AU French Club

In my junior year of college, I was chosen as Vice President of Communications for Auburn University's French Club. This meant that I handled the social media and digital communications of the club. Unfortunately, it was not off to the easiest start.

The French Club was very small. It may have had a lot of members on our university's involvement website, but these members did not attend meetings. My goal was to change this.

At a baseline, I needed to post every week or so, reminding members of new meetings. I could do this easily; what I needed to do was improve engagement with the club. And it was difficult to start. I had not taken a single marketing class yet, and I had no experience in graphic design.

My first posts were disasters. I use Canva for my posts for the purpose of efficiency, but I used different fonts for each post, and there was no clear theme. Here is what the feed looked like before I started my role, then after.

French Club feed before I joined

French Club feed two months after I joined

Fulfilling my baseline responsibilities of notifying members of meetings was unsatisfying. I could not figure out what was wrong with my strategy of making each post a pretty post individually. If each post alone satisfied me, why did the entire feed bother me?

I realized that it looked completely disorganized. The styles were completely different every post, one post being in a classic cursive font, and another being in an interesting modern font. I decided to test my theory, and I made all the fonts an even more interesting modern font.

Here is what the French Club's feed looked like after the change:

French Club feed from January 18th-February 4th

This was immensely more satisfying to see. I wanted to include pictures of faces to have viewers feel closer to the community aspect of French Club, and I wanted to keep the style similar across all posts.

Then, I ran into another issue. Engagement was still low, and I needed to make something more relevant to Instagram users. Reels were a very popular way to boost engagement, so I felt I had no other choice but to make a reel. And even though it was not a piece of art, thankfully, it worked.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/6e2fb9_41708264e3a34fb8a37a3dda15d4643a/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

The reel was no extraordinary feat, but it boosted engagement by twice as much as normal. So although it made my feed look a little worse, I knew I was heading in the right direction.

Now, my main goal is to make more reels. I personally prioritize beauty when I am looking at any social media post, but French Club meetings aren't held in the most glamorous of venues, and there is a good bit of editing I need to do just to make the images look decent.

Here is another reel I made from Beignet Night, and I am much fonder of this one than the previous one:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/6e2fb9_1c20225a44484df8acc05967954851a9/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Since the reels were a great hit, I figured that people enjoyed music and seeing people on their feed rather than my graphic designs. In small, short-term attempts to boost engagement, I posted people as the cover photo more. Reflecting on this, I realized it does not help the feed's visual consistency very much, so my next test is to print the graphic designs about meeting information and take pictures of those printed images next to an item that corresponds to the meeting's theme. For example, for a movie night notice, I can post a picture of a camera and some popcorn next to the printed movie night flyer.

Another obstacle: there are posts from other organizations that I need to remain consistent with. One example is this flyer from Latinx Student Alliance. To ensure consistency and minimize confusion, I felt it was best to post the same flyer they did for our collaborative event. But unfortunately, it absolutely wrecked the visual flow of the French Club's feed. Another example is a celebration of a professor in the French department at Auburn University. I was invited as a collaborator on the post, and it made no sense to reject the invitation, but it is also inconsistent with the color scheme and font scheme that I had going.

To resolve this issue, my plan for the rest of the semester is to reach out in advance before flyers are made by other people and request to make them myself, and I also plan to make the cover of my reels a screenshot of the original cover pasted onto a graphic that is consistent with the theme.

Overall, I am encountering many obstacles, but I am confident I can handle them by the end of my reign as Vice President of Communications. I am beyond grateful for this role and the lessons I've learned about what reaches people easiest, and I hope to apply these lessons to future experiences as well.