Timeline
Sep-Dec 2021
Company
Managing social media ambassadors at scale
Background
LoudCrowd was founded in early 2022 to support brands and micro-influencers on social media. As the Principal Product Designer, I designed and shaped the MVP, collaborating closely with Gary and Justin, the two co-founders and customer success leaders. Initially, my focus was on uncovering opportunities that would simplify identifying, interacting with, and measuring the impact of influencers on brands.
The Challenge
Loud Crowd had a challenging mission: to free brands from the burdensome tasks of using spreadsheets and manual processes for influencer management. Prominent brands such as Gymshark and Aberlour Whisky needed help securing and distributing discount codes, collaborating on creative direction, and generating detailed reports. The workload was too much for Gary and Justin to handle manually, and they needed a scalable solution to automate these tasks and improve their collaboration with a new wave of content creators known as micro-influencers.
My Role and Approach
I was responsible for leading the initial product experience of LoudCrowd. My goal was to create a minimum viable product (MVP) for the company's design system and user experience (UX) strategy. I concentrated on developing a social customer relationship management (CRM) tool that would simplify browsing through influencer content, engagement, and reporting. We followed a rapid two-week sprint cycle and worked closely as a team. Moreover, I integrated customer service insights to ensure the platform met users' needs.
I utilized iterative and research-driven approaches to enhance our product design. This involved conducting competitor analysis, customer feedback sessions, and prototype testing to refine our approach. The process led to the evolution of key features such as a simplified dashboard, new data visualizations for post content, and an intuitive search function to effectively discover influencers and content.
Hypothesis
The LoudCrowd platform allows brands to search for high-performing Instagram posts, contact the creator-influencer, and create a marketing partnership, all within LoudCrowd. By providing an easier way for brands to collaborate with several smaller, authentic influencers, will they move their resources and funding away from celebrity influencers where profit margins are slimmer?
Feature Work
Dashboarding
Throughout the design process, we faced important moments of feedback that demanded us to adjust the dashboard layout. Our goal was to prioritize the essential KPIs and simplify the search functionality. We found post count, impressions, and engagement rates valuable—however, the UGC value needed to be more straightforward for new customers to understand its relevancy.
Filtered Search
Based on customer feedback, we significantly improved the filtered search functionality. Version two includes a more opinionated set of filtering options, with unused functionality deprecated and highly used parameters elevated in prominence based on learnings from FullStory sessions.
Cards
At the post level, a LoudCrowd customer can view more detail and categorize a particular piece of content. A customer could also tag an influencer so they can reply with a message later.
Outcomes and Impact
The results were impressive. LoudCrowd managed to attract 30 major brands, including Gymshark and Lululemon, within just a few months of its launch. Additionally, the platform was instrumental in helping brands discovering 300 new micro-influencers every week on average. By focusing on smaller, more authentic influencers, platform usage resulted in a 155% increase in user-generated content. Steady growth proved the platform's effectiveness in fostering authentic brand-influencer collaborations and contributed to LoudCrowd's next funding round.
30+
Weekly new customers across sports, beauty, and fashion
300+
LoudCrowd brands were adding 300+ Instagram users weekly.
155%
Brand engagement up 155% via new micro-influencers