G O L D C O A S T M U M S O C I A L
M E D I A
C R I T I Q U E
CELIA SPENCER Social Media Project PUBR12-100_172 SID# 13424473
CONTENT INTRODUCTION COMPETITOR ANALYSIS BRAND IDENTITY BIOGRAPHY ICON CONTENT CONTENT CALENDAR GRAPHIC EXAMPLE TACTICS ANALYTICS EVALUATION REFERENCES
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WHO IS GOLD COAST
MUM
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Lauren is the face behind Gold Coast Mum, of whom is married, and the mother to one boy and three girls. Gold Coast Mum has a presence on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram while also running a blog. While Gold Coast Mum is advertised as a personal blog, they also state that they do have paid affiliations with other businesses, proving that their presence has been monetized. It can be seen through investigation on goldcoastmum.com who Lauren is, including awards achieved and other brands she has been featured with. However, upon the discovery of Gold Coast Mum’s Instagram page, the brand identity is not conveyed accurately across platforms. Analysis and critiques of the Instagram page have been made with above being considered, assuming that the brand wishes to further themselves as a profitable business as oppose to a personal account. I N T R O D U C T I O N
COMPETITORS The Gold Coast Mum business can be compared to that of Dinah Crowe, and MumKIND. All brands are similar business’, and are related to the ‘mummy blogger’. The competitor brands however distinguish themselves from other 'mum' pages; Dinah is primarily a foodie, and MumKIND collects donations as offerings to struggling mothers.
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#1 Dinah Crowe currently has close to four thousand followers, and from her presence on Instagram has landed a place on a television show (Adelady). Dinah’s content exhibits a bright and aesthetic feel through images of herself, her three children, and beautiful foods. Dinah has a high consumer engagement; averages 80 likes, and receives consistent comments. Dinah posts almost every day of the week, with high quality and relatable content. She utilizes Instagram’s Live and Story features, and makes sure to use geotags, hashtags and @ tags to increase discoverability and reach, while increasing followers and providing a solid growth. #2 MumKIND’s Instagram account has almost 500 followers from a sixmonth presence on Instagram. Posts acquire no less than 25 likes and always has comments. Consistency of posts are irregular, averaging 1 post a week. The account features images of donations they have received, along with images of mothers with their children. Hashtags and @ tags are often used alongside lengthy and informative captions. MumKIND does not involve themselves in the use of Instagram Live or Stories.
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ABOUT Brand identity is fundamental to consumer recognition and symbolizes the brand's differentiation from competitors. A brand can also be used to attract customers by a company, if the brand of a company is well established and has goodwill. The recognition and perception of a brand is highly influenced by its visual presentation. Gold Coast Mum needs to establish who they are. First impressions of the Instagram account leave the viewer to question who and what the brand is, and whether they feel compelled to follow or not. Â
B R A N D
I D E N T I T Y
From the Instagram biography (featured alongside), Gold Coast Mum’s brand image is unclear. The creation of a clear and concise statement on their objective as a brand needs working on. Information is being presented that is unnecessary in conveying their identity to viewers. It appears cluttered and messy at the top of the Instagram profile, reducing the brand aesthetic, as this statement and the icon photo is what forms a viewer’s first impression on the brand. Dinah Crowe follows this notion of simplicity in her biography, clearly stating who she is as a brand. The following biography has been formulated in order to give viewers of the Gold Coast Mum Instagram a clear identity: “Just a Gold Coast Mum of 4 under the age of 4 Journalist | Blogger | Editor Karaoke Lover www.goldcoastmum.com” B I O G R A P H Y
T H E N E W B R A N D
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I C O N
FONTS USED: Lauren, Lorano The Instagram icon provides businesses a brand recognition with consumers, especially when achieving connectivity through other social media platforms. It can be seen that Gold Coast Mums icon photo needs updating to provide a more concrete brand identity. The design needs to be reconsidered in order to make the brand clearer to provide uniqueness. For example, an even and thicker font, and correctly aligning the elements will improve the logo. A professional looking logo furthers a brand as a whole as it can be applied to other platforms(see left improved logo). MUMKind follows this theory, providing a clear logo in their icon, which they also print onto stickers. Dinah does not use a logo as her icon, rather an image of food that is regularly changed.Â
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CONTENT
It is evident from analyzing the Gold Coast Mum Instagram that there has been no planning for the content posted. The profiles’ feed shows no visual fluidity, or aesthetically pleasing images. It is pivotal that the feed looks appealing in order to increase consumer engagement. From simply cleaning up the images, and using the same editing process for the images, the feed can look more enticing. C O N T E N T
For example, Dinah Crowe follows this concept, keeping a common colour scheme through quality images, providing a consistent flow, probing viewers to scroll further and follow her account.
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It can also be noted that Gold Coast Mum's posts are missing captions. These posts should then be deemed unnecessary and should not be posted. Quality content is more desirable than quantity. Low quality content will consequence in loss of followers. Not posting at all proves to be more beneficial in keeping followers than posting undesirable content. C O N T E N T
CALENDAR To provide a consistent feed, a content calendar should be utilized. This enables planning of posts, giving the opportunity to produce quality and consistent content. Currently, Gold Coast Mum posts inconsistently. For example, in their recent trip to “The Brick Man Experience”, the account made 16 posts simultaneously, which is an overwhelming amount of posts made at one time. The posts were of low quality and would have congested followers’ news feeds, leading them to unfollow. However, if planned images were posted according to a content calendar, quality content would have been produced. A content calendar also aids in obtaining a range of analytics and insights into how consumers engage with content i.e. trial and error in discovering the best time of day/week results in more consumer engagement (see page 22: ANALYTICS). AUTHOR: Mum Lauren
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Creating a visual content calendar also aids in organization of posting as it can be difficult to stay on top of a posting schedule. It also assists in creating new content as, for example, you can see if too many posts are made on food. Inputting pubic holidays can also help in creating content, for example if Father’s Day is coming up, a post can be planned according to the event.Â
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CONTENT CALENDAR APPLICATION
All images are copyright free, sourced from unsplash,com.
