The rise in infographics on Instagram

If you are familiar with the social media app Instagram, you will know that its main purpose has been, traditionally, to share selfies and snapshots of one’s lifestyle. But there has been a significant rise in the use of educational infographics flooding everyone’s news feed, particularly in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Let’s take a look at how this has changed the way we use Instagram and how it promoting societal change for the younger generation.

What is an infographic?

An infographic is defined as ‘graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly.’

Instagram offer an image carousel with a maximum of 10 slides, which you can fill with whatever you like.

Users can take advantage of this feature, posting tailor-made graphics, with bold text, to explain elements of bite-sized concepts. They have proved to be a successful tool for education and spreading awareness, considering most young people consume most of their news on social media rather than on traditional news outlets.

The catalyst: Black Lives Matter

The trend of the Instagram infographic really came to the forefront following the tragic murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in the United States.  Our newsfeeds filled with selfies quickly turned into mini slideshows packed with cries for justice and equality, to define relevant words and phrases, and resources on how to support the Black Lives Matter movement.  This trend was picked up by not only the everyday users but also celebrities and influencers who had vast followings on the platform.

 

Since then, the infographic had been adopted by other causes and is used frequently all over Instagram as a way to circulate information and educate on specific subjects or topics. They seem to spike when explaining especially complicated/heated political or social topics, such as for sharing the experiences held by women of sexual harassment in the light of the Sarah Everard case, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 

Here are some examples of how infographics are being used as an activism tool on Instagram at present:

 

@SophJButler posts a weekly ‘Sunday School’ graphic educating readers on specific issues regarding disability.

 

@everydayracism_  Graphics to educate on the subject of racism and how it can be challenged.

 

@theslowfactory  Frequently upload carousel posts on a variety of topics using tailor-made graphics and citing sources along the bottom

 

How the infographic can be used for your business

 

The infographic is a brilliant way to condense a fair amount of information into a singular social post, which can be beneficial to a business selling any kind of product or service.

For example, Brigstock Skin & Laser who post infographics to their Instagram account to promote their monthly offers or to provide information surrounding their expertise.

Infographics can be utilised as a tool to answer frequently asked questions at a glance. This lessens the likelihood of a user dropping off because it has proved to hard to get the answers they needed.

Each slide of the infographic can be posted as an individual story for more exposure and saved to a highlight reel for future users to find.

The infographic tool allows a brand to share snapshots of what they are offering, without wordy, lengthy and frankly overcomplicated posts. Providing a call to action in the final slide or in the caption will allow users to find further information on your website, thus promoting traffic and hopefully leading to greater conversions.

 

How to get started with infographics

  •  The free tool, Canva, is going to be your best friend. It is a library of pre-made, fully customisable, social media content – including premade carousals and infographics! The great this is, you don’t need any prior experience with graphic design to get the most out of Canva.
  •  Customise your posts to reflect your branding and stick to your own colours and fonts. If Canva does not have your font in-built, you can upload it manually. Likewise, you can upload your own icons, images and logos.
  • Keep the information concise, with a clear message, keeping to your brand’s tone of voice.
  • Do not overpack each slide with text. It is best to make use of the 10 slide maximum to spread out the wording. Whilst you can download ready-to-go infographics with the text included, it is best to edit them so that people don’t recognise it from elsewhere and so it reflects your company’s mission.
  • Put a small watermark on each of the slide, so that others cannot repost your content without crediting your business. This could be with a logo or with your Instagram handle.

Whether this is your introduction to infographics or you wanted to find new ways to make your infographics more effective, one thing is for sure, they have made a huge impact in all corners of the digital world and every marketing and social media professional should be embracing them – as they are clearly here to stay.


What Loss in Sport Can Teach Us About Resilience & Mental Health

In the aftermath of the England men's football teams loss in the final of Euro 2020 last night, our client, and founder of mental health charity stem4, Dr. Nihara Krause shares the following advice:

In the wake of England’s loss last night, and the torrent of social media abuse toward the players that followed, consultant clinical psychologist Dr Krause (CEO of youth mental health charity stem4), has issued some mental health advice relating to loss in sport, and the emotions that follow:

Sport is one of the best ways for young people to learn about building resilience since it provides an opportunity to experience failure, and learn to deal with set-backs. Whilst it is important that sportspeople themselves learn to move away from being self-critical and harsh when they face a set-back, supporters can also play a role in building their resilience by avoiding placing unnecessary criticism and blame.

One major element of resilience and our ability to ‘bounce back’ is acceptance and compassion. In sport there is always going to be a ‘winner’ and a ‘loser’- and there is comfort in knowing that, high or low, this will always be a shared experience. In those times of loss, whilst sportspeople should learn to practice self-acceptance and self-compassion, supporters can also help by practicing ‘other-acceptance’ and kindness. In order to do this, both sportspeople and supporters need to learn to balance their thoughts and emotions.

Our emotions are very powerful. One emotion that is particularly hard to deal with is disappointment because it contains within it two very powerful emotions – sadness and hurt (which can often show as anger). Suppressing these emotions doesn’t work, so the first step is to find a way to express them in an effective and safe way. This might mean sharing feelings with friends, writing down how you feel, or doing something that’s self-soothing. Social media is not a good way to express emotion – it’s so immediate that it doesn’t provide the time for self-reflection, makes you lose control and spreads fast. So, talk with friends, or write things down the old-fashioned way with pen and paper for you to re-visit and re-read later. Expression helps reduce the strength of emotions and gives a ‘handle’ on being able to think differently.

