As the Director of Marketing and Community at franki, I revitalized and championed the ‘franki Locals’ creator community across the United States. I spearheaded marketing initiatives under the CEO while leading a 3-person team that executed strategies to expand the community and encouraged members to consistently create ‘food, drink, and fun’ content for the video review app.

Accomplishments:

• Number of creators grew nationwide by 375%
• Quadrupled the average number of videos posted to the app (4-week rolling avg.)
• Increased engagement by 321% on the franki Locals Facebook Group
• Launched a brand ambassador program and an exclusive newsletter to a 71.61% open rate
• Spearheaded in-person events in Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin, Dallas, and Houston
• Developed several campaigns to boost engagement and video content creation

Building and Engaging a Creator Community

My team and I communicated daily with potential and current Locals through email, push notifications, Instagram, and Facebook. We listened to their feedback, answered any questions, and educated them on the app and the Franki Local Program’s offerings.

In the exclusive franki Locals Facebook Group, I increased engagement by 321% by ensuring there was a consistent content calendar to encourage comments and reactions. I also moderated it daily along with my team, triaging any issues or concerns from the community to the Product Team.

I spearheaded the launch of several multi-city in-person events throughout Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Including a scavenger hunt, I initiated in partnership with Amazing Co. to bring a special event to the franki Locals that supported small businesses. We also successfully had several virtual calls with our Locals in order to update them on the app’s latest product features.

Additional efforts to engage the community include an exclusive newsletter I wrote, edited, and launched to a 71.61% open rate, which has since stayed above 64%, well above the industry average.

We also assisted the Social Team with features on franki Locals to highlight them and their incredible content, thus championing them externally on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.

Most recently, I launched a brand ambassador program that aims to build upon our work in helping to onboard more Locals into the program.

Leading By Example

Part of my role as the head of the franki Locals creator community is to lead by example in order to exemplify our standards. Thus, I spent a fair amount of time experimenting on other platforms, such as Instagram and TikTok, to ensure I was aware of the latest trends and styles in video content. This has also helped me to initiate a content moderation system to ensure videos posted on franki are within company guidelines.

Note, as videos on franki are not currently accessible outside of the app, I’ve reshared some content to my personal TikTok account for ease of viewing.

Creating Monthly Campaigns

I’ve developed several campaigns to drive everything from increased video content output to engagement (e.g., likes, shares, comments) to signups. These campaign competitions have added a ‘fun’ element to our franki Locals offerings while also helping us to hit KPI targets from a business standpoint.

While some of these competitions are for ‘Locals only,’ others invite casual users of the franki app to participate, thus allowing these campaigns to achieve further reach and gain us some social traction. One such campaign was called ‘Tis the Season’ and launched in November 2022.

Brief: Increase video creation in a historically low output month–December.

Insight: By incentivizing franki Locals with a competition to create video content for 12 holiday-themed categories, it’ll spark the creative holiday spirit and increase content creation.

Action: We gave franki Locals early notice about the upcoming competition in order to get them prepped and ready to participate. We then announced it to the public via our social channels in late November. We awarded $100 per category to the most creative submission that exemplified each theme the best, thus allowing entrants a chance to win up to $1200.

Outcome: The campaign boosted competition submissions by 4,200% and helped increase video content creation by over 550% when compared to the prior year.