Introduction
This paper presents a detailed outlook on the social media plan development for the Glens Centre, located in Manorhamilton, County Leitrim, Ireland. Glens Centre was created to organize cultural leisure for local residents. As the official site of the organization says, “we host a wide-ranging programme including <…> music as well as a feast of theatre, readings, children’s events, Irish language events and cinema” (The Glens, n.d., para 2). Being a place of attraction for a wide range of local residents, the Glens Center tries to introduce people to local art through regular exhibitions of paintings. The main feature of the Glens Centre, which makes it unique in the field of entertainment, is the beautiful restored church where all the events take place.
The problem with Glens Centre is its low popularity on social media. Its posts and announcements gather a limited number of likes and comments. Therefore, the organization needs a detailed social media plan to achieve its marketing and communication goals. This social media plan will define the target audience, the attractive idea of a social media campaign, methods to achieve the goals, and the criteria for evaluating the intervention results.
Digital Plan
Campaign Idea
The biggest problem with Glens Center’s social media accounts is that they look outdated. Firstly, many posts include low-resolution pictures and big paragraphs of monotonous text (The Glens Centre, 2023). In a world with a huge number of sources of information and entertainment, this approach to the design of social networks leads to a loss of interest in the content. Secondly, the focus of social media posts is made exclusively on announcements of events. As a result, the feed looks similarly boring through the years, discouraging users, especially young ones, from reading posts.
The campaign idea is to diversify and systemize the content of Glens Centre’s social media. These two words may guide the Glens Centre’s efforts to modify its approach to maintaining social media. Diversity means that the social media plan should include announcements, engaging posts, movie recommendations, short analytical texts, and a consistent design. Systematization refers to making the convenient design of the social media page which will make it easier for users to find information about events. Using the feed as a place for announcements of events is an outdated strategy because modern companies use the feed to attract users and interact with them through various social media methods (Onu, 2018). Such a transformation will raise Glens Centre’s image on the market and attract a larger online audience to participate in offline events.
Potential Target Markets
Identifying potential target markets for an organization is essential in building an effective marketing strategy. In the case of Glens Centre, it is necessary to understand the demographics of the town of Manorhamilton. According to the Central Statistics Office, the census showed that 1,466 people live there (‘Census 2016 sapmap area’, 2016). The City Population Project provides more detailed statistics on the population composition (‘Manorhamilton’, 2016). The majority of people are of middle age, between 30-49 years. Nevertheless, the distribution is normal, with approximately the same number of old and young people. It seems that targeting an audience based on demographics is ineffective in such a situation.
Thematic segmentation may be a more effective strategy here. The first population group will be local residents who want to spend their free time in a cultural institution. This type of visitor sees the centre as a place of leisure, so dates and descriptions of events are always important to them. The second group is students and faculty members from nearby schools and universities. These people are active users of social networks and the Internet, so Glens Centre’s managers need to create content for them that they will not lose in their feeds. Finally, it is extremely important to find contact with artists, performers, creators and other creative people who can hold exciting events in the centre. Through their interest in cooperation, the Glens Centre will be able to reach a qualitatively new level.
Customer Personas for Digital Campaign
The elaboration of customer personas helps to deepen the knowledge of a company’s target audience. As Mou (2020, p. 3) notes, “companies should establish its own consumer persona in order to finalize <…> how much budget they have for the social media marketing campaigns”. One such person may be a 45-55-year-old woman who wants to spend her time in a cultural place. She does not have to be interested in art and the latest trends in cinematography and culture.
Besides such typical customers, there are significantly different types of visitors. For example, a fairly common type of visitor is young people who spend more than 2 hours on Instagram and Tiktok but simultaneously are creative and advanced. It will be quite boring for such people to attend musical performances with classical music. But at the same time, such young people are ready to come to non-standard events organized by people close to them in spirit. Finally, the third type of visitor is content creators. On average, these are people over 30 who can compromise but do not allow neglect their art. Due to the rather different range of types of such persons, the Glens Center should look for an individual approach to each.
Selected Platforms
Glens Centre has accounts on three social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Twitter is a distinctive social media in this list because it is particularly useful for conveying messages through targeting (messages for larger audiences) and tailoring (messages for specific types of an audience) (Manor and Manor, 2019). For example, the discussion of Twitter algorithms is popular in the literature on the digitalization of public diplomacy (Manor and Manor, 2019). From this perspective, Twitter is not the most effective platform for the Glens Center, as the target audience consists of a relatively small number of residents. There is no goal for the Glens Centre to garner a large audience outside of Manorhamilton and town neraby.
