Social Failures: Woman Arrested For Entering HS, And Harassing Kids for IG Follows.

Published May 13, 2021

In the land of terrible ideas, you may find a story much like this one: According to Local10 News in Miami, a 28-year-old woman was arrested for trespassing into a high school and… badgering zoollennials for social media follows?

Now, if you just read the lede the same way I did and audibly laugh-gasped with a confused “what the fuck,” I assure you: the story is just all-around weird. Apparently, the 28-year-old suspect, Audrey Nicole Francisquini, entered American Senior High School in Miami, FL on Monday impersonating herself as a student with the intention of building up her Instagram follower count. When approached by security officials at the high school, Francisquini said she was a new student trying to find the registration office.

“However, instead of walking to the office, she walked straight past it down a hallway, confronting multiple students as they were trying to enter a classroom.” In this interaction, security footage showed Francisquini handing out pre-printed pamphlets to students with her social media username on the fliers.

It was after her confrontation with students that security intervened a second time, but when she refused to stop to speak to them, the security guards notified the school administration that there might be a potential threat to campus.

Upon noticing that school officials were starting to surround her, the suspect ignored all calls to stop and promptly exited the building. Through Francisquini’s Instagram profile, authorities were ultimately able to arrest her at home.

Yeah…. Soooo…. Here are my thoughts: This woman got arrested for executing what was objectively, a broke dick social media marketing strategy that made people question if they were in a measurable degree of danger. That is terrible unto itself. But Francisquini’s social media strategy is broke dick for a couple of reasons, and I’ll just briefly go over them.

• Why was she trying to recruit Instagram followers in high school? Beats the shit outta’ me… – The high school demo is currently Generation Z, which has social media preferences that skew very heavily with TikTok. It’s not that Gen Z doesn’t have Instagram, so much as it is that Instagram serves a different purpose than TikTok. Instagram is about more branding and polish, while TikTok is more about authenticity. In reality, if Audrey Nicole Francisquini wanted to try some brazen shit like handing out fliers with her social media handle on them in a high school, she could have at least handed out fliers with TikTok handles on them.

• I appreciate the hustle, but handing out fliers is not how you grow social pages—I think on a certain level, it should be commended that this woman had enough courage to interface with young people directly to promote her “brand.” Let’s just get that shit out of the way. I also appreciate that she thought the best way to do it was via the “Street team” approach, such as handing out fliers and investing in physical marketing collateral. But aside from the fact that trespassing into a high school is just the wrong approach, social media marketing straight up doesn’t need all of that shit. It just doesn’t. If you want to get followers on any profile, you have to not only generate value, but you also have to reciprocate attention. This is usually the oft-forgotten second half of how you grow a brand organically using just social.

Of course, there are controlling factors such as content length, production timing, social channel considerations, and whatnot, but this is the basic equation. The truth of the matter is that social media just doesn’t require all of that extra stuff. It doesn’t require breaking into places. It doesn’t require disguises, and it sure as shit does not require fliers. What it does require, however, is a willingness to invest time into building your platform on the channel that you choose. If you want to call it customer interaction, or social media “street fighting,” I don’t give a shit. I think the point is that investing time into growing on any platform—including the internet itself—will always require knowing your audience, and actually spending time on the place where you want to grow. Sure, being in-person helps—sometimes—but as most brands are increasingly online-only, it is becoming easier to find people in your target demographic from all over the country and world. The problem with being in-person is that if what you offer is online, and not in person, then your in-person presence can be irrelevant. In the case of the kids in that high school, it can creep people the fuck out. If in-person interaction is the core principle of how you generate social media follows, then what you offer should primarily be in-person as well—whether that is a physical business location, in-person entertainment, or an immersive experience. That way, foot traffic can serve as the is the basis of a meaningful in-person social media conversion strategy—and you don’t have to promote in places where you shouldn’t be promoting.

As you might suspect, if you are promoting in a high school, or in a place that is concentrated with minors, then what you should be offering should be suited for minors as well. This can be a very sensitive place in promotions, as people feel kind of weird about brands approaching their child with targeted messages—even brands that we think of as respectable, such as the various U.S. military service branches that actively recruit in high schools. At the end of the day, however, what you offer should be relevant—and not just some 28-year-old wannabe influencer bull crap.

Not taking these things—as well as many other nuanced factors—into consideration is to execute a social media strategy that is at best, trial and error, but at worst, dangerous scattershot that can get you thrown in jail. At the end of the day, however, I hope Audrey Nicole Francisquini learned her lesson—and even more learned what they could from her mistake. (info via Fstoppers, Local10 News – Miami)