In less than 18 months from the profile launch and just over 6 months from Grand Opening, the Marietta Square Market Instagram page reached 10K followers without spending a single dollar on ads, an accomplished feat in the pay-to-play social media landscape. Reaching an audience of 10K means you have access to the Swipe Up feature on Instagram Stories, one of the most coveted conversion features Instagram offers.
Enough with the small talk. You want to know how we did it, right?
We Developed a Clear and Direct Strategy
The first step for us when onboarding a social media client is to produce the social media strategy, a comprehensive guide to all future social media efforts. It’s difficult (read: impossible) to track progress, produce meaningful content and work towards success without this guide and its clear outline of goals, content strategy and platform recommendations. The thorough playbook has guided our content strategy and given us a clear direction for every post published to the page.
We Started Early
Marietta Square Market officially opened in March 2019, though we started our social media efforts well before this in April 2018. As it turns out, there were a few delays in the construction and opening process, which actually worked in the Market’s favor to build an excited and devoted audience for a year leading up to its Grand Opening event. Teaser content allowed the local audience to become familiar with the Market’s new vendors and their offerings, while the anticipation caused a spike in conversation with an anxious future customer base contributing to free PR and post engagements.
We Created and Sourced High-Quality Assets
Throughout the renovation process, our access to the Market allowed us to capture construction progress photos, which were always top performing content due to their exciting behind-the-scenes nature. Ongoing construction posed a challenge, however, when working to fill the page with unique content about new-to-the-world merchants who were not yet up and running. To supplement assets in the construction phase, we were able to work with the merchants themselves on quality assets as they planned and worked towards opening.
Once the Market was ready for visitors, a plethora of merchant-specific, product-specific imagery was available via actual, real-time customers. Choosing high-quality user-generated content to fill the page encouraged more visitors to share their photos, while also building a database of usable content across all platforms.
We Engaged and Shared
It’s important to engage with and support your customers on social media, and especially on Instagram. A large part of any social media strategy should be to engage with and share customer photos to encourage user-submitted content and sharing while also building a committed and passionate customer base. Sharing to Instagram Stories and utilizing user-generated content on the feed is a great way to return the love and appreciate those passionate fans.
We Believed in the Product
It doesn’t hurt that we’re big fans ourselves! Considering the local pull to Marietta Square Market and its close proximity to our office (about 50 feet over the railroad tracks), we were excited to be chosen as the best team for the job of bringing its brand, and social media presence, to life. We had confidence in the Market’s success and believed in their product from the beginning. We were passionate and steadfast in creating, implementing and constantly evolving the best possible strategy and presentation for its brand.
We are grateful for the opportunity to work on a project we’re so passionate about, and it shows! Will you be the next project we write home about? Contact us today to get started!