My Social Media Impact

Hello everyone. This blog post is a little off topic from my normal posts however I wanted to share how I began my blog post and how I supported it with various social media pages.

Let’s start from the beginning. Firstly, I set up this… my blog. I chose a minimalistic design that wasn’t particularly geared to any particular audience. This was chosen due to that wide variation of my target audience and how my blog was aimed for anyone and everyone who has wanted to or tried to complete the photography hacks you see. The colour blue was chosen to for its association with calm and relaxing emotions. Many times, people have already tried these hacks and failed, so may have made their way to my blog to see if it was actually possible in the first place. Therefore, the relaxing tones of blue will help to keep them calm and lower frustration, as my blog is all about being on your side and helping you to improve your photography.

With the design complete, it was then when I created my logo. I used a website to aid me in this as what I created would be the face of my brand. To make the logo stand out, I had it placed on a white background to pull it forward from the blues in my blog. The words ‘Truth or Lie:’ where set at a smaller text size. This was because it was a part of my brand name, but I wanted the words ‘Photography Hacks’ to be the main focus to be able to tell the audience straight away what my blog would be about. These words were made bigger and highlighted in a yellow colour. This was to make it very clear what my blog would be about. The colours blue and yellow work hand in hand, in my opinion, as they complement each other. Also, the colour connotations of the colour yellow refer to happiness and joy. This would reflect their feeling and emotions after my blog posts, as these blog posts are essentially all about saving everyone time and that brings joy to people as time is so precious.

This brings me to the social media pages that I set up. The goal of these was to raise awareness of my blog as well as a place we can all interact. I started with a simple Twitter account. This would be my main way to engage with my audience as I was dedicated to posting multiple times a day as well as following as many people as possible to grow my audience. The way I posted went as follows: one post about my blog such as an update, 2 posts that are retweets of another account that may or may not have been associated with my blog (much of the time tweets that are trending) and a final tweet that has no relation to my blog but that catches the attention of my followers, something relatable or funny. I used multiple hashtags per post, these would have associations with what the tweet was about, I would also add trending hashtags too so my tweets would appear on more screens. Emoji’s were also used to engage with my audience as this adds context behind the tweet as well as adding colour to my feed.

I realised that to show everyone how to complete these hacks that I would need to make YouTube videos of my own. This meant that I had to create a YouTube account for the brand itself. this would be a place where all the video could be found, as well as a place where I could interact with the viewers through comments and statistics from viewers liking the video. Although these videos were made public and could be seen by people without links directly to the video, the content did not display on my channels page. However, the media did embed itself onto all my blog posts, making it easier for my audience to navigate from page to page to explore my video tutorials and reviews.

These social media platforms have been around for some time. In order to keep up with the times and engage with all kinds of audiences, I felt it was important to my brand to explore TikTok and to see not only how the app works but also how to create and publish videos of my own. What I did for these was shorten my YouTube videos into 3 parts as there is a time limit on TikTok. I found that when accounts had videos in parts that viewers were more likely to go to their page to watch the rest of the parts. Once they are on your page, they are more likely to watch other videos as well as follow your page. From trial and error, I found that by using trending backing music tracks that more people were about to discover your video. This is because users watch videos through music tracks, they enjoy. With the tap of a button they can find more videos that’s used the same music. Therefore, using trending music in my videos meant that I was more accessible and appeared on more people’s phones. I used hashtags that were both relevant and trending on TikTok so that my videos would appear more. Finally, TikTok has a feature called ‘For You Page’. A way you can appear on this page is by using the hashtag #fyp or #foryoupage. When doing this you are opening yourself up to more engagement and views. I used my personal account to comment #fyp on the videos of my brand so that it started the movement off. Also, by liking my own videos it encouraged viewers to like as well as no one wants to be the first person to like something. They are more likely to interact with your video if other people have first. This is because more people in society are followers rather than leaders.

The last social media page that I used was Pinterest. This was due to the fact that I knew that is could be a home for my brand, but I didn’t know how it worked and how you used it as an account publisher rather then user. After understanding the way the page worked about how to use it effectively. I started making my own Pins as part of my ‘Photography Hacks’ board. The way I used this was by adding a photography of what shows what I did. I then copied the first paragraph of my blog and altered it as a teaser. I included the link of the full blog so that my audience were able to find the original source. Overall, I used Pinterest as a way of teasing the audience so that they knew what my blog post was about, yet the full article wasn’t there in front of them. This would encourage them to click the link to go and read the full blog post.

Overall, I found that the experimental use of these social media pages, particularly with TikTok and Twitter that the use of these support pages grew my online presence for the brand and help promote and encourage my posts. With the following I gained, I believe that this blog and brand has the potential to move forward to something bigger in the future with the support of my followers.

-Truth or Lie: Photography Hacks