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GRAPHIC E X A M P L E
The choice of creating a competition post for Gold Coast Mum was made with the aim to build a larger community presence by collaborating with another local brand (for this instance, the fake brand Beauty Box is used and their product of a handbag is the giveaway item). An efficiently run contest can be highly beneficial in building a stronger following for both parties. Contests also tend to achieve a higher reach than regular posts as word of mouth is increased; family and friends are conversing about their hopes of winning the competition. Rules of entrance to the competition also increases engagement, as it may be a requirement that one must follow the brand before entering, or one must tag three friends in the comments below to enter. It can be seen from this that competitions are highly advantageous in greater brand awareness.Â
Awareness is also increased through the collaborating brands page, as their posts are notifying their followers of the Gold Coast Mum business. As commenting and liking is encouraged due to an incentive being offered, higher consumer engagement follows. The use of a customized hashtag also provides advertising for your brand through user generated content. Conditions of entry may include a repost alongside the use of a personal hashtag i.e #GCmumandBeautyBox. Following up the contest and announcing the winner is also very beneficial. Once the winner has been contacted, sharing the winning entrant in a post and @ tagging their account solidifies the brand relationship with their audience. Sharing this information also helps consumers put more trust in a brand, and removes any notions that the competition may be a hoax. G R A P H I C
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TACTICS
From thorough analysis of the Gold Coast Mum’s Instagram account, it can be seen that they do not utilize Instagram’s features on increasing discoverability. Captions appear to be missing, and subsequently the use of hashtags has ceased. However, some geotags seem to have been used sparingly throughout posts. The account occasionally uses an @ tag in its content. Unfortunately, the accounts low quality content also reduces engagement with viewers. The account also does not exploit the Instagram Live and Story features. Due to this lack in use of marketing tools, it can be seen that consumer engagement is low. This can be seen in the absence of comments on the content. Where comments do occur, it can be seen that Gold Coast Mum unfortunately does not reply. Replying to comments can provide a positive touchpoint to consumers, and is highly advantageous for the brand. The use of these features will certainly assist in furthering the Gold Coast Mum’s presence on Instagram, by boosting both reach and consequently, growth.
If Gold Coast Mum wishes to further increase their discoverability, Instagram offers the opportunity to purchase sponsored posts/advertisements. The sponsored posts are highly customisable and enable the opportunity to be featured on consumers newsfeeds without the need for them to follow the brand. S O C I A L
M E D I A
T A C T I C S
ANALYTICS Several tools can be used to find out data, including applications that can monitor an accounts activity. Iconoquare was voted the “Best Free Instagram Analytics Tool” (Schauer, 2015), and provides many features that deliver precious insights and analytics on an Instagram account. The application gives, in-depth analytics, including the total number of likes received, a history of your most liked photos throughout the duration of your account, the average number of likes and comments you receive per photo, and follower growth charts. This data can give brands the ability to decipher the best time of week and day to reach the maximum amount of engagement from followers. It can also provide information on what content is most favored by followers, enabling the brand to cease posting content that is not liked, producing a more desirable account and subsequently increasing brand growth. Iconosquare also allows users to add an Instagram tab to their Facebook pages to “boost cross-channel engagement”. Converting to a Business Profile on Instagram also provides users further access to insights. Data can be discovered on the page’s followers regarding demographics and geographic’s such as age, gender and location. Data can be found in regards to impressions, reach and engagement, per post as well as overall. If the story feature is utilized, data can also be found up to 14 days after the story was posted.
EVALUATION It is important to monitor an account in order to have insights into how the brand is performing. It is highly advantageous to know if a brands growth is plateauing, declining, or inclining, and why. It can be noted that the previous are happening due to; declining likes, comments not being made, loss of followers. Tracking the previously stated are extremely important in providing solid growth for a brand. Â Gold Coast Mum needs to invest time in analysing her conumsers in order to focus effort into producing quality content that is desired by her audience.
REFERENCES
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FACEBOOK. (2017). WHERE CAN I FIND MY INSTAGRAM INSIGHTS?. RETRIEVED 29 JUNE, 2017, FROM HTTPS://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/BUSINESS/HELP/1533933820244654 GOLD COAST MUM. (2017). ABOUT. RETRIEVED HTTP://WWW.GOLDCOASTMUM.COM/?M=1
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LEE, A. (2017). 6 BENEFITS OF RUNNING SOCIAL MEDIA CONTESTS. RETRIEVED 29 JUNE, 2017, FROM HTTPS://MAXIMIZESOCIALBUSINESS.COM/6BENEFITS-OF-RUNNING-SOCIAL-MEDIA-CONTESTS-8288/ MUMKIND. (2017). MUMKIND. RETRIEVED 29 HTTPS://WWW.INSTAGRAM.COM/MUM_KIND/
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SCHAUER, P. (2015). THE 5 BEST FREE INSTAGRAM ANALYTICS TOOLS. RETRIEVED 29 JUNE, 2017, FROM HTTP://WWW.SOCIALMEDIATODAY.COM/SOCIALNETWORKS/PETESCHAUER/2015-07-11/5-BEST-FREE-INSTAGRAM-ANALYTICSTOOLS UNSPLASH. (2017). UNSPLASH. HTTPS://UNSPLASH.COM
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