Overarching Strategy

In 2.5 years, I was able to organically grow Downtown Portland's Instagram following from 44.6k to 70k followers. Weekly page views ranged between 1400-3000+ views per week.

Steady organic growth was made possible by focusing heavily on Instagram Stories. Due to the nature of Instagram, static posts are still vital for reaching a wider audience for a longer period of time. However, regularly posting engaging and valuable content to Stories gives the audience a stream of never-ending reminders about your brand, cultivating top-of-mind awareness.
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Interesting to note: during a two week vacation where static posts were scheduled and consistent but IG Stories were kept to a minimum, weekly page views dropped to around 600-800 views per week confirming the enormous pull that Stories have on audience reach.

Instagram Stories were used to a narrative around a restaurant, retail store, business, or event, and often involved audience participation (polls, question boxes, slide votes, etc.), and appearances from local artists, creators, and influencers.

Strategic messaging during first 2 weeks of COVID-19 (Instagram)

• March 14: Initial post (see above) addressing situation with purely consumer-focused messaging

• March 17: Cherry blossoms and dogs of Portland - lifting spirits with two of Portland's favorite things. Successful: received 59 comments.

• March 19: As the situation became increasingly serious, I decided on simple messaging ("Sending some zen your way") that would avoid directly addressing COVID-19 while keeping it relevant within context. During a time of extreme uncertainty and lack of knowledge around the virus, it was best to focus on togetherness and positivity, especially because the brand is meant to be consumer-focused first and foremost.

• March 24: Official "Stay Home, Save Lives" campaign from State of Oregon posted on feed

• March 25-27: Began using hashtag #PortlandTogether: two posts with shorter but relevant captions + familiar visuals to comfort audience with positivity.

• March 31: Longer, inspirational caption (see left) to reinforce feelings of togetherness in a time of crisis, and encouragement to stay strong as we flatten the curve. The longer caption also affirmed viewers with sentiments beyond surface-level acknowledgement of COVID-19, showing humanity in time of crisis.

• April 6: Shared four resources to support local businesses, and encouraged audience to tag their favorite local business in the comments. This indirectly opened up a space to promote businesses outside of downtown Portland while technically following protocol.

• ​April 9: Shared a long list of restaurants still open and operating to directly promote restaurants downtown, while also fostering a sense of a brand listening to its audience (ie. “many of our followers have asked what's still open…") to bolster feelings of togetherness

• April 16: Grocery shopping safety guidelines posted on all channels

• April 24: Another long caption asking audience to comment an emoji with their current mood (community building): 133 comments. Caption focused on staying inside as the best we can do for our community

• May 15: Announcement for first day of Oregon's reopening process, led by the governor

• May 22: Encouragement to continue flattening the curve for Memorial Day weekend. Asked audience to comment with a heart if they were staying close to home (attempt at simulating herd mentality to pressure people to stay home): 86 comments

Main takeaways:

• In crisis situations, more communication = better. In addition to the strategic static posts outlined on the right, I posted 15-20 IG Stories daily from March 14-May 27. This was up from 6-10 stories daily. Stories were a mix of amplifying local businesses as they scrambled to pivot business models (online shopping, local porch drops, curbside pickup, restaurant pre-orders, sales and promotions), and original content (asking and sharing audience uplifting questions, virtual tours downtown, positive stories from the community, etc).

• More empathy. It was absolutely crucial to read the room every day in order to stay sensitive to what the audience would be receptive to day-to-day. It was also important to regularly acknowledge that staying purely positive at this time was unrealistic for many people, in order to avoid alienating differing realities.

• People adjust. At the beginning of the crisis, it was imperative to monitor and adjust messaging by the day, if not hour. Much care went into balancing consumer content with emotionally valuable content to foster a stronger sense of community during a rapidly developing crisis situation. However, as people and businesses slowly adjusted to their new reality, the demand for emotional content decreased as people sought business-related information to keep up with business reopenings, closings, and new developments. This meant more leeway for static posts that didn't necessarily center the pandemic in some way, and thus, a return to "normalcy" was tolerated.