Aug 29, 2021
Creating social media posts and a posting schedule for Product Gym
Growing in specific careers has never been easier.
“University is the only way to a great career” is a thing of the past. Companies like Product Gym have changed the world for better. If you want to be a Product in a growing company, you don’t have to sit in a university program, get your masters, and then get a Product Management Job. You can apply at Product Gym, and accelerate your Product Management Career!
Their Instagram profile is great as well. Each post provides value to the followers. Their posts are filled with useful knowledge and practical information.
I love their Instagram posts, and I wanted to do something for them.
I worked on a copywriting project and designed three Instagram posts for Product Gym along with creating a posting schedule.
You can watch about the project here —
OR, read along!
Instagram posts
Product Gym’s Instagram posts are filled with value. And that was the main focus of my project as well — to create posts that provide value to the community.
The target audience of these posts are the current customers and people interested in starting a Product Management Career.
The posts need to be aesthetic, with proper branding, and effective in terms of copy. I’ll deliver information through short and punchy text.
I created three posts -
- “Ace the interview”
- “What differentiates a Junior from a senior Product Manager”
- “Product Management Jargon: learn the lingo”
It’s Instagram we’re talking about. A “visual” platform. So I’ll show the visuals upfront, and then talk about those designs.
Product Gym’s Instagram isn’t just a profile. It’s a brand. And a Brand needs to have consistent posts all over.
So I reversed-engineered Product Gym’s recent posts and made mine similar to those. And honestly, I like this format. It’s punchy, recognisable, easy-to-skim, and effective.
People on the internet don’t read, they scan.
And these posts are designed for this. Users would get value just by reading the headlines, aka “scanning”, or by reading the entire body. They’d derive value both ways, although more in-depth value in one case.
Design-wise, I couldn’t change much. Product Gym has a brand identity, and I had to stick to it. The most effective method seemed to stick to the current format for posts. So Copy is where I could edit everything!
Copy
I wrote on three topics, one about interviews, and two about Product Management careers. I think this is effective because the followers of Product Gym are expecting to get career insights, and advice on Product Management career and job-hunt.
Post-by-post, line-by-line, this is the copy I wrote -
Ace the interview
Page 1: Ace the interview
Page 2: You’re good enough
The fact that you got the interview, means you are good enough and so is your work. Hiring managers don’t request interviews because they want to spend time talking. They’ve looked at your portfolio, at your projects and then decided to give you their most precious resource — time!
Page 3: Be a good listener
Gauge the interest level of the person interviewing you. Actively listen to the interviewer and steer your conversations accordingly.
Page 4: Research the company
Go through the company’s website, their social media profiles, and even their founder’s social media. You need to research the company you’re applying to. Avoid a situation where you walk into the interview unprepared. This could give the signal that you’ve applied to a bunch of companies and are just another jobseeker.
Page 5: Be memorable. Be yourself.
The interviewer is not only interviewing you but a bunch of more candidates.
And almost all of them will show their different backgrounds and different reasons to hire them.
Standing out from the crowd is going to be your superpower. Stand out. Be memorable.
Page 6: Follow up immediately
Follow up after your meeting. And don’t take days doing this. This is a great sign of professionalism.
Take the time and effort to thank your interviewer(s).
Caption:
Are you applying to lots of places, sitting in for interviews, but aren’t getting any further?
Crushing your interviews is a skill that can be learned.
It’s better to come prepared for a few interviews than sit mindlessly in a hundred.
Here are 5 steps for you to crush your interviews [emoji]
Have confidence walking in, play your cards right and ace that interview! Read articles on crushing Product Management interviews on our blog. (link in bio)
What differentiates a junior from a senior PM
Page 1: What differentiates a junior from a senior Product Manager
Page 2: Responsibility
When you think about the difference of a junior-level to senior-level employee, years of experience and technical skills might come to mind first. But that isn’t instructive or helpful.
Ultimately, the most important thing which differentiates a junior from a senior is one thing:
Responsibility.
Page 3: Embrace sincere communication
Failing to communicate early enough that you can’t meet the deadline is like a big sign flashing “junior-level”. This also shows that you’re not a team player, which almost all good product managers are. Communicate early and properly with your team.
