*posts selfie with motivational quote as caption*
Creating content has proven to be harder than expected. Brand consistency is important for companies maintaining their business social media accounts. The audience needs to be engaged and not confused by what they’re seeing, hearing, or reading. Curating media in order to construct this week’s blog initially seemed difficult. Bridging the gaps between my weak associations with Ladurée & Les Merveilleuses and my everyday life was crucial to keep my personal social media outlets on-brand. Keeping in mind that the end-goal for each creation was to appeal to my audience, my plan for how I wanted to create the content became clearer.
To the left, to the left, you can see a photo that I took and edited using my iPhone 6s. After a few weeks of not having a case on my phone, the camera lens has become fairly scratched and therefore the quality of the photo isn’t the best it could be. The photo was edited with an application called “Afterlight,” which is just one of the many options for mobile phone photo editing. I took the picture at a downtown Raleigh restaurant called Capital Club 16 for the pure fact that they have gorgeous marble tabletops, which created the perfect background for a product styling shot. Their wine list may have also been part of the reason that I chose this hot spot, just saying.
The inspiration behind this photo was based off of my favorite blogs that I follow (Favorite being @iamgalla.) An aerial view of the items of an outfit, sunglasses or watch collections, or even the contents of your backpack are a great way to profile your preferred brands on your account. This also allows for viewers or consumers to disassociate the products from the person that is normally displaying the items. Allowing for the products to shine through and be the main event of the photo.
A recent trend in the social media world is the use of the Boomerang application. This camera extension allows for users to film a short video that plays itself forwards and backwards on an endless loop. Most users utilize the technology to show off their flow-y dresses, film waves coming and going on the beach, and maybe to create an infinity hair flip or two.
In my case, I simply used the application to show the lucettegrace bakery cashier choosing just the right macaron out of the case. Using Instagram’s new “story” feature, I was able to upload the boomerang video to my story and apply a filter. I chose black & white because I wasn’t in love with the saturation and exposure of the video. Black & white created a deeper contrast on the photo and also an added element of “wonder” for the viewer to create their own experience in terms of colors that they perceive the product to be.
Photofy is another mobile phone photo editing application that allows for users to add text or images that can announce a baby on the way, wish all of your followers a great day, or even just list your other social media handles. The options are truly endless with this application and businesses even have the opportunity to pay an additional fee and upload their company logo to brand themselves further and protect their original content from being used elsewhere.
The Photofy image that I created was a screen-grab from the boomerang video. I wanted to create an image that fell inline with our class project brand of Les Merveilleuses but also allow association of their more well known brand of Ladurée. I sifted through the thousands of preset options on Photofy and settled on the triangle with two options for text; one larger than the other. Photofy allowed me to also change the colors of the text. I chose pastel tones of blue and red, and a pure white to mimic the French flag.
All in all, content creation requires direction, creativity, and possibly a better iPhone camera that maybe isn’t scratched to death. However, it is important to keep in mind that there needs to be an audience for the content that is being created. The engagement is really the only true measure of how effective the content is to your audience. Remember though, not all engagement is positive engagement! With other factors in mind such as what time of day the media was released, which platform it was released on, and what type of media was released all come into play when the calls-to-action of likes, comments, & shares are being evaluated. Study the target market and what it is they want to see, create media that exemplifies what they want to see, screw it, and then just post a selfie instead.
This post was created as part of the Global Luxury Management Program at the NC State Poole College of Management. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