The second step is to start exploring different perspectives. Is getting to the final goal the only achievement the team can make, or can you focus on all the other achievements that happen along the way? According to Winston Churchill, ‘success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.’

The third step is to catch the ‘negative thinker’ within you, and redirect your energy and focus onto all the positive solutions that are possible in the future. Disappointment can strengthen and lead to even greater strength and effectiveness. Let’s celebrate our English team and thank them for helping all of us learn that, although disappointment is inevitable, being discouraged and defeated is a choice.

Dr Nihara Krause, Stem4

Image Credit: Thomas Serer

 


tik-tok

How I went viral on TikTok

For those who are unaware of the social media platform of the moment, TikTok is a video-sharing app which saw a boom in users in 2020. The format is 15 to 60-second videos, with the front page having a ‘For You’ page in which an algorithm guesses what you would want to see and a ‘Following’ page which is only content from accounts that you follow. The primary users of TikTok are teens and young adults, but it is a place where anyone and anything can go viral overnight.

blind-and-blonde

The boredom of lockdown inspired myself and my partner, Reece, to create a TikTok channel called @blindandblonde. For context, Reece is visually impaired, and we run the account together. We post both comedy and informative content about disability and living as an ‘interabled couple’, a term neither of us were aware of before TikTok.

A few weeks ago, I thought going viral on TikTok was something that could only be achieved once in a blue moon through sheer luck. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to why some of the videos we posted stalled below 200 views, and why some climbed a bit higher. The ‘For You’ page seemed so oversaturated with content already - how could we possibly get a video seen by more than a handful of people? Well, I’ve now discovered that there’s a lot more science behind it than I had first thought.

The first of our videos which amassed over 100,000 views in only a day was most certainly an accident. But since then, having achieved similar success with multiple other videos in the space of a couple of weeks, I have been able to pinpoint the things that can be actively done by a content creator to maximise the potential for going viral on TikTok. Here are some tips.

Authenticity and a USP

Another motivation for starting the page was seeing other visually impaired and blind creators in the space. But what really inspired our content, was the comments on said creators’ posts. They were infuriatingly stupid, with the likes of, “how do you know you are alive” being asked to one blind woman.  Instead of going down the route of trying to educate people on blindness, we decided to flip it on its head and poke fun at the ridiculous questions and comments we saw on TikTok and that Reece is often posed with in everyday settings. We posted ‘Blind Morning Routine: Stereotype Edition’ as a response to this frustration, never expecting nearly 500,000 views, 125,000 likes and thousands of followers to come of it. The key to this success was the USP. Other creators were not successfully providing a comedic take on disability and many found the authenticity of the content to be refreshing.

@blindandblondeHow sighted people think I spend my mornings as a ##blind man 👨🏻‍🦯 ##spoof ##parody ##comedy ##fyp ##blindtok ##visuallyimpaired ##morningroutine ##vlog♬ Night & Day - Instrumental

 

Maximise Interactions

After reading through the comments on our first ‘viral’ post, we noticed the trend for users commenting about things that were not necessarily pointed out by us, but encouraged interaction, such as the toaster being plugged in next to Reece pouring water all over the counter when making tea (oops!). It is also the case that the more comments you have, the more the in-built algorithm will push your content out to peoples ‘For You’ pages. Therefore, we added subtle things to subsequent videos, such as saying “Alexa, play Stevie Wonder”, triggering viewers Alexa devices who found it so amusing we amassed hundreds of comments related to this. This certainly helped us to appear on the For You page and gain the same level of virality.

@blindandblondeHow sighted people think I spend my evenings as a ##blind man 💤👨🏻‍🦯🛌 ##spoof ##parody ##blindtok ##nightroutine ##comedy ##fyp ##visuallyimpaired♬ Night & Day - Instrumental

To maximise engagement on posts, we found that replying to comments and building up a relationship with viewers was key and very much encouraged people to hit the follow button.  It has proved well to ask a question in the caption to invite comments. On our 'Gifts I’ve Bought My Blind Boyfriend' video, I wrote a caption which asked for people to give me more ideas – to which I received a number of comments with suggestions for accessible gifts.

@blindandblondeGive me some more gift ideas 🎁🥺🙏🏻 ##lockdownlove ##valentinesday ##blindtok ##blind ##couple ##giftideas ##fyp ##interabledcouple♬ Memories (In the Style of Maroon 5) [Karaoke Version] - Instrumental King

Analytics

A great feature of TikTok is that anyone can switch their account to a ‘Creator’ account in the settings. Doing this will allow you to see the analytics behind your account as a whole, as well as your individual videos.  Here you can see the gender and location percentage of your followers, the average watch time on your videos, whether your video was seen mostly by followers or on the For You page and when your audience is most active.

 

Having this insight enabled us to pick the best time to post a video, according to when our followers were most likely to be scrolling, and to take into account our growing viewership from the USA. It is a great motivator for posting consistent and on-brand content that we know our audience will interact well with.

Overall, going accidentally viral has been an excellent introduction to the workings of TikTok. Unlike other platforms, you don’t necessarily need a fanbase already in place – it is more reliant on authentic and consistent content. When we started in January, we had 40 followers, and now we are approaching 8,000 just a month later. Whilst I’m certainly not being invited to Dubai to promote Sugar Bear Hair anytime soon, it’s been a fun experiment to distract from the monotony of lockdown.

 

 

 

 


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