Audience feedback and engagement

Here is the product I created on reGAIN’s Instagram account.

Here is the initial standard instagram post that was uploaded with different various hashtags. Although the post itself didnt get many likes in the grand scheme of what is possible,the infographic I produced is the second most liked post on their instagram page. The posts on their page generally generate around 6-8 likes per post. Mine is one of the very few in double figures which supports that my method of using hashtags and posting at the specific time we agreed works.

#sustainablefashion is the most used hashtag and the hashtag that attracts the most engagement.

The hashtag ‘sustainable fashion’ is evidently one that is the most used and recieves the most engagement from users which is the reason why I wanted to use it in my post. By using lots of hashtags , The post is catalogued and this means that more people can easily see it.  By choosing the hashtags I have used carefully , it has meant that the post has got more likes than the others on the page therefor , showing that I have managed to engage an audience sucessfully , even if it isn’t hundreds and thousands of likes.

Another method I wanted to use in order to engage my target audience was an Instagram story using the poll sticker. This is a great way to engage an audience and get them interacting with the post.

We agreed that we were going to ask wether people were interested in finding out what percentage of textiles we buy go to Landfill every year.

Amazingly 73% of the audience that responded were interested in knowing the answer. This backs up the research I concluded that instagram polls were one of the best ways to engage an audience. To me it is shown here that a younger target audience much prefer things that you can interact with , further portraying that reGAIN is very much targeted at a younger demographic . The majority of people who saw this instagram story responded and interacted with the post which is a sucess for me and shows that I successfully engaged my audience well. My aim from the beginning was to ensure that people were made more aware of the environmental impacts that fast fashion is having but also made more aware of reGAIN as a company. Although it isnt on a large scale , it is clear that my audience have interacted with my product due to the methods of utilizing hashtags and using instagram polls proving that I have successfully engaged a target audience.

Production and Practical skills

As part of the production and practical skills process , I carried out some research into color theory, infograpics as a method of engaging people and other fashion related infographic in order to get inspiration for layouts and images.

Colour plays a huge part in influencing people more than we think. Colour psychology. It is an area of research that looks at how color influences our behavior and decision-making. When colours are used in marketing for example , different colors can often impact the way buyers perceive a particular brand in ways that aren’t always apparent or obvious.

The colours used in reGAINS’s are green, black and white. I found out through research into the colour theory that black is a very powerful colour and is associated with luxury and power. This is used throughout re-gains website and their logo is also black contrasting with white and green. Highstreet brands are re-known for their simplistic black and white palletes which is what re-gain have achieved here. The sparing addition of a bright colour on black (which is the green in their logo) adds energy and sophistication. It is actually known to be very well suited to the fashion industry which is of course what my infographic is based on.

Beginning the practical stages I took into account the colour scheme, the ways to lay out an infographic , the types of images to use and how to tie in the theme that reGAIN convey throughout their social media platform. Here is the sketch that I produced.

To create my work I used affinity designer as this is software that I am familiar with. The majority of my infographic was produced using purely shapes and of course it was text and image based.

Here was the first design that I sent off to ReGAIN. As part of some additional primary research I asked my target audience wether they liked the layout of my infographic, wether they liked the colour scheme and wether they think the information is engaging. 100% of the respondants said yes however when it came to the last question , one person disagreed that the post was engaging. Overall I think with this feedback I achieved what I wanted too with my infographic and it is visually appealing to a younger demographic.

ReGAIN came back to me and said although it was a great design there were a few things they wanted to change. They wanted the font more of a similar style to what reGAIN have throughout their website , they wanted the reGAIN green to be exact, and they wanted the infographic re-sizing to instagram scale which was 1200px by 1200px. I applied some new skills in order to put the changes in place.

With the re-sizing being done, it meant that the text was extremley squashed and was ruined in my opinion however I sent it back to them to see what they thought. Again , the sizing was apparently wrong and not fit to instagram scale so therefor , I was advised to divide the information from the infographic into 4 seperate posts.

With it being done this way , the text wasnt squashed and it fit perfectly to scale on Instagram. ReGAIN then confirmed that these posts could be uploaded onto instagram.

Planning and Decisions

The first initial set of research was some primary research In order to gage a greater understanding of wether my initial idea is going to engage an audience to begin with. My target audience established from who I thought reGAIN was most suited too. I concluded that they were a friendly , appraochable brand and were a lot more suited to a younger set of people. This also stems from the idea that doing something good gets you a reward in return. I asked them a few questions regarding recycling. In response to the first question being , do you recycle ? 100% of the people that I asked said yes. This helped in terms of being able to engage with an audience because if the audience recycle already , it won’t be a huge ask of them and they are more likely to want to recycle clothes if in return they get discount off clothing brands in the UK. In Addition, to back this up further, I specifically asked my audience would recycling in exchange for discount clothes encourage you to recycle more ? 100% of the audience said yes in response to this. The next question I asked my audience was what is the social media platform they like and use the most ? I gave the options of Facebook , Twitter and Instagram. These are the main social media platforms and are the ones used by ReGAIN so I was of course going to create content that went on the social media platforms they use themselves.

