We Work Remotely’s (WWR)- Instagram Strategy
@weworkremotelycom • March 2019-June 2021
Introduction
When I joined We Work Remotely (WWR) in 2019 as a Marketing Generalist, I was excited about two things: to talk about remote work and work with a large audience.
Boasting the largest remote work community in the world, the small team had set up a solid foundation to build upon.
During my first few weeks, I performed an audit and conducted research. WWR’s Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn platforms already had a strong following and the channels were used to broadcast new jobs (via Zapier). But when you did a broad search for remote work, WWR’s presence fell flat.
Source: WWR
The research showed that WWR’s most engaged audience group was millennials (no surprise there!), the demographic that was spending most of their time on Instagram.
After conducting the audit, I saw a need to improve WWR’s voice, increase its brand presence and get to know the audience a bit better.
I put together a social media strategy that focused on starting an Instagram account. And slowly but steadily, the audience grew.
Quick kudos before we keep going:
I managed the account from March 2019-June 2021. When I shifted over to a new role, we hired a new Marketing & Community person to take over (Fun fact! Her name is also Justine and she’s rad). With Justine’s help, we crossed the10k threshold together. 👯♀️
Social Media Strategy
This is an outline of my initial strategy, which was adapted over time.
Goals
Increase brand awareness
Establish WWR’s voice
Audience: The We Work Remotely Job Seeking Community
Age group: Millennials
Region: North America
Motivations:
Whether it’s in our home office, a co-working space or a patio, we want to work wherever and whenever.
We’re interested in challenging the 9-5 status quo and the toxicity it can bring into our lives.
We’re interested in living with freedom and honouring other people's freedom. This includes working preferences, creative processes, communication styles and more. #youdoyou.
We know that remote work isn’t the norm yet, but we know it will be.
We see ourselves as part of society, not outside of it.
We’re driven and are life-long learners.
Brand Tone
Leadership
Empathic
Honest
Empowered
Witty
Channels
Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook
Analytics
Engagement, Impressions and traffic to weworkremotely.com
Benchmarks
Two weeks (measure)
One month (measure)
Three months (evaluate)
Key Messages & Tactics
Advocate for remote work and share its benefits
Share the benefits of remote work while remaining transparent and truthful about its challenges.
Share that the number of remote jobs is rising.
Promote remote companies.
Inspire stories that bring a meaningful connection
Center the community and highlight their stories about remote working and job hunting.
Share imagery and stories that promote freedom (ie. Travel, time with family).
Disrupt the 9-5 status quo
Highlight sentiments, theories and philosophies that push the boundaries of work, highlight work-life balance and show the quality of our lifestyles.
My Process
As the sole marketing person, I had to be effective with my time. As well, I wanted to shoot for long-term growth to maintain the longevity of the brand. These were some of my methods:
Share long-term content and don’t get trapped into short-term trends.
Repurpose content from the blog, podcast and Slack community.
Write the Instagram post first and adapt the copy for the other social media platforms.
Test, test, test and practice active listening. Share what resonates with people.
Tools I regularly used:
Adobe Creative, Figma, Unsplash, Grammarly
Takeaways
Don’t chase trends and short-term gains
People say the average longevity of an Instagram post is about 48 hours. But because we focused on sharing long-term content, we noticed that many of our older posts still got engagement months later. And they still are today.
Know what “the right fit” means for this role
Having a strong strategy and vision matters. And, usually, that also means hiring the right people for the gig. In this case, this meant someone who has an intuitive understanding of the company’s brand and aesthetic. Justine’s transition into managing the platforms was seamless for this reason.
Know what anchors you
Managing the account when the Pandemic hit was one of the toughest parts of my role. It was devastating to scroll through all of the channels each day and see how much suffering was happening in the world. Anchoring in our community, focusing on where we could be helpful and being transparent with my manager quite literally saved my mental health.
