Project Summary
The suburb of North Wollongong, NSW has a large active beach community which I capture along with food, juices, smoothies, staff, sunrises and more. I work for The Diggies Group and create content and strategy across 3 businesses. As my digital artifact, I decided to focus on North Beach Kiosk as it’s the business I work the most on in its development and decisions of content along with guidance from the marketing team. Through working as a marketing assistant I have established many skills by learning and discovering what I’m good at and enjoy. North Beach Kiosk lives on the platforms of Instagram and Facebook. I spend most of my time on my phone and laptop on these platforms creating content at home, outside and at the office. After countless discussions with the Diggies team, it’s become evident that information-producing technologies such as social media shape businesses and their reputation which heavily influences my work practices in this environment. This evolving ecology and social and technological advances are continuing to change rapidly (Wall, T. 2022). I can see this as engagement levels of certain content can change within months. This is seen at the beginning of my time working when aesthetically pleasing photos had the most engagement, then stories, then reels and now trending songs attached to reels (Tien, S. 2022). This is part of an emergent future network that progresses quickly and I have realised it’s essential for marketing professionals to have to keep up with these changes.
Learning Analysis
Utility and planning is a collaborative process that is undertaken each week. I plan posts for the week on certain days, each weekly plan is influenced by what we want to focus on and promote. Examples of focus over the past few months have been the UCI Road World Championships cycling event, school holidays, merchandise, community events, staff hiring and new menu items. I complete monthly reports reflecting upon key activities, significant learnings, communication strategies, sales, subscribers, trends, engagement rate and online feedback. These monthly reports are then used as a reference point moving forward in strategies and weekly focus points which change the approach to certain plans. This is often referred to as insights which are information that comes through research and data analysis that can be directly actioned to a business action plan (Karnowski, M. 2021). These insights aren’t always research but directly external from my boss or managers that request certain content or topics, it is then up to me to get creative with my approach in the production. I often look for inspiration from other creative cafes and restaurants liked by my boss or previous content from before my employment.
Over the past few months, there have been many learning moments when creating content for different focuses. At the start of the university break we launched a Mexican-themed event at the Kiosk, I noticed through Instagram analytics that the artwork promoting the event had the most interaction of click-throughs and shares. After the event trial we brought the event back during the UCI cycling event, I collaborated with our graphic designer to create another artwork for socials as this worked previously when gaining audience attention. Through this process, I learnt that by trialling events you learn from them when creating the event promotion again or for future events.
Promotion planning was extensive among our team leading up to the UCI cycling event that came to Wollongong in September 2022. I did this by taking photos of the cycling community at North Wollongong Beach, celebrating world bicycle day by collaborating with UCI (Wollongong 2022) and offering free coffee from 6-9 am and a video reel leading up to the event to encourage a positive attitude. It was planned that the promotion wouldn’t be as essential during the event as it would naturally be very busy; however, we weren’t busy due to the road closures. This altered our plans and I turned to reel promotion as this is the most popular form of content in terms of engagement for our audience. The video reels included how to access the Kiosk, updates on the races and our positive energy.
Reflective Themes
The constant transition of popular trends and types of content is a pattern I’ve seen very quickly at work. It demonstrates the infinite amount of information and different creative work methods. A trend that comes to mind is the timing of posts, this results in me posting at 6-7 pm most nights. The traditional model of 9 to 5 labour and permanent tasks and goals is no longer relevant in my job. Emergent future networks and the evolving ecology of technology are associated with the development of new forms of work, this analogy is commonly identified as liquid labour. I would have never thought at the start of my degree that I was going to be working outdoors every day and not in an office.
Within future networks is the speculation of future networks which explores the fictitious prediction of new future technologies (Yastrebova, 2019). Imagining what the future of social media progression might be like and what my job could turn into in the next 20 years is a method of design fiction. This methodology investigates design decisions that make the unreal seem real in a soon environment.
These themes are seen in cyberpunk and also clean and aesthetic alternatives with less ‘’stuff’ and visual chaos. This is something I think about for my future in work where communication and promotion to others through technology are critical in the marketing practice. It is a topic that will continue to progress and I will learn from in various ways throughout my career.
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