In these circumstances, it seems that it will be beneficial for Glens Centre to focus on Facebook and Instagram. These platforms have comparative advantages, which are worth more detailed elaboration. Instagram provides opportunities to integrate various types of content: posts, stories, Reels (TikTok type of videos), and live streams. Currently, Glens Centre only uploads posts with announcements of events, while other functions are not used. Therefore, Instagram suits the goal of the campaign to diversify the content in the social media accounts. As for Facebook, it is ideal for announcing events because users may add them to their timetables. In addition, Facebook is the most used social media in Ireland, so Glens Centre cannot ignore this social media platform (‘Social media use in Ireland’, 2022). As for Twitter, although the use of it is not necessary, Glens Centre can copy some of the information from Facebook and Instagram.
Frequency of Posts
The campaign to diversify and systemize the content of social media accounts has a direct link with the goals of increasing awareness about Glens Centre’s activities and engaging the new audience for the events. It seems that to successfully achieve the goals of a social media campaign, there should be about one post every one or two days. The more frequent posting cannot be achieved because of limited financial resources and the inability to hire many contributors for social media. In addition, customers may become bored from the frequent posts and ultimately unsubscribe from Glens Centre’s social media.
However, there will be differences in the scope of activity on Instagram and Facebook. On Instagram, stories should definitely be more frequent than traditional posts. The platform’s logic forces organizations to be regularly active in stories because the algorithms encourage active users by moving their content higher in the suggestions. In addition, creating Reels also adds to the workload on Instagram. In general, there will be posts every two days, three to six stories every day, and Reels one time every week. As for Facebook, there will be less entertainment content because it will mainly be used to navigate upcoming events. It will be the same posts as on Instagram and some additional posts with the most successful projects implemented on Instagram.
The tone of voice and posts should be friendly and respectful to the audience. In other words, Glens Centre’s staff should approach the audience assuming that these people are smart. The quantitative analysis of customers’ reactions on Twitter and Facebook shows that such polite and respectful expression of opinion increases social trust (Sabatini and Sarracino, 2018). According to this logic, one should not persistently invite clients to visit the centre and deceive them about the content of shows. It is necessary to talk in detail about upcoming events, show some details through stories, shoot funny videos in Reels, and leave customers freedom of choice.
Digital Marketing Management Tools
The market is full of different social media management tools that businesses of any size utilize. These platforms, such as Zoho Social and Social Pilot, are used to schedule posts, match Twitter hashtags, and regulate contributors’ activity. However, the barrier is the high price of these services. It ranges from $25 to $150 monthly, which is expensive for small organizations like Glens Centre. It will be more beneficial to use services available for free. For example, it could be Google Excel for scheduling posts, Canva for designing support images for texts, and Google Docs for editing new texts. The decision to choose them is that these tools are one of the most popular in small projects aimed at constricting social media profiles. All other tools may be found directly on Facebook and Instagram. One of these internal tools is the constructor of Reels, which suggests popular music and trending videos.
Legal and Ethical Issues
Finally, a few words about possible legal and ethical issues should be stated. Several aspects should be in mind: privacy of users, intellectual property, deceptive marketing, and cyberbullying. There is no need to collect users’ personal information for the campaign. The editors should be careful when they choose the music for Reels because copyright laws may protect some. Contributors should not give false information about upcoming events. Lastly, the moderators should read the comments and delete hateful speech if necessary.
Evaluation Plan
Quantifiable Goals and Objectives
Glens Center’s social networks are currently using low user engagement. On Instagram and Facebook, posts get up to 6 likes on average. The largest number of likes is gained by posts about holding charity events. Also, the problem is the lack of comments on the vast majority of posts. Therefore, clear, tangible targets should be set to increase the involvement of Manorhamilton residents in the life of the Glens Center. Tasks can be defined as follows:
- Increase the number of likes on Facebook and Instagram by 50% in the first apartment.
- Publish a post every week which collects at least ten comments.
- Increase the number of followers on Instagram to a symbolic number equal to the number of residents in Manorhamilton.
- Have a weekly increase in the number of views of Instagram stories (about 5-7%).
Associated Metrics and KPIs for Instagram and Facebook
In social media planning and maintenance research, organizations may use several popular metrics and KPIs to evaluate their social media activity. KPI can be defined as quantitative values that demonstrate performance over a specific period. In general, both Instagram and Facebook provide metrics that describe the users’ activity. In Instagram, these KPIs are reach, story views, Reels engagement, and follower growth. As for Facebook, businesses can evaluate their social media performance by the reach, number of impressions, engagement rate, follower growth, and video engagement. Build-in opportunities on Facebook and Instagram are sufficient for tracking these metrics. Another important goal that should be accomplished according to the social media campaign is the diversification of the content. The corresponding KPI may be the number of publications by each category.
