For our social media page, we have received feedback via Screencastify from our teacher.

From the feedback, we have learned that we made great use of social media page conventions such as guerilla marketing, portraying the star as ordinary (dyer) and extraordinary, posts advertising tour dates and the evolution of the album project.

It has also highlighted that our calls to action need to be clearer, therefore to improve we will edit captions and pay close attention to future story posts to draw more attraction to the links and methods of distribution for each of our products. Further, we could also use some cross media convergence such as a radio or TV interview. Cross media convergence drives engagement for the star as their content can be consumed in more ways than one.

Here is a a screenshot and link to our social media page:

It is important to reflect on the progress of the page so that we ensure that we are creating a consistent brand and using social media to effectively campaign the release of an album. To do this, I have filled in a self-assessment sheet, the full doccument is linked to the images below.

Assessing our social media page has allowed me to identify what we have done well and the ways that we can improve it. Upon reflection, I would like to create promotional content encouraging fans to purchase physical copies of the album as well as just streaming and maybe an interview.

To coincide with the digipak, we have also created an Instagram page for our star. This page will be used to create a positive star image, market the release of the album and music video and interact with the audience and fans.

Instagram is our platform of choice as we feel it is the most relevant for our target audience – female pop star’s have a core audience of young girls age 11-19 but generally pop is a genre for everyone. Our intended audience are on this platform, evidenced in research by Social Media Perth 43% of females are on Instagram, 72% of 13 – 17 year olds use Instagram and 73% of U.S. teens say Instagram is the best way for brands to reach them about new products or promotions.

We’ve created a brief timeline of posts which aim to create and interest and buzz around the album release. The social media campaign includes things like synergy to create links with brands that would appeal to the audience. Originally we went with R.E.M Beauty – inspired by our analysis of Ariana Grande’s SMP, but have since decided to go with a collaboration with Converse as we want a slightly edgier star image for our artist.

Other things include showing interest in charities and issues (our chosen issue being LGBTQ+ Rights), displaying the star as an ordinary person through relatable and personal content, content that the audience can gain social interaction from such as a Q&A, calls to action to stream the music and many other posts that build and promote the excitement of the digipak.

To appeal to Bulmer and Katz, we will use the SMP to inform and entertain our audience and provide a star who makes people feel they can gain a sense of personal identity from it.

Below is our SMP Timeline and log. The first and second slides show our rough plans but I think we could add a guerilla or viral marketing campaign, more calls to action, a prompt to buy physical copies, more information on the album and a tour or live event.

To learn about how audiences interact with a social media page, we looked at Ariana Grande’s Instagram and talked about the approaches she uses to gain this audience engagement. Audience engagement involves each element of AIDA – attention, interest, desire and call to action – as well as the Uses & Gratifications theory from Bulmer & Katz.

Other elements include integrated advertising, promotion and other marketing techniques. Ariana is a good example of this as at the moment she is using synergy by promoting her cosmetics brand, R.E.M Beauty, through her Instagram.

Analysing Ariana’s page has taught me about how a female pop star uses her social media pages to encourage audience interactions.

Above is an annotation of Taylor Swift’s Facebook and Instagram. Annotating her social media platforms has allowed me to look at the technical conventions of a social media page and how a female pop star uses each of them.

For example, Taylor uses her header image to promote her new “Midnights” album and keeps consistent promotional imagery across her pages. On Facebook she uses the “featured” tool to keep her promotional tour and album posts as the main focus of the page. This is because she will be implementing a marketing campaign to appeal to her fans to engage with the new album and spread awareness of the tour before the tickets come out.

This has taught me how artists from my genre use the technical conventions of social media pages to appeal to their target audience. For us this will mostly be young to teenage girls but in general pop is for everyone and Taylor’s SMPs will be a big inspiration for the types of things we post.