Page 4: Fully own your mistakes
This sounds so simple, yet most of the juniors don’t do this. When something goes wrong, take full responsibility for it and resist the urge to come up with excuses or point a finger at something or someone else. Look at the situation and come up with solutions.
Page 5: Learn how to Prioritize
The ability to effectively Prioritize is a crucial skill that most junior managers struggle with. A good starting point is learning a basic time-management framework to help you make decisions in the face of competing priorities.
Page 6: See the bigger picture
Junior managers often focus too much on specific details and don’t think about the broader challenges, and the bigger picture of the project they are working on.
Work intentionally, with a bigger goal in mind. Look at the team as a whole and always consider the goals of the project.
Page 7: Own your career progression
It’s you who needs to think about what you want to be. You won’t be handed any kind of promotion automatically. It’s your responsibility to progress in your career.
Actively think about how to get to the next level, instead of waiting for your seniors to give you instructions. This mindset shift alone will empower you to take charge and own your career progression.
Caption:
If you sit and wait for someone to arrive and accelerate your career progression, you’ll have to wait for a super long time, and you won’t get far.
You have to take charge of your career and get promoted from a junior product manager to a senior product manager!
We share 6 steps for you to take charge of your career and get to a senior position fast.
Product Management Jargon: Learn the lingo
Page 1: Product Management Jargon: Learn the lingo
Page 2: Product Roadmap
A product roadmap is a blueprint, a plan of action for how a product will progress over a specific period. It outlines the vision and guides the goals of the product manager and development team, and helps with prioritisation.
Page 3: Agile Methodology
Agile Methodology is a project framework used to develop products via the implementation of short cycles of work. These cycles, aka sprints, allow teams to focus on flexibility and adapt as they gain more understanding of the product and the user.
Page 4: Sprint
A sprint is a short cycle of development, used in agile methodology, to solve big problems and test new ideas in a short duration of time. A sprint breaks down big-picture goals into smaller, achievable tasks, while focusing on structured progress and clear communication.
Page 5: Product Backlog
The product backlog is a master list of work to be completed, broken down into granular tasks. This dynamic list helps the team stay focused on the most important tasks.
Page 6: User Story
User Story helps teams focus on who the target user is and what they want from the product, and why they want it. To make the most effective user story of the product, it’s important to keep in mind User Experience Design, User Interface Design, User Flow and Journeys.
Page 7: User Persona
User Persona is a representation of the product’s current and future users. Creating user Personas helps the PM team define the needs of different users and prioritize for product growth.
Page 8: Minimum Viable Product
A Minimum Viable Product is a version of a product that allows a team to test it with real users, with the least amount of time and resources dedicated to development. This helps teams put in the least effort and gain maximum results from testing the product in the market.
Page 9: Mock-up
A mockup is a realistic rendering of the product, created by a UX Designer to represent what a product or a feature will look like and how it will be used.
Page 10: Unicorn
A unicorn is an extremely rare professional in the industry who is hyper-specialist, possessing specialist-level expertise in multiple disciplines in the Product Development world.
Caption:
Product Managers have a language of their own. Having the ability to understand them and have a fluent conversation is a tool you’d want to have in your back-pocket.
That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the 9 most common terms and phrases used in the product management world!
We hope you can apply these terms and concepts to your development in your product management career!
And if you’re ready to take your product management job hunt to the next level, schedule a free consultation with one of our career counsellors by clicking the link in the bio.
Posting schedule
A scheduling software helps A LOT.
Posting on Instagram doesn’t need to take a space in your head. You can automate posting, set up, design how your posts would look on the grid, apply hashtags and other SEO improvements, and do all this in one application to increase the value of your posts.
Planoly is one such software. I used planoly for the first time, learnt it and used it to plan social media posts for Product gym.
Copywriting is fun!
I always enjoyed creating social media posts. I loved the designing aspect more and didn’t really cared much about the copy, until now.
And I discovered that copywriting is exciting!
It’s challenging for sure, but it forces your creative brain to churn out ideas and write the best copy. This exercise teaches a lot.
This project isn’t the end. It’s barely the start of my copywriting journey. It ignited a spark of creativity and now there’s no turning back!
