Marketing Through Social Media

Max Shukla, Marketing Assistant

From May to November 2021 Max worked at Aspex as a Marketing Assistant on a government-funded Kickstart scheme. This post serves to impart a small piece of wisdom learned from his time here and acts as a posthumous ode to the role he so enjoyed. (His words not ours!)

How to market through social media

Without a background in either visual arts or marketing, what goes into the role of Marketing Assistant at Aspex is something I was wholly unfamiliar with. Over time I’ve learned from myriad mistakes but what I will focus on here is social media marketing.

As it happens, social networking isn’t just a means to hurl abuse through the ether at your local MP. I’ve used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to promote everything at Aspex from weekly art workshops to whole campaigns. But how do you go about it?

At any given moment, everyone in the world is on social media and no one’s looking at a post for more than three seconds. This is where you come in, dragging your crafts event onto Instagram for the fourth time this month, acting like it’s the best thing ever, because it is. I usually start with a short statement or question to jump off from, instantly producing a feeling of ‘FOMO’ in the reader: “Have you heard about Family Saturdays?” This is the icing. What follows is the cake: the substance of the post informing the audience about what’s on offer. As with every good cake, everyone wants a piece but if the base is plain sponge, they’re just going to lick the icing off. Keep it short and sweet.

It’s also a good idea to use link-shorteners, scheduling, and pictures to draw attention to posts with pretty colours and shapes, which we all like to think we’re above past a certain age but psychologically we’re all essentially moths or small children attracted to the shiniest object.

I have used what I’ve learned not only to promote Aspex but also to sharpen my approach to these platforms in the promotion of my podcast which has fundamentally changed how I use social media.