The use of KPIs that are easy to collect and analyse is beneficial because they can be used to compare Glens Centre with its competitors. These competitors are the Dock Art Centre (44 minutes by car from Glens Centre) and Hawk’s Well Theatre (26 minutes by car from Glens Centre). Analysts may collect data from competitors’ social media and put their performances on the same plots with Glens Centre. Such an approach will make the evaluation more practical and evidence-based.
Methods for Collecting and Evaluating Metrics
There are a variety of different platforms that help to collect, track, and evaluate metrics. These services are usually costly, so the decision of which platform to choose is highly important. The first and the most obvious one is Google Analytics, the free tool that tracks website traffic. It may be used to determine which social media platform gives more traffic to the website of Glens Centre. As for the other services, the major problem is that the majority of them cost more than $90 a month (Sprout Social and Hootsuite).
The most beneficial option is to buy a subscription to Buffer. It assists in publishing, analytics, and engagement. For example, managers may create schedules of posts and analyze the data of KPIs from the same place, which makes social media use more efficient. The “Essentials” option costs $6 for one platform monthly, which is quite affordable for Glens Centre. Glens Centre management team can try to use this paid version and then evaluate whether it is useful for them. Considering free alternatives, managers may use Word, Excel, and R programming to generate some insights from the statistical trends. Such evaluation may be conducted every week because it seems that the number of posts and stories is enough to find some patterns.
The Use of Obtained Information for Decision-Making
The data obtained from the weekly analytic reports can show whether the media campaign was successful during the week. To more clearly explain how this can contribute, it is better to explain this logic with an example. One week, the social media management team decided to record a video with a track popular among young audiences. More specifically, it could be a viral TikTok trend with Capital Cities’ “Safe and Sound” track (MNcorpJR, 2021). In this TikTok, people show strange situations in which they can do something together. In the case of Glens Centre, such TikTok may show some behind the scene situations happening with the performers. Such videos can be made for about a month and then compare the trends of growth or decrease in the audience’s interest in such content.
Additionally, the data obtained can change the strategy and redirect the focus from Instagram to Facebook. Initially, the idea of the campaign was that Instagram’s capabilities help to create creative content on this platform. At the same time, Facebook is planned to become a place where users can get more systematic information. Findings that Instagram activity is not driving growth while Facebook shows solid engagement may influence the decision to change platforms.
Finally, managers should understand whether the stories bring enough views, comparable to previously planned ones. The problem is that stories need to be uploaded daily in order to be high in the user’s feed. At the same time, Glens Centre employees are not always able to film them daily. This is complicated by the fact that the quality of stories can also vary: stories with photos of events are quite easy to make, but creating content that engages the audience can take several hours. Therefore, the data of the first month of active publishing of stories will be key to determining the place of stories in the Glens Centre content plan.
Recommendations and Conclusions
To conclude, this assessment was devoted to the social media plan of Glens Centre, the organization organizing cultural events in Manorhamilton, Ireland. The recommendations of this report are the diversification of the content and systematization of the information. Up to this moment, Glens Centre experiences problems with audience engagement (low number of likes) and quality of the content. Glens Centre’s potential market was divided into several segments, including regular event visitors, young audience, and creators. The recommendations made throughout the paper were made for the first two groups. It seems that the way how to communicate with local creators should be made on the ground because it is hard to conceptualize without internal documentation how this cooperation works.
The new strategy will make the social media content appealing to a larger audience. In Instagram, it will be stories (with polls, questions, and quizzes), Reels (with viral music from the Net), and posts (with analytical texts and event announcements). In Facebook, the emphasis will be made on event announcements and general posts about Glens Centre (interviews wiith creators, analytical texts, and event announcements). The budget of this campaign should include salary for content manager, payments for social media analytics services, and payments for contributors’ texts.
Reference List
Census 2016 sapmap area: settlements Manorhamilton (2016) Web.
Manor, I. and Manor, I. (2019) ‘From targeting to tailoring—the two stages of public diplomacy’s digitalization’, in Fitzpatrick, K. and Byrne, C. (eds.) The digitalization of public diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan, pp.101–134.
Manorhamilton (2016) Web.
MNcorpJR (2021) “Safe and sound”|Tiktok compilation| Tiktok sound. Web.
Mou, J.B. (2020) Study on social media marketing campaign strategy – TikTok and Instagram. Doctoral dissertation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Onu, R. (2018) ‘Advertising and promotion in rural tourism in Romania. A content analysis of social media advertisement. Case study’, Proceedings of the 14th economic international conference, Iasi, Romania, 241–254.
Sabatini, F. and Sarracino, F. (2019) ‘Online social networks and trust’, Social Indicators Research, 142, pp. 229-260.
The Glens (no date) Web.
The Glens Centre (2023) Gavin fairhall Lever at the Glens Centre tomorrow! [Facebook] Web.