It’s my favorite time of year: sunshine, warm breezes, peach cobbler, and …the Textile Design Lab’s Summer of Creativity!
This is our 5th Summer of Creativity course and it’s something that our community looks forward to each year.
In past years we have covered a variety of topics in our summer of creativity sessions. From branding to nurturing our creative spirit, we have always used this special time together to positively impact one aspect of our creative lives and businesses.
This year I am thrilled to explore the topic of social media and how it can be used in a more sustainable and impactful way. We’ll explore how we can use social media to improve our businesses, without hindering our creativity. And we’ll do so together, as a community, through inspiring creative exercises and live events.
This course runs from July 19 – August 27, 2021, and is free to all Textile Design Lab members.
Through this course you will:
Discover how to use social media in a sustainable way. I believe you can effectively use social media without it controlling your life or taking time away from your creativity. Imagine having a system for documenting your creative process, allowing you to spend less time preparing social media posts and more time doing what you love.
Feel more confident knowing who you should be connecting with through social media and what you should be posting. We’ll explore a holistic approach to marketing and identify who you want to reach, and which platforms and post types will make the most impact.
Course Schedule (July 19 – August 27, 2021)
Guest Speaker
We are pleased to welcome marketing expert Brooke Ashley of Flowstate11 as our guest speaker for this course. She will be sharing valuable information with us in the first two weeks of the course.
Week One: Getting Started
Lesson One: In this first lesson of the course, you’ll identify what you hope to achieve through social media. For example, are you using social media to connect with agents or to sell products? These details are important to creating your social marketing strategy.
Lesson Two: Introduction to Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. The lessons learned in this course can be applied to all social media platforms, but we’ll be focusing on these three during the course. You’ll discover best practices for each of these three platforms including: who’s using each platform, which post types perform the best, preferred image sizes, and more.
Lesson Three: You’ll learn how to set up your Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn accounts.
Live Session: We’ll come together as a community to discover what’s special about each of our own businesses. This will be a group brainstorming session with guided questions and discussion opportunities.
Bonus Training: We are pleased to welcome marketing expert Brooke Ashley of Flowstate11 as our guest speaker for this course. In Week One, Brooke will be speaking on her approach to developing a holistic marketing strategy.
Week Two: Developing Your Plan
Lesson Four: We’ll explore what to post on social media, as well as industry specific questions such as how to protect our work. You’ll create a library of post ideas to refer back to in the future.
Lesson Five: We’ll share our favorite tools for automating social media and setting ourselves up for success.
Lesson Six: You’ll create a social media workflow connecting all the social media pieces. This workflow will be centered around your creative process and your social media goals.
Bonus Training: In Week Two, Brooke Ashley of Flowstate11 will share her tips for creating captivating video content for social media.
Weeks Three, Four & Five: 21 Days of Posting
You’ll experience three inspiring weeks of daily social media prompts and “Instagram worthy” live creative challenges held over Zoom. During these live sessions we’ll have fun and create amazing artwork, but we’ll also take time for photos, screenshots, and process videos that you can share through social media. You’ll discover that documenting your creative process and sharing it on social media doesn’t have to take too much time… And it can be a lot of fun!
We’ll use the power of our community to lift each other up and promote our posts. You’ll no longer have to fear being alone on social media, speaking to no one. You’ll be put into small groups to comment, share, and engage on each other’s social media posts. The Pattern Observer team will also be staying involved and doing what they can to make your posts as visible as possible.
Week Six: Reflection
In this final week of the course, you’ll take time to explore social media analytics and how your posts performed. What resonated with your audience? What should you post more of in the future? How can you continue to simplify and improve your social media workflow? The answers to these important questions will set you up for future success on social media.
Change the way that you think about social media in just six weeks.
We are excited to make your Summer of Creativity more than just a course. We want it to become an experience which will transform your design business for the better. Together, as a vested community of designers, we have incredible potential to accomplish this.
