As a social media marketing manager, it is important to adapt and blend in to the identity of the brand you are working for. Besides, it is also crucial that you understand what the target audiences are looking for, or what they prefer to see. That’s why ‘Put yourself in someone’s shoes’ is a necessary skill to have for every social media marketing manager.
In this blog post I will set out two imaginary scenario as if I am working as a social media content writer for the organization Csiro and The Conversation.
Scenario 1: What's Mardi Gras all about? - Chau Anh Marketing x CSIRO
Instagram extended carousel:
Caption:
What’s Mardi Gras all about? 
You have probably heard about or seen the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade before, but do you know it is also a case study for neuroscience? 
Despite being physically tired, many of our staff and participants felt “uplifted” during the event and wanted to come back for more – why is that?
Come join us and @SydneyMardiGras on this wonderful experience and explore the science behind the story. Read the full article at the link in our bio. 
#Criso #SydneyMardiGras
Reflective analysis:
The first thing I do is to look at the theme and style of the organization’s social media page. This is very important as it sets the identity and audience target of the organization. For @csirogram, we can see that most of the posts have an image as the background, and big titles (with bold phrases) as the central message/topic of the post. For some of them, stickers with outlines were also used. The fonts the organization is using are easy to read, but not too formal nor playful. Overall the instagram of @csirogram has a casual look, with different posts aiming at different audiences. Most posts have the same layout as described above; however, there are few with only photos, and a few with different layout styles, which could be used to address specific target audiences.
With the task of creating an Instagram carousel for the article: “The science of Mardi Gras” and the target audience: “Young Australian adults, aged 18-30 years, living in urban centres, who are tech-savvy and value the intersection of STEM, social inclusion, and major cultural events.”, I decided to theme out my post as follows. But before going into my design, I also found a similar post on the official account titled “What makes a night out feel so good?”, which also talks about Mardi Gras. The post is also a carousel, with a slightly text-heavy approach and a few photos.
For me, I believe that many individuals in the young generation (including the target audience, young adults) suffer from a short attention frame. This is also mentioned by Sahin Ahmen (2025) in his article about how technology including social media short form contents nowadays negatively affects our ability to focus and increase the rate of ADHD. Personally, I am also very easily distracted, and if I’m scrolling through social media posts with too many words, I won’t be bothered to even read what is on it. That’s why I go with the approach of being visual heavy, and try my best to include as less words as possible while still being inforamative.. Within the carousel, I highlighted important keywords and phrases, which greatly assist the audience in understanding the main idea of the post. I also mimic the caption writing style with a few emojis at the end of sentences and include relevant hashtags. Furthermore, when taking photos, such as the photo in carousel page 3, I use the rule of thirds by leveling the crowd in the 3 bottom boxes of the camera gridline, leaving background spaces to be ⅔ of the photo. This helps the shot to be more pleasing to the eye and also help stabilize the image (Long, 2019).
Scenario 2: Watch out for these types of lightning - Chau Anh Marketing x The Conversation
Caption:
From bolts to blue jets, lightning comes in many strange forms. Throughout human history, lightning is embedded in mythology, religion and popular culture. And in Australia, it appears in the ancient First Nations rock art.
What exactly is lightning? In simple terms, lightning forms by the build up of electrical charges in clouds as frozen and liquid water bump into each other. As light travels faster than sound, we see the flash of lightning before hearing the sound of thunder.
Surprisingly, there isn’t only a single type of lightning. On Earth, there are two main types: Intra-cloud (or cloud-to-cloud) and Cloud-to-ground. On rare occasions, Pyrogenic lightning, Upper atmospheric lightning and Ball lightning can occur in certain conditions. Since lightning splits nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere, it does contribute to global warming; however, it is far from the leading cause.
Read more via the link in bio.
Reflective analysis:
Similar to the previous scenario, I took a look at the official Instagram page of The Conversation and noticed the following. Unlike Csiro, The Conversation uses a more professional approach with their post being informative. The graphic style of The Conversation is what I described as “multiple layers”, specifically they put multiple elements of photos and graphics together to make a collage. The font is professional and clear, not as classical as Times New Roman but also not too casual like the Sans family font that Csiro used; although there are a few posts that use casual fonts, the majority is still professional. For this article about lighting, the target customers are educated Australian adults, aged 35-45 years, who are interested in deep dives into science and nature. For my post, I followed the style mentioned above with similar fonts and layout. Since the task required is an infographic, I decide to include types of lightning as the information shown on the post. Towards the target customers, this will be valuable knowledge for them and I believe they would be interested in exploring what those different types of lightning are. However, I don’t want to overcrowd the image (graphic), as Meta recommends that 40% of the visual advertising content should be free from text, logos and other key creative elements (Sutherland, 2024). The caption I wrote for this post is more extensive than the previous post, this is to align with the caption style of The Conversation of being relatively information heavy (basically a short summary of the full article). This also creates value to a greater extent, as the audience can gain key knowledge just by reading the captions; however, if they want to know more, they can read more via the link in the bio (CTA – call to action). Moreover, unlike Csiro, to suit the style of being professional, The Conversation emoji and hashtag usage is very limited to none, which is why I don’t include any emoji or hashtag.
As you can see, through these two scenarios, I have demonstrated my observation and adapting skills. Combining with my creativity, I have been able to ‘put my feet in other people’s shoes’, and successfully create effective and relevant social media posts. If you have any questions or interested to discuss and work with me, feel free to contact me here!
References:
Sahin, S. (2023). The diminishing attention span: How technology is reshaping our minds. Medium.https://medium.com/@sahin.samia/the-diminishing-attention-span-how-technology-is-reshaping-our-minds-47963d248d41
Sutherland, K. (2024). Strategic social media management: Theory and practice (2nd ed). Palgrave Macmillan.
Long, B. (2019). Complete digital photography. Course Technology
Media Credits:
Post 1:
Carousel Page 1: Design by me using Canva Pro, Photo by Csiro (the article): “Team CSIRO with the Sydney Mardi Gras crowd 2024.” (If i am working for Csiro and posting on Csiro Instagram then i believe it shouldn’t be a copyrighted issue using Csiro photo.)
Carousel Page 2: Design by me using Canva Pro, Photo by Csiro (the article): “Science tells us when people feel safe, valued and able to be themselves, their brains shift out of threat mode and into connection and creativity mode.”
Carousel Page 3: Design by me using Canva Pro. Photo by me taken following the Rule of Thirds by Long and Rivera (n.d.).
Carousel Page 4: Design by me using Canva Pro. Photo by me, sticker created by me (background removal, add outline)
Post 2: Design by me using Canva Pro. Photo by me (for background). Stickers and elements provided by Canva Pro.