Following on from this , my research developed into looking at Instagram and also Facebook as a platform. As a result, I carried out some more primary research and asked my target audience how often they spend on Instagram per week. 60%  said that they use it around 8-10 hours per week. 20% said that they use it around 4-8 hours. The other 20% use it more than 10 hours per week. With the highest percentage of people using Instagram for the most amount of time , this inclined me to want to use Instagram as the platform for the promotional piece to go out on , therefor I conducted further research into Instagram and other aspects involved in engaging an audience. Looking into the demographics of Instagram and Facebook , and also ways to engage an audience.

One of the key things I discovered was that it is important to adapt your content strategy for each platform your audience uses in order to engage them. Step one of this is knowing who comprises the audience within those platforms. ReGAIN’s target audience is technically anyone and everyone who either recycles regularly and wants to begin recycling their unwanted clothing , or people who don’t really recycle and they want to encourage them to do so through rewarding them with discount codes off online retailers. Every social media platform is unique in the content that you have to upload for it and with me choosing instagram , the content I created need to be visual as that is what instagram is based on. In order to make my decision on what sort of content I created, I carried out some primary research and showed my audience an image of an infographic and an image of some macro photography on a piece of fabric. Whichever my audience preferred was going to give me a more solid idea as to what I was actually creating. 80% of my Target audience said that an infographic , due to the large numbers and text , were more interesting at first glance. After speaking with the people at reGAIN, it was now officially decided that an infographic was what I would be producing.

Since I was using Instagram as my main platform , It was important to understand the best tips and hints into how to engage an audience specifically on Instagram. For example I found out that hashtags were a brilliant thing to use in order to engage people on Instagram however, it is essential not to clutter a post with hashtags and only use them that are relevant. Hashtags that are too over used won’t work like you think they will due to the fact that your content will end up lost amongst the millions of other posts that have used the hashtags as well. Another great way to engage an audience is through instagram stories. Instagram story polls are a great way to engage an audience and stop followers from swiping past your story. Furthermore they create an opportunity to hear directly from followers. Including your Instagram followers in the creation of your new products or new ideas is a great way to engage your audience, and by asking questions with polls you can get direct feedback from your target customers. From this research , I knew that I wanted the post uploaded onto Instagram with hashtags relevant to the topic of the post and also for it to be used in an Instagram poll.

Now it was a case of researching the best times to upload on Instagram and confirming this with reGAIN in order to get the best possible engagement from the target audience. Overall i found out that the engagement you recieve on Instagram is better on weekdays rather than weekends. Sundays especially are not a very good day to upload. The peak times during the week are between 7 and 9 in the evening . Everyone is home from work , relaxing and simply scrolling through social media. I found out that you should avoid posting between 3 and 4 pm as these are during work hours. People aged between 18 and 34 are very much busy with full time jobs so are therefor going to be busier during the day. I knew that this was my target audience and therfor it was important to consider them at all times. After researching into the best times to upload on Instagram and the key tips and hints to use in order to get the up most engagement, I put together my production schedule confirming the times and methods I was going to use. The first post was scheduled to go out on wednesday at 5pm due to the fact that this time has the highest enagegment rate in the UK at this specific time. I was going to use the Instagram story method to have the audience guessing and engaging with the infographic. The second version of the post was scheduled to go out at 9pm on Thursday the 16th. Ths was going to be a standard post however with hashtags included. The third version of the post was scheduled to go out on the 17th. This time it was going to be uploaded onto facebook as a contrast to Instagram. This would help really see which platform is the most engaging.

Project aims

As part of my final evaluation , it is important that I assess and discuss where my idea came from and the process I went through in terms of deciding what I was going to produce for my project.

I knew from the start that I wanted to do something fashion related , with this in mind , I began to think about wether there where any issues that were going on in the fashion industry that needed solving or that people needed to be made more aware of through marketing and promotion . The obvious one was the impacts fashion has on the environment. A lot of people know very little about the impacts it is having , me being one of them so I knew that the research aspects of it were going to be interesting.

This conslidated that I was focusing my promotional piece on recyclable and sustainable fashion as it is something people need to be made more aware of . Leading on from this it was a case of deciding wether I was going to create something for myself to put out to other people , or wether I wanted to create something for an existing brand. Creating something for an existing brand was always going to be easier as they have the following already. I knew of a brand called reGAIN who had worked with big fast fashion companies like pretty little thing and boohoo who has a result have created clothing collections made from recycled materials as a way of helping to change textile recycling habits. The app has different drop off points in and around the UK where you can take old clothes that will be recycled in exchange for discount codes.

I contacted them and asked them wether I could create some promotional material for them. They agreed to this and sent me across their logo to obviously use on the content they create. I was given the choice to create whatever I thought looked best however the choice for me was between an infographic or some photography. This became a case of asking my target audience what they thought was the most engaging and they were the main focus.