It all started with a belief! The belief bestowed on me by a fellow colleague, ‘Jeffery, the awesome’ as I like to tease him….
In addition to my main role as a Client Relations Officer, I also serve as support to the Marketing and Corporate Communications (MCC) team. I would do the usual news collating, Friday wrap up, store inventory and a few other tasks as I am needed to, but never would I have imagined being a content creator for an Instagram page, a significant one if I must say!
“Uju, we strongly need your help in running the Humans of Transcorp’s Instagram page. In fact, I advise that you own it as your baby.” Jeffery will often say. The page had been dormant for a while and there was an urgent need to revive it. A few weeks later, I got the opportunity to present my content calendar to the team for further action.
Prior, to this time I met my former boss to suggest a campaign that could grow followership as we barely had over 50 followers. And so, the team cooperated and ran the Poetry campaign for Africa Day for an external audience. Jeffery and I worked day and night sorting out the entries to eventually select 3 winners for the cash prizes. Our growth level skyrocketed to 500 plus followers. But hey, work hadn’t even started yet. The HOT page is majorly for the staffers of Transcorp, we had to go back to the books to remind ourselves of that fact.
With a new boss, came endless possibilities. Nkem came on board and her mission was clear. To be efficiently proactive! She taught me all the rudiments of managing the HOT page and posting things of relevance to us. Initially, I was required to draw a 2-week content calendar for the page, as time progressed, I just dish out the content for the day, what a tremendous increased level of trust if I would say (chuckles)! It was quite tasking in the beginning, creating content for the page. I had a few foreign pages I would visit from time to time to learn a few things, but this is Nigeria, and this is Transcorp. It had to be unique, it had to be different.
So, I stopped visiting them and would just create a theme or envision something I would love to see, I would check the pages of Staffers across the group then create content around it or repost. I became content hungry, nothing at the Head office left my sight unnoticed especially when it had to do with the Humans of Transcorp in it. The WhatsApp page too has been a great place to build in content from our subsidiaries. For example, birthday celebrations. And sometimes, this idea comes last minute but, boom! It becomes a hit.
I will say our most rewarding content has been Ayra Starr – Bloody Samaritan reel. It has been our greatest hit. After we joined in for that Instagram Challenge that involved the entire Transcorp Group, our followership increased from 600 to 900 with more engagements. And the more we post, the more we got noticed. I won’t take credit for this idea even if it was a collective effort, my boss, Nkem suggested it. She is always about being intentional whenever we are making a post.
Then the reel we recently dropped last week Friday was a thank you message to all our over 1k followers using the #PeruChallenge vibe. It has likewise been a hit back-to-back like the first one. One thing I noticed about these trending videos is that they outlive themselves. Even when the song becomes stale people can still find them and keep liking and following them. Let me also add that the acronym – HOT was coined by me on one faithful day while brainstorming content creation for the page. You need to see how excitedly I rushed to Jeffery to share my thoughts on having a HOT magazine. That idea is a reality today, thanks to a visionary leader and an amazing team. I am happy to say that we will be having our second issue next month, watch out!
This opportunity has immensely improved me and expanded my relationships with members of staff across the Transcorp Group. As a result of it, I learnt to manage a page, create designs on Canva, currently learning photography with of course, ‘Jeff the awesome’, my writing style became much better thanks to my firm boss. I must confess, all the while my colleague had been hinting me on taking charge of the HOT page, I had been super excited and waiting on the opportunity to actualise. I love new challenges; it removes the boredom in routine work, tasks my intellect and creative prowess.
If you ask me what the next step for the HOT page might be, I’ll tell you, wait on it. We are gonna blow your mind!
