Digital Media Project Proposal

The remainder of this first semester will be focused on creating a short final project that delivers an outcome based on one of the digital technologies experienced during the first part of the term. I have attached my project proposal for this work below...

Proposal

With Instagram's slow but steady transition from a still image-centric social media platform to one where consumers enjoy the choice of still or video imagery, photographers who traditionally used the platform to exhibit and promote their work are faced with the dilemma of how to, or whether to, embrace this upstart usurper of the status quo.

This project seeks to follow the hypothetical path required of many pre-iPhone generation photographers in adapting to the age of video media. It will examine two social media platforms offering video streaming services; Instagram and Facebook, identify the optimum platform for a successful marketing campaign, and create a template for a marketing campaign that uses a combination of video, still images, GIFs, and #tags. Additionally, it will develop new video media using the  9X16 portrait orientation which is customary for social media.

Both Instagram and Facebook platforms, which incidentally have been part of the same organisation since 2012 when Facebook Inc. (now Meta) purchased Instagram for one Billion Dollars (Bose, 2022), offer video streaming services in two formats, Stories or Reels. Both also offer the facility to “live stream” or broadcast video in real-time via their apps. There are subtle differences in the offerings of the two platforms (Manroth, n.d), and this project aims to interrogate both to identify the optimal conduit to reach a photographer’s potential clients. These decisions will be based upon demographic assumptions for prospective clients, including age, gender, or whether they might be businesses or private individuals.

Since 2013 the visibility of Facebook posts for consumers has been curated (read controlled) by a machine learning computer algorithm (Sadhu, 2024). Instagram consumers have experienced similar curation since introducing a comparable algorithm-based selection process in June 2016 (Lever et al, 2020). Algorithms will need to be seriously considered by the budding freelance photographer if they intend to use social media for marketing because algorithm selections affect the likelihood of your social media posts being prioritised or to whose social feed they are delivered. Both Facebook and Instagram are reticent about the finer details of the algorithm’s selections, advising us instead that such parameters are continuously being updated. This project will attempt to understand current approaches to social media post optimisation, by seeking guidance from internet professionals and academics, who use recent iterations of platform algorithms.  

The following objectives are intended as a guide for project delivery. They identify a set of deliverables by which progress and success might be measured.

1.     To produce a researched examination of social media demographics and provide subsequent recommendations for social media platform selection aimed at the marketing use case identified above.

2.     To create a social media marketing diary, based on research into platform algorithms and demographic behaviors.

3.     To produce video media to supplement the current use of still images and text, aligned to the prospective client demographics identified in Objective 1, and the algorithm requirements and consumer behaviors identified in Objective 2.

BOSE, S., 2022. Facebook Acquisitions – The Complete List (2022) [Viewed 28/10/2024]. Available from: https://www.techwyse.com/blog/general-category/facebook-acquisitions-infographic#

LEVER, T., T. HIGHFIELD and C. ABIDIN, 2020. Instagram | Visual Social Media Cultures. Polity Press: Cambridge.

MANROTH, T., n.d. Instagram Stories vs. Facebook Stories for Businesses: The Most Important Differences [Viewed 28/10/2024]. Available from: https://storrito.com/resources/instagram-stories-vs-facebook-stories/#:~:text=Facebook%20vs.,being%20seen%20by%20your%20followers.

SADHU, S., 2024. Understanding the Facebook Algorithm in 2024 [Viewed 28/10/2024]. Available from: https://www.socialpilot.co/blog/facebook-algorithm