Eva Zagury
20/12/22
Rationale
The Hertfordshire Business School is asking student to help with their creative content for their social media platform.
To apply students, need to send in their portfolios. In the portfolio we will be showing 3 posts that were created on the subject of “Mental Health at University : resources”. It will also include a Blog written about: “Why choose Hertfordshire Business School”. On this later theme we will also conduct a user generated video to show the day in the life of a student at Hertfordshire Business School when that student lives in London.
Overall creative strategy
The target audience of these creative content are perspective students, these are new students that might be joining Hertfordshire Business School and current students who already are in the school
The objective of the school is to increase its followship on social media.
To achieve this objective, we will be using different techniques of SEO to promote the school. SEO is "The practice of improving an organisation's place in the SERPs using organic or free methods usually abbreviated to SEO." Hanlon ( 2019). SERP are the pages that are shown to the person that does the research. If content appears higher on that list the user will more likely click on it, thus promoting the school which will be the main subject of the content created.
There are 3 main types of content, evergreen content, planned content and topical content. These will not be used the same way; they change according to the way you want users to look at your content.
To get the creative content across we decided to use the evergreen approach for the Instagram reel and for the blog. Indeed, this content will remain relevant, and people will be able to look for it even after it has been released for a long time. For the Instagram posts we decided that it would be planned content as it would have a bigger impact at certain time. For example, as it is themed around mental illnesses like stress it could be released right before final exams.
The two general themes selected for the portfolio are: Mental Health at University: Resources and Why choose Hertfordshire Business School. They were all focused on different topic. For the 3 Instagram posts that I did for theme Mental Health at University: Resources, the topic of the first post was: 5 minutes mental health check. The topic for the second one was: Mental health, what you can do on campus. The topic for the third post was: Relieve stress immediately.
The blog and the Instagram reel where both on the theme Why choose Hertfordshire Business School. The topic of the blog was: Finding your new home in Hatfield. This is related as students who are wondering about joining the school might use the location as a criterion, thus showing them what Hatfield has to offer might give the school an advantage.
The topic of the Instagram reel was: A day in the life of a Hertfordshire Business School student living in London. This relates to the theme as location is an important criterion for potential students, mostly international students. If they see that they can live in one of the most famous cities in the world while studying at Hertfordshire Business School, they might be more willing to choose this school
According to the 3H framework there are three types of content. All the content based on the theme, why choose Hertfordshire Business school are all HELP content. Indeed, they will attract people to the school and will be of support to the main content about the school. Whereas the content based on the theme: mental health, are HUB pieces. Indeed, they help gain more engagement from the intended audience
Copywriting is an essential part of advertising, there are many different methods that exist to get the best copywriting you can have. In the portfolio, the method used is the 4P’s. This method “gets the reader to commit by proving that you can deliver a promise.” In the reel and the blog, a certain picture of a life when you are a student at Hertfordshire Business school is promised to the reader. With the information in the content, this life is proven to the user who wishes it for himself.
Another method used in the portfolio is the 4U’s method. The three Instagram posts, show how the problem has to be dealt with.
Design
For content to be optimised in needs to have certain limits. The platform used in the portfolio are Instagram and LinkedIn. There is already maximum to the words that can be used but according to some analysis there is an optimum word count for every platform. For Instagram posts, the ideal length is 1-50 characters for the caption length. For LinkedIn the ideal length depends on the type of post. This is why the Instagram caption of the posts in the portfolio are on average 38 characters.
There is a same idea for hashtags, there is a perfect number of hashtags. The Quintly study found that for Instagram less hashtags tend to drive more interactions overall.
For the design content in the portfolio, the design principles that were used are lines and shapes as all the shapes are very round which is relaxing and coherent with the theme mental health. Moreover, the different shapes give the direction in which the user should read the post. Another principle is unity as all the posts use the same graphic figures and colours. Unity shows that there is a coherence between all the posts, that they can be complementary and not just randomly put on Instagram.
The design of the content cannot just be based on preference, indeed there is a brand guideline that need to be followed. Therefore, the colours of the post, the pictures in the LinkedIn post and the reel are all brand colours. This is the case with the fonts which is all Arial. Moreover, as the client is a University, the type of content needs to go with the general feeling they want to give out. Therefore, the content needs to be positive, lively, and professional.
When analysing the customers search behaviour for the Hertfordshire Business School, we could see that people were mostly looking for rankings and YouTube videos about the school. This meant that people want facts but they also want real life example of what life at the school would be and why they should choose that school. For the mental health people often look for ways to deal with it, so we can deduct that they look for it after they think they are under stress. That is why when doing the content for this subject it is interesting for it to be available before stressful times so that students feel more accompanied by the school.
Blog
A blog needs to tell a story; indeed, it needs to be narrative, attention grabbing, interactive and imaginative. It must go with the target audience and have a coherent message. That is why in the blog there is a chronological line to guide the text, it goes from essential needs to more fun activities. It targets potential students which is why it is not too detailed because they don’t need to get confused, if they want to go deeper in the subject, they will use the links included. These are call to actions.
Video
The video is a user-generated one, having a user create content gives it a greater impact as potential students as they believe it to have authentic information. The technique used for the video can be called “Takeover” as someone takes over the platform to post their life in the school.
