Instagram Hacking with High School Students

I’ve previously taught brands and grown-ups on Instagram strategy, but never would I imagine that I would be invited to teach in a high school! The topic of marketing, especially social media, is highly relevant to millennials, yet it seemed such a novel and innovative idea to apply these real life skills into actual school curriculum.

OWN Academy had put together Collide, a one-week program for American International School in Hong Kong with an interesting objective. The students were assigned real brands as clients, attended workshops to acquire marketing skills, and at the end of the program pitched a campaign as a way to get hired as interns.

During the workshop day, there were over 10 of us leaders, each with a group of high school students to learn our craft. The workshops included content creation (such as video, photography, and copy writing skills), influencer marketing, events and brand activation, and data analysis.

In a way, I wish I had time to visit other leaders’ classes to expand my knowledge on some of these topics!

I participated as a workshop leader to teach kids aged 14-18 on how to take great photographs and optimize a brand’s Instagram profile. The workshop included basic photography concepts, post production tips and hashtag hacks for an optimized Instagram feed. To keep the class engaged, we broke into hands-on sections and Q&A throughout the class.

In addition, I had a panel discussion with artist Marc Allante to interactively show the students how to promote their personal brand or client using online and offline marketing strategies.

It was amazing to see how these young minds interpret the knowledge and I felt so proud to see them get engaged. The enthusiasm and creativity in some star students were truly incredible!

Thank you to Natalie and her team at OWN Academy for having me!

Photography by Derek Chow