Context of Practice 3 project proposal

What impact can Instagram have on the success of brands?

I have decided to research in to the above topic for my CoP 3 project, i find this a very interesting topic due to the power of social media and the ways in which the platform can be utilised to increase brand success. 

I am particularly interested in this topic due to the fact that my own brand The Prawn Shop heavily relies on the use of instagram in order to boost ales and reach a larger audience, allowing me to see the ways in which certain posts can have a larger impact.

One are of this project i am interested to explore is the ways in which the aesthetic of a brands instagram page can impact the amount of followers an account has, i think this would be an interesting aspect to develop an experiment around; using my own brands account and over a week or so see the affect of posting 'aesthetically pleasing' photos will have on my sales figures and follower count. 

The contexts of my theoretical and practical research i believe revolve around a number of different aspects such as social, technology and aesthetics. 

theories i believe would be useful to look in to in terms of my research; 

 Reciprocity Norm - our obligation to return favours done by others - eg 'like for like' 

Scarcity Principle - the theory that people want what is in short supply, the desire will increase as you anticipate regret you might feel if you do not act fast enough

I will conduct a variety of experiments during this project, looking at how the changes in social media approaches can have on a brands success, using my own brand as the test subject. 

Although at this stage i'm not certain on what it is i'd like to produce, i think it would be interesting to try and create something along the lines of a fake social media persona, similar to the computer generated 'bots' which have a large following on social media, however they are not real people. 

reading list: 

'instagram for business dummies' 

'the cyber effect' 

My plan of action is to find more appropriate books to read during summer, and begin to develop arguments during summer. 

I also want to conduct a series of 'social media experiments' over summer and record the results.