s interests and relevant trends. Our additional goal was to develop 3 mockups that are good enough that our client will want to feature on their website.
Fast forward to 25 Sep 2024, mission accomplished! I am proud to see my school assignment featured in Elgydium's Instagram account. This led me to write this reflective piece on my learning journey through MD4201.
Skillsets Learned
This project taught me about
Social Media Analysis: how to analyse a brand's social media presence, including their content, audience engagement, and competitor landscape.
Target audience Analysis: how to understand the target audience’s content consumption habits and preferences. For example, their interest in oral care and social media content.
Strategy Development: what were the key elements of a successful social media strategy, including content pillars, tone, and platform selection.
Challenges
The biggest challenge my team faced was analysing different brands' social media channels. We carefully studied these different companies’ content, tone, and engagement to identify trends and best practices. We developed a structured approach to our analysis, focusing on specific areas such as content relevance, aesthetics, and frequency. For example, we noticed that Colgate’s product showcase videos which have a lot of traffic were all short, engaging and informative, while Elgydium’s current product showcase video (as of August 2024) was very long and not engaging. We identified areas where Elgydium could improve and proposed possible solutions that may entice viewers.
Another challenge was that our team consisted of Gen Z individuals, yet we had to create content that would resonate with our target audience who are a different demographic group, specifically individuals aged 25 to 65 (Gen X & Y). We conducted secondary research to better understand the trends and preferences of this group with regards to their attitudes towards oral health and social media.
Key Takeaways
This assignment taught us the importance of:
Thorough Research: Conducting in-depth research on the brand, target audience, and industry trends is essential for developing an effective social media strategy.
Audience Understanding: Understanding your target audience's needs, preferences, and behaviours is crucial for creating content that resonates with them.
Content Consistency: Maintaining a consistent tone, style, and frequency of content is essential for building a strong brand presence on social media.
Strengths and Weaknesses
My team analysed the strengths and weaknesses of Elgydium's competitors using a competitor analysis framework. We also drew inspiration from Colgate's Instagram posts as we created our mockups for Elgydium.
In hindsight, I feel that my team did well, but our research (competitor analysis) lacked depth. We should have focused more on the specific tone and engagement metrics of different brands in the oral care industry. This would have allowed us to gain deeper insights and tailor our strategy more precisely.
In short, I learned about increasing a brand’s awareness on social media platforms. My next challenge is to find another “client” where I can put into practice all these new skills.
Chia Howie
4 October 2024
TLDR
MD4201 Module assignment featured on Elgydium's Instagram! Learned about Social media strategy and applied it in a real world context.
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