When in Doubt, Instagram Food
After this week’s social media trials, I have a much greater appreciation for those that do this for a living. I posted on some of the main social media outlets I use (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) to see what sort of engagement I could get. It was actually a lot harder than I thought. First, let’s get one thing straight- I am not a professional or influencer by any means. I love social media, I use it all the time to keep up with my friends, family, bloggers, brands, etc. OKAY…I admit it; I would love to get lots of likes on my photos… who wouldn’t??? You’re lying if you say otherwise. BUT I also get that most people don’t really care about my everyday life. I mean, why should some random person care about the party I went to last night or that fact that it’s my brother’s birthday? Well this week I posted with the intent of seeing what sort of engagement I could get across my social media. I used various platforms and apps in order to create different types of content. My posts were as follows:
- A tribute to 9/11 on Facebook using the Photofy™ app
2. A photo on Instagram of my family from that time we had coffee at Central Perk
3. A poll on Twitter to see what kind of chocolate my followers prefer
4. A boomerang video on Instagram of Godiva chocolate strawberries
Here are some of my observations/opinions based on my experience with different content and platforms:
1. Facebook is a cool place for my family to see what I’m up to.
a. I don’t know about you but I pretty much expect the most engagement on my Facebook posts to come from my mom (Just me? Oh…). For my first trial I decided to use the Photofy™ app to edit a picture about 9/11. I was probably going to post about it anyway and I thought this would be a nice way to pay tribute to those that lost their lives. I also noticed that many of my Facebook friends were doing the same on this day. In addition, the picture I took was on NC State’s campus so I thought this could grab the attention of other students. I even used “#NCStateOnCampus” and tagged NC State to see if the university would notice… but no dice. The picture only got 19 likes total and no comments or shares. Not a huge success on the engagement scale. I am glad I could post something meaningful but maybe next time I should post this content on Instagram.
2. Posting content to which people can relate is important.
a. My Instagram is not set to private so I wanted to see if I could really do something with this. I don’t have a huge amount of followers but Instagram is easy to browse through by locations and tags. As a huge fan of the FRIENDS TV show, I wanted to see what other crazy-obsessed fans I could reach out to.
First step: Post picture with friends, in Central Perk, of course.
Second step: add friends-related hashtags such as “#pivot” or “chandlerbing.”
Third step: Tag FRIENDS-related accounts a.k.a. those other crazy fans
I posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook and got a total of 234 engagements on it. I got a lot of comments from my friends and followers saying how jealous they were of my total “Rachel Green” moment. All comments were from people I personally know (or my mom’s friends), but still cool to see how much they liked my post. I thought posting about a highly popular TV show was a great way to connect with my followers.
3. Twitter is slowly becoming irrelevant.
a. Okay so this isn’t totally true… But if I think about how often people use it compared to Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat…it’s definitely falling behind. I still like Twitter, however, because it’s so great for engaging with other users during live events. Think: the Olympics or the Bachelor. I also pretty much just use Twitter to complain about my champagne problems or tweet at celebs. This outlet is a little different from Facebook or Instagram in that I feel I can be pretty informal in whatever I tweet (no need to impress my Grandmother on this one). I decided to create a poll on Twitter to see if I could get any sort of response to my question on chocolate preference: Godiva or Lindt? In total, I got 23 votes, which isn’t terrible considering how many followers I have and that most of my followers probably don’t care about my school project. Although, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t recruit some of my friends to help me out on this one. According to Twitter, 188 people saw my tweet, 75 people engaged with it, and 23 people voted in the poll. While 12% of the people that saw this tweet, voted in my poll, 188 views is pretty poor. Anyways, what I got from this experience is that a small amount of people, probably my friends, prefers Godiva to Lindt. Thanks, Twitter.
4. Instas of food are never a bad idea.
a. I don’t know why but I always feel really great about any of my Instas that involve food. Do I believe that everyone really cares about what I had for breakfast that day? Absolutely not. But who isn’t drawn to a pretty picture of something you can eat? Those chocolate strawberries looked so nice that I almost didn’t want to eat them right away (ALMOST). I was really trying to get the brand’s attention with this post to see if Godiva would engage with my video. Unfortunately, Godiva did not see or react to my post. I did get a pretty good reaction out of my followers, however. Again, I posted a product that my followers could relate to: chocolate. When posting about a product, it is important to post content that is good quality and aesthetically pleasing. Using a different app, such as boomerang, is also a great way to switch it up from the average Instagram post. Out of the 233 users who saw the video, 121 people have like it. This means that more than half of my audience engaged with the post. To see what these numbers actually mean, I compared them with Godiva’s Instagram account and how people engaged with their last video. While they have a huge following of 180,000 people, only about 3% or less of that saw the video, and 33% of those viewers actually liked it. Plot twist: I have better ratios than Godiva.
S/O to my Twitter followers for convincing me to purchase the chocolate strawberries- they don’t disappoint.
This post was created as part of the Global Luxury Management Program at the NC State Poole School of Management. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
