The Challenge
Establish a presence for MunchyMay within the food illustration niche, increasing the visibility and reach of the brand to drive traffic and become adopted as a community leader.
Outcome
I developed a social media strategy, a follower engagement framework, a community generated content system, as well as graphics and marketing materials that support and encompass the overall campaign.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire
The death tole has reached 35,000. As March comes to a close, the coronavirus pandemic continues to explode in growth. Hospital's surge with more inbound patients and citizens across the globe are urged to isolate, our populace see's an increase in mental-health deterioration.
Many people look to online communities to seek aid, I knew this because I was about to build one. I recognised my ability to make a change, MunchyMay was born to promote positive mental-health frameworks and food illustration was the context to connect a disrupted niche.
I initially started the MunchyMay IG account in March 2020 with 0 followers. The process of building a community from 0 tested my ability to adapt to the unique behavior of a new audience whilst developing strategies that align with the structure and framework of Instagrams algorithm.
Community Generated Content
MunchyMay was made for the community it wished to serve. It made sense from an early point that the content should be curated not generated by myself. Due to the nature of the brands mission it was obvious that I needed to encourage the community to celebrate themselves not my efforts.
I set up the MunchyMay social strategy to empower the community whilst positioning the MM brand as the voice and leader to their ideals. This not only provided consistent quality content for me to utilise, but transformed account visiters into loyal fans of the brand causing many to become advocates and message spreaders enhancing account growth efforts.
Ydxart submitted this post to the MunchyMay Instagram account for the May annual event. I selected this submission as an appropriate feature due to it meeting my criteria, I later featured Ydxart's submission onto the MunchyMay brand account. The post had a 27% engagement which I was thrilled with.
Why a Quantity over Quality focus is better when starting out
Instagrams algorithm is geared towards viral content, the more time people spend on app, the more money Instagram makes. When Instagram identifies your content as having "good social signals" it will be pushed onto the explore page and shown to none followers resulting in huge growth.
"So, I just have to make high quality viral content, right?" Well, not exactly.
When you have low followers on Instagram the algorithm trusts you less, in their eyes your a risky person to dabble with. One reason is because they don't have a big enough sample data to know who your content is even for. How can you be shown to prospects when Instagram hasn't identified them yet? Data is needed and therefore quantity is important at the beginning. I posted 5 times a day, every day for 90 days with MunchyMay.
I posted 5 times a day, every day for 90 days, this totals to 306 posts over the 3 month period. This 90 day sprint provided me a range of data that was vital for the next stage in my process. The image above highlights the feed that resulted from 90 days of posting; achieving 3,649 followers from zero.
How do I convert visitors into followers? That's easy, I talk to them.
The most important part of social media is the "social" part. Posting content everyday for 90 days was important, but each post is only a conversation starter, you have to keep the conversation going. For MunchyMay to establish itself as a tribe leader it had to lead discussions and form real relationships.
When I wasn't posting content and iterating strategy I was talking to as many people as I could on MM posts or visitor profiles. I engaged with a minimum of 20 people an hour at least 8 hours a day (everyday), this drew favourable attention to the MM profile. What's better than that is people started to see the brand as their friend, they would even go as far as to reach out to me through the brand account!
It was through every touchpoint and interaction that I nurtured each individual follower's relationship with the MunchyMay brand, It was important each person felt a connection to MM. “At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.” - (Maya Angelou)
Data is your edge.
How did I achieve exponential growth in the following weeks? I mapped the behavior of the MunchyMay audience. 306 posts is alot of data, in fact, it's enough to know someone. I took the 15 best performing posts, analysed them, and extrapolated a projection of the ideal content. I now had a blueprint of exactly what I thought the MM audience wanted to see and there was one easy way to find out: test test test.
It was my aim after the 90 day sprint to hone in on the content that the MunchyMay audience resonated with the most. The process of analysing the best performing posts provided me with a framework that allowed me to tailor content to the audience, resulting in an effective increase in engagement and growth.
Quantity builds foundations, Quality builds bridges.
Over the next few weeks I focused on posting 9 high quality posts. Nine!? After posting 5 times a day for 90 days? Yes, heres why: Instagram now has enough data to know who your audience is, it uses the hashtags you use combined with your current following to identify look alike audiences for your account through their explore page algorithm. When a high quality post shows good "Social Signals" the post is picked up by the algorithm and pushed onto the explore page.
Having identified the common traits of the accounts most favoured content with it's audience I proceeded to post 9 relevent high quality pieces of content for the MM community in the following weeks. During this pierod of time the MunchyMay following increased by 300% achieving the desired 10,000 followers.
The chart above highlights the impact that the "high quality posts strategy" had on the MunchyMay account following over time. This graph features the entire time I spent on the project showcasing in white the results of this final strategies direct implementation.
Results
A presence of 10,000 followers was established for MunchyMay during the 3 to 4 month period I spearheaded the management of the growth campaign. The implemented strategies generated 800,000 impressions for the brands Instagram account which contributed to a 300% growth of the account during the last month.
During the last 15 days of account management before I parted with my role I was able to double the average engagement of each post from 20% up to 40%, resulting in the ideal foundation for nurturing leads in the next phase of the brand growth.
