So I’m a newbie designer working my first job in an organization that helps folks get firearms licenses, works with a gun store promoting weapons and likewise presents capturing clases.
At first my job was to make and print out the licences we processed. I used to be instructed to make posts a couple of occasions each time we had a promotion to submit in social media (largely Fb) and that was largely it.
A pair weeks in the past, my bosses instructed me that I used to be anticipated to make four posts a day about weapons, the licensing companies, the capturing clases and posts about info gun homeowners ought to know -mostly legislation stuff- (remember that I work half time from 9am to 12:30pm). I additionally must take photos of the weapons now we have accessible on the gun store, edit them, and make and print the licenses we make (it depends upon the day, however they take an hour or two of my time on a regular basis).
I’ve been studying a bit within the subreddit to attempt to discover some solutions however I’ve two essential issues right here:
1. My bosses don’t need templates, and so they have acknowledged that very clearly. As a result of their public “will get uninterested in the identical” and so they don’t wish to be “boring and predictable”. This contains colour, so I can’t use the identical colour scheme both.
2. They used to (and nonetheless do typically) make their posts on a cellphone app with some loopy fonts and colours that they learn as soon as had been good for advertising and marketing. They put 10 minutes in that max, and so they suppose I ought to do it even quicker trigger I’m a designer and I’ve a laptop and adobe applications to work with.
I can’t inform you they need extremely produced photos that take hours to complete, as a result of they don’t, they need extra easy stuff, however I nonetheless battle to maintain creating new content material on a regular basis, and I wish to know if this a lot work is one thing regular or there’s a technique to velocity issues up whereas not repeating content material, no less than visually (I attempt my finest to maintain the model cohesive).
I feel I defined every thing, and I’m sorry if this posts as a large number since I’m writing from my cellphone. I additionally don’t know the apropiarte flairs, so mods please forgive me.
I hope this isn’t too lengthy and somebody can assist, thanks!
You have a boss who has no idea about marketing or design, welcome to Being A Designer – Level 1.
There’s a couple of mistakes they’re making here, all of which you’ve pretty much identified.
You’re one person, and you’re a designer, not a marketeer. If they want varied, engaging content, they need to hiring a marketing person. Even if its only for a few hours a week, in order to plan the content for the following week.
You need templates. If you’re working short hours and have a lot of output, it is woefully unrealistic to be reinventing the wheel with every post. Additionally, in terms of branding, they are a *brand*, they should have recognisable, reliable output, because their reputation relies on being recognisable and reliable. People will only “get bored” if they see 20 posts a week in the same format going out – its just too many posts.
I would go back to them with a plan – managers like this only like problems if there’s a solution attached. In the plan, include:
* Research on social media output. How many posts a day/week people engage with. Include actual studies, with actual data. Just a few numbers, don’t write an essay. I am willing to bet there are no studies that show companies that post 20 times a week have four times the sales of companies that post 5 times a week.
* Plan a content calendar. For the next, say, month, come up with some ideas for content, one main idea a week and then broken down into individual post ideas. I’m betting if they can see the broader picture in terms of upcoming content, they’ll stop wetting themselves about getting “as much out every day as possible”. They might even get excited about helping plan the upcoming content. Tie it into public holidays, industry announcements, local events etc.
* Templates. You need to sell them on the fact that reliable, recognisable output reflects a reliable, recognisable brand; *and* it will save you time, meaning your work will be more efficient. No manager is going to argue against efficiency.
* Get a quote for a marketing person for a few hours a week to help with planning the content, and present this quote back.
* Find some metrics you can measure the work against. Customer satisfaction, public understanding of the brand, etc etc. Any way you can use to measure the success of your plan.
This doesn’t have to be a huge project. Work on it over a weekend and present them back some slides with how you think you can improve their SM platform. If they don’t bite, they don’t bite. Part of the job of a designer is having to sell difficult or new ideas, concepts or ways of working through to the people who pay your salary.
Just remember, this isn’t *you*. Any designer they hire will have the same issues as you’re having.
Long time digital marketer here and I’ve been where you are. A few things:
First, four posts a day is not a lot. In fact, it’s so infrequent on something like Facebook that you’ll be dinging your engagement rate by not posting more often. Based on what you’ve said about what they’re doing currently and what they’ve told you, they have no clue about their actual engagement on any given platform.
Second, that’s too much work for you to do if your already existing work takes 1-2 hours of your 3 hour day. There’s no way to keep pace with that much unique design development, especially if they want weekend posts too.
Third, and my big red flag on your post, there’s no mention of paying for these posts so that you can target who sees them and will be most likely to respond. Depending on the size of the business, that needs to be between $500 and $5000 per post. Bottom line: Facebook wants ya damn money and it is a pay to play world on FB, IG, TW, Reddit, Snap, TikTok, WhatsApp, etc. if your bosses want some mythical organic engagement that’s amazing and draws in new customers, tell them to give up the gun shop and go into running a porn website. Organic engagement on a platform like Facebook is about 1-2% of your follower count in the first few hours of the post being made. So if your business has 100 followers and you make a post at 9am, one or two people will have seen the post by lunch. Because Facebook wants your damn money.
Fourth, get yourself a Canva account. They’ve got a bunch of apes strung out on coke over there churning out a new social post design at a rate of 17000 a second. Just work your way down style after style and load some assets into the library and go ham.
And as others have noted, and you agreed, you need a game plan. If they’re marketing experts as they view themselves, then they would already know that. Failing to plan is planning to fail, and all that jazz.
But good luck my man; it sounds like you’re headed down that road where you have 7 titles, 90 hours of work to do, and only on the schedule for 15-20.
Cool job, I have always wanted to work with the firearm industry. I think it’s a lot, but it sounds like convincing him otherwise might be tough. I would do this: first look at the competition, and make a list of the post they make. I suspect it’s 1-2 post actually about them, a meme or something light and a share or an industry news post. There are marketing guidelines that day 1-2 post a day is sufficient and something like 20% should be about you and the rest engagement. Don’t forget you can do 30 second video with a guy talking about a feature etc. You can search and find marketing social media post guidelines.
Lastly can you tell him this is more hours than you are allotted?
It needs to be a variety. Are you using Canva? It might help recycle stuff very quickly