Mia Krysa

Tag: content-marketing

  • Rebuilding Spalding: A Strategic Blueprint for a Stronger Digital Presence

    Rebuilding Spalding: A Strategic Blueprint for a Stronger Digital Presence

    I spent about 5 weeks researching Spalding’s brand and social media presence. In short: I didn’t find much. I quickly realized that Spalding had a lot of work to do when it came to their digital identity, so I came up with a plan to help them.

    A Brand with Legacy, but Lacking Presence

    Rather than make one single campaign that might help their engagement and success on social media, I analyzed the brand’s voice, what their goals were, the history of the brand, and how they can better portray that on social media. I focused more on longevity than one campaign. Spalding most appeals to young athletes, especially ones that play basketball, softball, or volleyball. They’ve been around for a long time, and are a credible sports brand that many people turn to if they’re putting up a basketball hoop at home or picking up practice equipment. However, they lack that young, fun, and trendy presence on social media, which is crucial when you consider their target audience.

    Their social media presence is almost non-existent, and doesn’t reflect a player-first mentality. It has a cold, impersonal feeling that seems like they’re trying to market to arenas and gyms (which is okay if that was their only target audience, but it’s not). Sports and social media have such a strong relationship in today’s world, and lots of people who watch sports are most likely on social media. It’s crucial that Spalding up their game (pun-intended) if they want to stay relevant in the sports world.

    The Game Plan: How Spalding Can Win Online

    It would help to incorporate things like:

    • More athlete collaborations (college and pro athletes)
    • Social media takeovers
    • Collaborations with landscaping companies (to appeal to young athlete’s parents)
    • More participation in current trends/memes
    • Attempt to reach a larger audience by tapping into golf, softball, tennis, and volleyball worlds (their social media focuses heavily on basketball)
    • Celebrate the history of Spalding, which increases their credibility
    • Incorporate trends unrelated to sports with their sponsored athletes or teams, to reach a different audience

    Measuring Success: SMART Goals for Spalding

    To make sure that Spalding is reaching their goals, I implemented the SMART strategy to accurately measure growth. In short, the main goal would be to increase Spalding’s brand relevance and engagement among Gen Z and Millennial athletes, increase 100k+ followers on combined social platforms, achieve a 15% increase in Instagram and TikTok engagement rates, boost sales of basketballs by 20%, and other equipment by 10%. By leveraging their current partnerships and existing following, Spalding must post on a consistent schedule on Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube to resonate with their target audience — while keeping their brand voice in mind.

    Final Thoughts: A Brand Built for the Future

    It’s crucial that Spalding continues to evolve with the times. They’re legendary, but aren’t acting like it on their socials. With the right strategies implemented, they can increase their brand awareness on social media, appeal to their target audience, and increase sales. If you’d like to take a look at my project, it’s linked below!

    Spalding Social Media CampaignDownload

  • When Going Viral Means Going Vegetarian: The Good and Bad of Sticky Content

    Source

    In this day and age, stickiness is what makes content stand out. It’s not just about views — it’s about content that gets people’s attention, encourages emotion, and lingers in people’s minds. Content that makes people emotional (good or bad), makes it more likely to be shared and remembered, which is incredibly useful when it comes to social media.

    The Stickiness of Food, Inc.

    The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about “sticky” content, is the documentary Food, Inc. It’s a documentary about factory farming and shares information about how horrible the animals in factory farms are treated. I’ve watched it a total of two times in my life, and both times, I went vegetarian for probably a month. The documentary shared information that while disturbing and sad — was true — which made me remember it more, hence “sticky” content. I can almost guarantee that if you decide to watch it, you’ll remember it forever.

    Using Stickiness for Good

    Sticky content, when used correctly, can help create a better world. It can go viral and drive change. When creators use emotional storytelling and bold visuals, they can raise awareness about social issues or inspire people to take action with the causes they care about — in other words, me going vegetarian after I watched Food, Inc. Think about something that you saw on social media that you’ve always remembered. What are some features of that message, post, or content that made it stick in your brain? It probably elicited emotion and/or was bold. Websites can also be made “sticky” by encouraging engagement and return visits. According to TMDesign, this means designing platforms that make it easy to learn more, get involved, or take action.

    Another way to use “stickiness” in social media, is to post “sticky posts“. These are images or posts that can be pinned to stay at the top of feeds, keeping important messages visible longer — which makes people remember them more. In the sense of using social media for public good, accounts and organizations can keep things up on their pages for a long period of time if they want users to remember a specific detail.

    Concerns with Sticky Content

    It’s important to remember that just because something goes viral, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good or accurate content. Sticky content, even if it contains false information, can spread just as quickly as something that is telling the truth. Creators of content must be thoughtful and intentional with the things that they’re posting. And users must be thoughtful about the content they’re sharing. If you see a TikTok video spreading information about something that sounds crazy, research it before you share it.

    When used correctly, stickiness can help turn something that’s forgetful into something that encourages lasting impact — and that’s exactly what we need for a brighter future.

  • Understanding User Personas for Effective Design

    Photo by Ivan Samkov on Pexels.com

    When designing a new item, product, or service, it’s helpful to know who you’re designing for. Not only must you empathize with your target audience, but you should also know their demographics, hobbies, who they’re influenced by, and what their day-to-day looks like. These details are crucial because they keep the important part of design (humans!) at the forefront of the conversation. Now, picture this information neatly wrapped in a little box with a bow. These little boxes are called personas.

    Here’s the fancy definition of personas according to UX Magazine:

    A persona represents a cluster of users who exhibit similar behavioral patterns in their purchasing decisions, use of technology or products, customer service preferences, lifestyle choices, and the like. Behaviors, attitudes, and motivations are common to a “type” regardless of age, gender, education, and other typical demographics. In fact, personas vastly span demographics.

    Companies use personas to help them design for groups of people, rather than make a product for one person with one individual problem. Personas are either made up, or created based on patterns found after conducting research. There’s no “right or wrong” when it comes to personas, and there are a few different versions of them.

    1. Goal-directed personas. These kinds of personas are developed to focus on one thing: what does the user want to achieve with my product? What are some issues that the user might run into? How do we move through these issues? Basically, how can they achieve the goal we want them to achieve, with our product or service?
    2. Role-based personas. Role-based personas are a perfect mix of goal-directed personas and human behavior. They include lots of data and focus on the user’s role in the process.
    3. Engaging personas. Engaging personas take into consideration the emotions of the user, as well as their psychology and behavior. Designers use engaging personas to make them seem more “real” to inspire more ideas.
    4. Fictional personas. Fictional personas are exactly how they sound – fictional. They come from experience, assumptions, and sometimes stereotypes of the people creating them. Many argue that these personas can be flawed because they’re not based on data. Although this may be true, I think fictional personas are the most fun to create and work with.

    This week, after creating a few personas based on my A&F website analysis, I realized how much more difficult I found it to create one around myself, rather than make one up. It took me a while to pinpoint what I thought was worth including and what might be better left out. For some reason, this was probably the most difficult exercise for me in the graduate program thus far, and I’m not exactly sure why. While I appreciate the use of personas, I do know that there are designers who feel that they’re sometimes unnecessary.

    Whatever your opinion is on personas, I believe that they’re useful to get your creative juices flowing. Next time you’re engaged in the design thinking process, give them a try.

    And, if you’d like to take a look at my personas I created for A&F, they’re embedded below.

    PERSONASDownload