Winning Gold at the Essex Digital Awards
“And first place for Best use of Social Media for Business is… Prime Creative for their work on Amateur Photographer” Honestly – a moment of shock. I know, it’s hardly an Oscar but for me, to take first place was a pretty awesome feeling. I was up against some strong competition including a social media for pets that had over half a million followers. I was pretty certain they would take the top spot.
What we submitted our pitch for the Essex Digital Awards we had only been doing Amateur Photographer Social Media for 6 months so it was still in it’s infancy. Our campaign was pretty strong – we took Amateur Photographer from 96k followers on Twitter up to 300K followers in just 6 months. We knew our strategy was strong, but didn’t expect quite such rapid growth. Oh, and we didn’t do any fancy tricks or buy followers! We just created content around the objectives of growing the audience and reaching more people. Funny gifs, sharable content and the occasional meme for good measure.
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font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div><div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div><div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div><div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div><div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"><div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div><div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"><div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div><div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div><div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div></a><p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BURAmDyASC_/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">I only ruddy won it! 😱😮 How did that happen?! Took 🏅 at the Essex Digital Awards for Best Social Media For Business - my campaign was 6 months of @ap_magazine Twitter/Facebook. I was 100% certain with 500k followers and awesome content, The Good Vet & Pet Guide would win it. Did you know doggos and cats do well on the internet? The judges said they loved seeing an old, historic brand being at the forefront of social media... So I got the gold! Big up the AP team - your web content is incredible 😘 🤘🙌</a></p><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/callummcinerney/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_medium=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Callum Mcinerney</a> (@callummcinerney) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2017-05-19T07:36:25+00:00">May 19, 2017 at 12:36am PDT</time></p></div></blockquote><script async src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>
We had a lot of challenges in the beginning. Mainly, changing the way it acted online and establishing a tone of voice. The old style had no personality and was very straight to the point. With a subject matter so in-depth a techy, you need a bit of personality to brighten it up.
That transition between traditional and new-age is a battle editors of the magazine and been fighting for years – taking a brilliant magazine from the days of film, through to digital, from print to an online focused brand… and bringing that readership with it along the journey. It’s a challenge that been felt by everyone in the print industry and something we feel Amateur Photographer Magazine have done a great job in overcoming.
Interestingly, the judges said the reason they gave the award to us is because they used to be readers of the magazine themselves many years ago and they were very impressed with the direction it has gone in. From this simple print magazine to now being an online presence that’s kept itself ahead of the curve in the now digital age.
What make it easy is that Amateur Photographer has the best writers and photographers working on it week in week out. Anybody that has a passion for photography will have an interest in the amazing content it consistently produces – the only challenging is packing it and delivering it to you audience as and when they want it. That means timing posts correctly, giving the audience and sense of community and engaging with the people that consume the content.
A few years on and we’re still running the Amateur Photographer Magazine accounts on Facebook and Twitter. We’ve had some great fun.
Here are a few of the highlights:
Racking up over 250,000 impression with a single tweet!
This graphic we made also done the rounds a fair bit being reposted by thousands of people. A few years on it still pops up occasionally in Facebook comments section.
We’ve had a lot of fun with the AP audience!
They’re always happy to engage in a bit of light-hearted fun between the technical photography stuff.
Oh and who can forget the cutest moment ever.
We run a little franchise called #APpySunday where everyone shares their pictures on a Sunday afternoon… and one fine sunday everyone submitted photos of their pets and it was a CUTENESS OVERLOAD
