UWP Social Media Post Templates

Context

I interned with UW Provision, a family-owned wholesaler and retailer of meat products, in Summer 2016. As UWP’s Retail Promotions & Marketing Assistant, my responsibilities included creating social media content for their three brands: UW Provision (wholesale division), The Meat Market (primary retail store), and Local Source Foods (secondary retail store). I created social media content for UW Provision’s brands’ five social media platforms: Facebook (3), Instagram (2), Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. UW Provision’s three brands use the following social media platforms:

Objectives

• Design social media post templates that reflect UW Provision’s three brands so that their audience can differentiate them from one another yet can identify The Meat Market and Local Source Foods as UW Provision’s daughter companies.
• Maintain a consistent brand image for UW Provision’s wholesale division and its two retail stores across its five social media platforms.
• Design social media posts templates that are engaging to UW Provision’s audience and have high readability.

Gather Past Content

Before I could design the templates, I first had to determine what types of content UW Provision should post to promote conversion and brand loyalty. To do so, I gathered UWP’s previous social media content. After sifting through UWP’s multiple social media accounts, I compiled the following list of content:

• Deals of the Week weekly promotion
• Warehouse Sale promotions
• Featured products
• Meat Tip Monday content series (Sharing meat cutting, cooking, and shopping tips)
• Recommended recipes
• Job openings
• VIP Text Club promotions
• Wine of the Month Club announcements and promotions
• Holiday greetings (Merry Christmas, Happy Father’s Days, etc.)
• Steak dinner giveaways

Determine Future Content

After I gathered UW Provision’s previous social media content, I audited the content with my supervisor, Retail Store Manager Scott Niebuhr, to determine whether or not it supported the company’s content strategy going forward. Niebuhr shared his goals for the retail stores and I shared my ideas for UWP’s sales and brand campaigns. Together, we created the following list of social media content (the new content is bolded):

• Deals of the Week weekly promotion
• Warehouse Sale promotions
• Featured products
• National Days series (ex. Promoting beef jerky on National Beef Jerky Day)
• Meat Tip Monday series
• Recommended recipes
• Job openings
• Email newsletter promotions
• VIP Text Club promotions
• Wine of the Month Club announcements and promotions
• Wine Wednesday series (Promoting a red, pink, or white wine biweekly)
• Holiday greetings (Merry Christmas, Happy Father’s Days, etc.)
• Promoting holiday gift boxes and meat sample boxes
• Meet “The Meat People” series (Highlighting UW Provision employees)
• Customer appreciation (Sharing positive customer reviews)
• Benchmarks (ex. Thank you for 8,000 likes)
• Promoting other UWP social media accounts

Brainstorm Template Ideas

Once I determined the types of content to post on UW Provision’s social media platforms, I brainstormed layout ideas by scrolling through Canva’s templates. Canva is a free online graphic design program with hundreds of pre-made templates for social media posts, flyers, postcards, and more. I collected about two dozen Instagram templates that I thought were engaging and creative yet contained the necessary amount of text to promote UWP’s sales and brand campaigns.

Adapt Templates

After I brainstormed, I adapted the templates to UW Provision’s social media content and branding, including UWP’s three brands’ logos, colors, and typeface. Below is an example of how I adapted a Canva template promoting a bed and breakfast into UWP’s Wine Wednesday template:

What I Learned

• It’s not always necessary to start from scratch; building upon previous ideas instead of completely starting over is typically more effective. Although UWP’s previous Meat Tip Monday content included blurry stock photos and a few sentences of copy, the idea was excellent – just not executed as well as it could be. I built on this content idea by using quality stock photos, expanding the written content into full blog posts, and including an expert of the blog post in the social media post.
• Looking through UW Provision’s past social media content gave me ideas for the company’s future sales and brand campaigns that I otherwise wouldn’t have thought of.
• It’s always a good idea to share your goals with your supervisor to make sure they are feasible with the company’s budget and resources. Your supervisor may even have ideas on how to accomplish your goal!