RS
Social Media
Social Media Launch | Carolina Coffee Crawl
Carolina Coffee Crawl was a semester-long class project developed as a hands-on learning experience in social media marketing, content creation, audience engagement, and digital analytics. The project focused on promoting local coffee shops through authentic lifestyle and review-based content while strengthening brand storytelling and community engagement. Content was strategically created and managed across both TikTok and Instagram to compare audience behaviors, content performance, and platform-specific engagement strategies. Over 90 days, the Instagram account generated approximately 8,000 reel views, 3,700 viewers, 421 likes, 35 comments, and 36 shares across 13 reels, while TikTok analytics showed 6,842 video views, a reached audience of 5,543 users, 172 profile views, 528 likes, 17 comments, and 15 shares over 12 weeks. Through ongoing performance tracking, we analyzed which content formats, storytelling approaches, and engagement tactics resonated most with audiences, while also identifying key differences in how users interacted across platforms. This project provided valuable experience in content strategy, analytics interpretation, and platform optimization. The attached document further discusses the insights gained from this experience, what we learned from audience behavior and performance metrics, and how we would strategically improve and grow the brand moving forward.
Below is an example of a campaign I designed for A Cup Full Cafe. This was a strategically planned content campaign developed to promote a local coffee shop through visually engaging, trend-driven social media content. The campaign included a full creative content plan, mood board development, shot list creation, and platform-specific content strategy tailored for TikTok and Instagram. Content concepts included barista spotlights, café reviews (“Crawl With Us”), aesthetic lifestyle content, beverage and menu highlights, behind-the-scenes footage of coffee-making, and trend-based videos designed to increase audience engagement and drive foot traffic. The campaign emphasized storytelling, authentic brand representation, and consumer connection by showcasing both the café atmosphere and customer experience through visually cohesive content. Research into current TikTok trends and competitor inspiration informed the creative direction, while a detailed shot plan ensured brand consistency and optimized content performance across platforms. This project strengthened skills in creative direction, campaign planning, visual storytelling, social media strategy, trend forecasting, and content production.
Example of Content Collected
Passion Project | Jess' Reading Corner
Jess' Reading Corner is a content strategy designed to build a fantasy, romance, and adventure-focused book community on Instagram and TikTok. More than a content calendar, it's a framework for turning casual followers into a loyal, engaged readership through a consistent weekly rhythm, a set of recognizable signature series, and a newsletter that deepens the relationship beyond the algorithm. The documents outline the brand's positioning, target audience, content pillars, and posting strategy, along with future growth opportunities, including a subscription book club designed to extend the brand into a tangible, revenue-generating product.
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Example of Mood Forecast Series
Mock Feed
This mockup illustrates how our content series will appear across the feed.
Content Calendar and Strategy
Our content calendar operationalizes the strategy outlined above through a structured, repeatable rhythm. Rather than posting reactively, we follow a two-week alternating cycle across three core weekly slots — Sunday, a mid-week day, and Friday — supplemented by same-day Stories reposts to extend the life of each piece of content. This consistency is intentional: it trains our audience to expect us at predictable times, which builds the habit-forming engagement that turns casual viewers into a loyal community.
Each slot is assigned to one of our five signature series, ensuring that content never feels random or one-off. Sunday is reserved exclusively for our anchor series, Mood Weather Forecast, paired with the newsletter send, making it the cornerstone of our weekly presence. The remaining slots rotate between DNF Confessionals, Read This If…, The Prophecy Board, and Would You Survive? / Tropes Decoded, giving us variety while keeping every post recognizable as part of our established formats.
Key takeaways from the marketing plan and strategy documents:
Our differentiation comes from structure, not just content. Most BookTok accounts rely on one or two recurring formats; we've built five distinct, recognizable series that rotate on a schedule, giving us more surface area for discovery while remaining consistent and predictable for our audience.
Every piece of content serves a specific brand goal. Discovery-focused series (Read This If…, Tropes Decoded) are built for saves and shares; community-focused series (DNF Confessionals, Would You Survive?) are built to drive comments and debate; and our ritual series (Mood Weather Forecast) is what ties everything together as a weekly habit.
The newsletter is our retention engine. While social content drives discovery and growth, the newsletter converts that attention into an owned, algorithm-proof audience — and its closing question creates a direct feedback loop that fuels future content across every platform.
Taken together, the strategy isn't just about producing content; it's about building infrastructure: a recognizable brand, a predictable rhythm, and multiple paths for readers to engage with us at the level they choose.
The Sunday Stack Newsletter and Expansion
To deepen our relationship with readers beyond social media, we'll launch a weekly newsletter called The Sunday Stack. While our TikTok and Instagram content is built for discovery, the newsletter serves a different purpose: retention. It's where casual followers become loyal community members, and where we can speak to our audience directly, without relying on an algorithm to decide who sees it.
Each issue follows a consistent structure so readers know exactly what to expect: a short, personal opening note written like a message from a friend in the book club; a quick look at what we're currently reading; a deeper dive into a rotating topic such as a trope breakdown, genre on-ramp, or DNF confessional; a community spotlight featuring a reader's recommendation or shelfie; and a closing question readers can simply hit reply to answer.
That closing question is one of the newsletter's most important strategic elements. It turns a one-way broadcast into a two-way conversation, and the replies we receive become a direct pipeline for future content, both in the newsletter and across our social channels. Sent every Sunday alongside our anchor "Stack Sunday" content, the newsletter and our social presence reinforce each other: the videos drive people to subscribe, and the newsletter rewards them with content they can't get anywhere else.
Ultimately, the newsletter gives us something social media can't: an owned audience. Followers can disappear if an algorithm shifts or a platform changes its rules. Still, an email list stays with us, builds a more personal relationship with our readers, and lays the groundwork for future business opportunities, including the subscription book club.
To expand the brand and create new revenue opportunities, I'd like to propose launching a subscription book club. Each box would include a curated book of the month, branded stickers, a bookmark featuring our signature "The Sunday Stack" branding, and a handwritten letter from the account owner giving subscribers a personal, tangible connection to the community we've built online.
As an additional touchpoint, we could also offer a branded embosser for sale and use it to emboss every book included in the box, adding a distinctive, collectible detail that reinforces the brand with each shipment.
*All images included in this project are AI-generated.*
Logos created by Jess Duess
Social Media Rebrand | Rhode
This project was developed as a mock project to showcase my social media strategy for Rhode in December 2024. I began by transforming Rhode's Instagram feed by integrating various techniques such as UGC content, sensory marketing, and testimonials. I first pictured the feed to show the difference and then explained my strategy below.
Sunrise Yoga
Sunrise Yoga is the result of a project assigned in my Digital Marketing course taken at Coastal Carolina University. We were instructed to create a website on something we were passionate about and use the tools we had learned throughout the class, such as SEO's, digital marketing, web design, etc. Creating a social media for the company was not required, but was encouraged as it would help with analytics throughout our websites. I took the liberty of creating an Instagram and Facebook page for Sunrise Yoga, creating a mock version of what could become a reality. This entire project was created with AI-generated images, but the strategy and creativity were implemented through skills learned in the class.
