Morning all,
There’s a great focus on video formats in social media today. But if you’re of the generation that came up in text-and-image(-occasionally-gasp-GIF)-based social media, all this can feel quite far away from anything you have professional skills in.
What I really like about this case study is it shows how honing a discipline like copywriting can pay dividends. People do still read copy if its good.
Over to Alice!
We all know copywriting is a powerful marketing tool, yet it still surprises me how many organisations do not apply copywriting techniques to their promotional content. Since implementing copywriting techniques, we (at the Paul Mellon Centre), have increased our followers on Instagram by 60% in one year. So how did this all begin and what techniques have worked best?
Let me begin by taking you back to 2018. I’d left Art UK for the bright lights of the Royal Academy of Arts but as I sat in the windowless digitisation suite of the RA, I realised that not only did I miss the sunlight, but I missed the words. I missed the sentences and the craft. In the spaces in-between my working hours I began to write again. During lockdown, I finished the first draft of a novel, but life happened, I went on maternity leave and – like most parents – had little time left for my own hobbies.
When I returned to work, now working for the Paul Mellon Centre, I knew I had to find a way to shoehorn writing back into my job: this is when I discovered the art of copywriting. I found a copywriting diploma, convinced work it was extremely necessary to my role, and was diligent about completing it, mostly during working hours, but occasionally at the weekends – as I soon became obsessed. As soon as I completed the diploma, I set to work transforming the copy for the PMC’s social channels, most notably Instagram.
Something that was, admittedly, a selfish journey to begin with quickly became a shrewd marketing move as the growth of our Instagram has far surpassed my expectations.
Since our guiding principle for growth on Instagram has been considered copy, we have increased our following by 42% in 6 months compared with the previous year where we increased our following almost exactly the same percentage but over 12 months.
For those of you interested in more detail:
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When we implemented copywriting techniques in earnest in May 2024, we had 8,827 followers
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By the end of December 2024 we had 12,500 followers – an increase of 3,673
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If we carry on at this rate – at an average of 524 new followers a month – we will have increased our following by 6,296 in a year – more than double the number of new followers we gained the previous year.
Let’s take our New Narratives funding scheme promotion on Instagram as an example. We launched it at the beginning of 2022 with one asset across multiple platforms, including Instagram. You can see it uses a combination of image and text and has the words ‘New Narratives’ in bold and much larger than the other text which explains that this is a funding opportunity. The post received 79 likes but, more tellingly, we only had 9 MA studentship applications and 17 Doctoral scholarship applications for these incredible new funding opportunities.
For the 2023 round, we decided to be clearer about the types of studentships we were offering – for example an MA one and a PhD one. We used bold colours to try to make this stand out on people’s feeds. We also commissioned a short film where previously successful applicants shared their research ideas and used part of this as a Reel. We used this content again for the 2024 round.
Again, both received less attention than I would have hoped, and the results again were telling in that we only received 8 MA applications and 14 for the Doctoral scholarship for the 2023 round, and 5 applications for the MA studentship and 18 for the Doctoral scholarship for the 2024 round.
Then, in 2024, I put my copywriting training into practice and had a carousel of posts starting with ‘How can I study for a Masters degree when I can’t afford the fees?’. This post is now our most popular Instagram post of all time. We had 36 MA applications and 49 Doctoral scholarship applications. A 620% increase for MA applications and a 172% increase for Doctoral applications.
For context this is how the posts compare:
Another interesting comparison – in total for our 2024 round posts we amassed 31,684 views and for our 2025 posts we amassed 129,621 views, a percentage increase of 309%.
Let’s look at these two useful copywriting formulas:
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Useful
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Unique
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Urgent
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Ultra-specific
‘How can I study for a Masters degree when I can’t afford the fees?’
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It is useful as people will want to know how they can study for a Masters without affording the fees
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It is unique as it’s a question perhaps not asked by an organisation
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It is urgent as it is talking about fees in a cost-of-living crisis
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It is ultra-specific as it is talking only about the Masters studentship and not all funding opportunities in one post
This is one to be imagined as a funnel. You will get more views (attention) but always expect less click throughs (action).
A – Awareness – grab your audience’s attention – pose a question, promise something or spark curiosity
I – Interest – keep your audience’s attention with something interesting
D – Desire – how can your audience benefit? Show proof if possible
A – Action – ask for a specific action, e.g. click to buy tickets
‘How can I study for a Masters degree when I can’t afford the fees?’
Awareness – We posed a question
Interest – We mentioned the affordability of fees
Desire – We asked a question which we then went on to answer with more slides
Action – We ended the carousel of slides with ‘How do I apply?’ and pointed people to our website to apply
Copywriting is not only about using tried and tested formulas. It is also about examining pain points. A pain point in marketing is a problem that customers have with a product or service, or with the experience of using it or user journey. So, for the MA – the pain point would be that it is unaffordable. But for an evening lecture, the pain point might be that many people don’t understand one of the basic terms used in the title, so an explanation of that term in an Instagram post could prove useful.
I have found it very useful to put existing copy into Chat GPT and ask it questions such as ‘What do you think the pain point of this research is?’ or ‘Could you make a title for this event that recognises the pain points?’
Note: I would only do this with copy that is already on our website and I would not do this with unpublished research.
Other simple prompts for clearer copy could be:
· Can you format this into bullet points and headings?
· Can you make this title into a question?
As Rachael Easton from Tessitura recently said at the recent AMA conference “Treat AI like an intern”.
My role consists of managing the website, all social media channels, the YouTube channel and liaising with almost every department in the organisation as well as being line manager/trainer to our Digital Content Graduate Trainee.
Needless to say, my time is limited, much like so many who work in small and underfunded arts organisations (note: PMC is not underfunded but the focus is on funding others). Therefore, I thought it was important to share what I’ve found can work on a relatively small budget with limited staff time.
If you’d like to discuss copywriting in more detail, please feel free to reach out via LinkedIn or via email.
If you’re interested in the work of the Paul Mellon Centre please do consider signing up to our mailing list.
Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
Persuasive Copywriting by Andy Maslen
