Summary:
My digital artefact going to be a essay/article on the future of social media marketing. I want to understand the importance of social media marketing and how it is redefining the whole shopping experience for consumers.
I am hoping to educate myself and other business owners who want to maintain their brands in the future of social media.
Social Media managing includes a lot of planning which can contribute to the way we think about and organise for the future. I like to utilise articles online about understanding engagement and to search for keywords for social media. This is why I chose the format of a contextual essay as I think a written format would suit me and my audience better and almost be used as a guide.
I intend on using Instagram, Tiktok and Reddit as the platforms that I will be posting content towards. I chose these three as each one differs in the kind of content they allow (video, photo, written format). Every 2 weeks I intend on putting my focus onto one of these platforms by posting content, engaging with my audience and finding the relevant and niche tags necessary. I will collect my data at the end of the two weeks to see how my audience responds on each platform.
I will collect secondary research by scholars and journalists who study social media trends to understand how consumers respond to certain content and what their predictions are for the future.
Putting all my data into one article (I called it a contextual essay in my pitch) will make the project fast, simple, tiny and inexpensive. From there I believe I will be able to understand what the future is in social media marketing and why it is so crucial to maintain.
Here is a visual plan of my production timeline:
| Week 3 | Pitch Due |
| Week 4 | Set Up social media platforms (Instagram and TikTok done.) Organise content to be posted Create a content schedule |
| Week 5 | This week’s focus – Instagram |
| Week 6 | This week’s focus – Instagram Collect the data that you have found for a progress report |
| Week 7 | Gather Feedback/Iterate This week’s focus – TikTok |
| Week 8 | This week’s focus – TikTok Collect the data that you have found for a progress report Beta Due |
| Week 9 | Gather Feedback/Iterate This week’s focus – Reddit |
| Week 10 | This week’s focus – Reddit Collect the data that you have found for a progress report |
| Week 11 | Gather Feedback/Iterate Secondary Research – analyse what other brands have been doing |
| Week 12 | Edit and revise |
| Week 13 | DA Due |
References:
Meeker, M., 2018. INTERNET TRENDS 2018. Kleiner Perkins, [Online]. 3-8. Available at: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/perspectives/internet-trends-report-2018/ [Accessed 18 March 2021].
Shane Barker. 2020. The Future of Social Media Marketing – 11 Trends That Will Impact Your Business (Updated January 2021). [Online] Available at: https://shanebarker.com/blog/future-of-social-media-marketing/. [Accessed 18 March 2021].
Rachel Weisz 
Reblogged this on Future Cultures.
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Hey, this is a great DA idea! In this new digital age era we live in, social media is such an important tool when it comes to marketing your business. It’s a super powerful way to get your concepts and products out there for the world to see! This is also a perfect way to be able to integrate uni life and work life into one project, which will hopefully save you a bunch of time. Your production plan is clearly well-thought out and precise in action, well done. However, my only suggestion is to highlight your feedback utility and find a way to undertake the Fail Early Fail Often concept. Really looking forward to seeing your projection in this subject, well done.
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Hi Rachel,
I really like your digital artefact and concept about social media marketing and how powerful it is now but even more in the future, our generation is so easily influenced by what we see on social media.
I myself have been those people that are heavily influenced on buying things on social media, a lot of from Facebook, but even more recently on Instagram (clothes) and Tik Tok (random, niche products). I feel these platforms have taken off and don’t seem like they are stopping soon.
I feel it might be hard to balance continuous quality content over three large platforms but from what I gathered from your production timeline they will be separate weeks for those platforms which I believe would work well.
I didn’t notice in your pitch or blog post you address how many years in the future that you would be focusing on which might be something to think about and address throughout your digital artefact or in your beta. In regard to the FIST approach, in my eyes anyway, it might be an easier and more effective approach to applying this throughout the digital artefact rather than right at the end of your contextual essay.
I found this journal article “Social Media: Marketing Public Relations’ New Best Friend” which focuses on the effective use of information technologies that can make marketing inexpensive and the advantage of reaching a worldwide audience, as well as social media making it very easy for consumers to deliver feedback. This could be useful in exploring the probable impact that social media will have on marketing practices.
Anthropocene in lecture three could be something to investigate as the less demand for physical catalogues being delivered to households multiple times a week will cut down on paper and precious resources. Environmental concerns can definitely be something to take into consideration when social media marketing is on the rise and is the way of the future.
I look forward to seeing where you take your digital artefact, I think the aesthetic and work you have done for your Instagram page and website is something to be commended on, so well done!
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Hey Rachel, this is such a sick idea for your DA! You’ve clearly done enough background research to get started and I’m excited to see where it goes. With your clothing label already set up (pls link me to your website), I think it’ll be easy for you to create a feedback loop for yourself and directly apply changes in real-time, with real results! With the feedback loop in mind, I think you could’ve touched more on that side of things regarding aesthetic posts, website layouts or even clothing designs. I’m interested to see if changing your approach to any of these things would increase your reach through your marketing.
Lastly, you include a lot of academic sources but I think it would be useful to reference the lectures/readings a little bit more and also, show us what inspired your clothing brand. One of the biggest things for me was creating a mood board when I first conceptualised my brand and included the Instagram handles of brands I really enjoy. This type of casual research would be interesting to see and might help you garner a larger audience outside of marketing enthusiasts. Here’s a couple of local brands I really like: @streetx, @wiilds, @low.ville
Good luck with your project, keen to check out more of it.
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