How a little B2B took flight with social media

[Background] “We should be on social media, but we don’t have the time”

A university-affiliated entrepreneurship program knew that Instagram was the perfect place to engage its audience. Their raison d’etre was to build students’ entrepreneurship acumen, and they had dozens of partnering organizations. The problem was they didn’t have the staff hours to populate an Instagram profile with content, nor a strong enough business case for the budget to hire another person.

They started to search for a partner who’d work as an extension of their team and found us. They liked that we could produce great on-brand content, supply the KPIs they needed, and develop and execute a structured Instagram program with little oversight.

They told us our primary goals were to significantly increase the awareness of the program, get students and partners engaging with them on Instagram, and increase website traffic. While we were starting from scratch, we were confident we could create a strong presence for them.

We both swiped right, signed a one-year contract, and were off to the races.

[Challenge] Efficiency and effectiveness—our magic sauce

We used a planning workshop to quickly understand the brand and organization, and collectively brainstorm and agree on topics we’d cover, key messages and content we would produce. In just a few hours, we had ideas, consensus and a content plan with hard dates.

Our content plan included three categories of content: informational, promotional and community.

Informational content: posts that shared valuable content that resonated with their target audience by offering solutions to problems and concerns they may face.

Promotional content: posts to educate followers about the benefits of joining the program that the organization offers and building brand awareness.

Community content: posts showcasing past experiences and testimonials from participants and stakeholders, highlighting the impact of the program on the community.

The Hop Skip team also came up with a design system for the posts. Like eating with your eyes, great images do a lot of heavy lifting on social media. We also collaborated with indigenous creators to develop inclusive posts that celebrated the community’s diversity.

Because video is so successful on social media, this was also part of our plan. We traveled to the campus where we had students, staff and partners on camera sharing their experiences. Our aim was to share engaging stories as a way to show people what taking part in the program is actually like. These videos were turned into reels and stories and were hugely successful.

Show me the numbers! [Conclusion]

Content is well and good, but ultimately, our job is about the numbers. Our reports captured the performance of the brand’s social media account and we used them to inform adjustments that should be made to our plan. The data enabled us to pinpoint which posts resonated the most and create more of those. (We do this type of reporting for all of our retainer clients because it gives transparency and an understanding of the impact of our work.)

Let’s talk engagement metrics! At the one-year mark, we were a well-oiled content publishing machine. The brand had made thousands of impressions, hundreds of shares, likes and comments, and was driving 5% of traffic to its website. It was such a boon that they gained permission and budget for a full-time person to take on social media work. While we were sad to part with them, we felt like a proud mama bird watching her baby bird fly the coop.

While our client couldn’t get permission from their legal team (Ah, legal, we love you!) to put their name to this case study, they did share this: “Working with the Hop Skip team has been an incredibly positive experience for us. They have been instrumental in helping us establish our presence on social media. Their strategy workshop was excellent, and they were always open to adjusting on the fly to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. We couldn’t have gotten to where we are now without them.”

Case Studies