#abdyear2

[thefavouritechild]

TUMBLR’S QUEUE SYSTEM AND HOW TO USE IT

With Tumblr, you don’t have to use an outsourced app such as Buffer to schedule your posts to upload - it has it’s own in-built ‘queue’ system, wherein you can choose how many posts a day to post, within what hours. This gives a bit less control that Buffer, as with Buffer you can select specific times down to the minute, and Tumblr just chooses a time within the hours you’ve set to post it, meaning you could miss a peak time by just half hour if that’s when it chooses to schedule it, and you’d have to rejig what hours you want ALL your posts to upload to just to try and get that single post to a specific time, which is very fiddly and inconvenient. However, unlike Buffer (which merely sends you a reminder that it’s time to post, and it’s up to you to actually push it through) Tumblr’s queue system is completely automated, so once it’s set you don’t need to manually post anything at all, it will just immediately upload it to your blog when the time hits. 

This is very convenient if you want to keep your blog running when you’re not going to be online for a while - people utilise it during exam periods, or holiday times, to make sure their blog will be updated a decent amount of times per day to maintain interaction with their followers without them actually having to be present themselves. Pretty savvy to ensure you don’t lose anyone’s interest in periods of absence. 

[thefavouritechild]

POST-IT-NOTE-IT

BEST TIMES TO POST ON TUMBLR

Likewise to what I did with Instagram, I wanted to research the best times to post on Tumblr - the results are drastically different from what I found out about Instagram, proving that one size really doesn’t fit all. Unlike Instagram, Tumblr’s best hours are really early morning, or really late at night, seeing as their userbase are usually in some form of education and will be mostly checking their phones when they wake up and when they get home. 

Source: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/timing-everything-tumblr

[thefavouritechild]

CONCLUSIONS, THOUGHTS, FEELINGS.

THIS PROJECT DIDN’T LIKE ME AND I DIDN’T LIKE IT EITHER.

I definitely struggled with this project, and I know why - I know where I had my falls and where I fucked up. Visuals have never been my strongest aspect, nor the aspect I ever have any interest in doing; I put all my energy into my research and my strategy, and drop the ball when it comes to actually producing the outcomes needed to bring my project to a conclusion. I was steered in the direction of copywriting and strategy in the past year, and told to keep my visuals super simple so that those two things can shine through it and be my main body of work, but when confronted with a project that puts emphasis on the visuals, I overwhelmed myself and bit off more than I could chew in the timeframe I had available to me. This is definitely a project where I should have either kept it very simple content wise, or worked in a group with someone who excels in visuals and maybe falls flat in their strat, so that we could have shared the work 50/50 and collaboratively come out with a solid bulk of work. Getting back into the rhythm of class after months being away, and retaining the momentum and progress I achieved last year has definitely been difficult - it’s felt like starting an engine on a vintage car that hasn’t been driven in years, and I think clawing my way back up to the point I was at last year is definitely going to take some stops and starts, and some trips and falls, but that’s just how the creative process works. Not everything can be a win, and this project just wasn’t the one for me, son.

But I bit off more than I could chew, and didn’t spit it out. I continued to struggle through it because some work is better than no work, and I knew if I backtracked and tried to start from scratch with such a small amount of time left, I’d panic and get further behind and end up having nothing to show for it. I’m proud that I was able to put some work out into the world, but not proud of what work I’ve put out into the world. Social media, whilst being perceived as being fast paced, actually needs time to stew in order to engage an audience and get the reaction and responses you want - you can’t put out little content and expect a lot back, you have to pile it on and keep at it to get the results you desire, which was where I fell behind and got lost. I didn’t leave myself enough time to push out enough content to keep on stirring up engagement and get myself a foothold with my target audience. The engagement I got was minimal, at best, and nonexistent on some platforms entirely. I stubbornly refused to use other peoples content because it felt lazy to me to do so, and I didn’t want to ride on the coattails of others and fall into this trap of being able to use what other people have produced and then fall out of motivation to produce anything myself, but in this day and age stealing content from other people to use on your page is fine, it’s what everyone does. Brands capitalise on memes, repost from people who use their products to make themselves look more authentic and approachable - it’s all part of the strategy of inserting yourself into an online community and getting a basis there to start pushing out your own content that they’ll then be more inclined to engage with. 

Though, this project wasn’t a huge flop - going wrong is just as important and valuable as getting something right. You learn from mistakes and adapt to correct them next time, and if I had more time on this project I would know exactly where to push it next to start to generate more engagement. I would just rapid fire more content, keep uploading and inserting myself into those spaces, follow a lot more pages, message a lot more people, comment on a lot more stuff, really make my presence known where I haven’t done so far. 

[thefavouritechild]

DUNE, YOUR SHOES SUCK.

LAST MINUTE IDEA. 

Thanks Mum, she thought of this one. Using her Dune box from the boots she recently bought, we had one last ditch attempt to get some engagement on Instagram - before my Challah shoes completely fell apart, too. I put the shoes in the Dune box, and presented them as a new purchase, and uploaded the image to Instagram. It’s the image that has definitely gotten the most likes out of everything that I’ve uploaded so far, excluding Junaid from all the results because he’s ruining my experiments (5 likes total, 4 excluding Junaid). Whilst some seem to be from my target audience, others seem to be from elsewhere, including a makeup blogger who god knows why they’re here.

I also took photos of my breaking Challah shoes, and messaged a complaint to Dune about how unsatisfied I am with my latest purchase. Predictably, they didn’t reply. Typical, big corporations never want to admit to their wrongdoings. 

[thefavouritechild]

I PLAYED BY THE RULES AND GOT NOTHING. NADA, ZIP, ZILCH.

REDDIT RESULTS - EVEN WHEN YOU DON’T GET BANNED, YOU DON’T NECESSARY GET LIKED (OR UPVOTED)

With Reddit, I followed Steve’s advice and played by the rules - turns out this was shit advice, because even when I played by the rules I wasn’t allowed to post my content. I found two Jewish groups that were a lot less serious about the religion than others - /jewdank and /judaism. I read both of their rules, and posted the same picture and same caption in both groups. /jewdank gave me no results whatsoever; merely a single upvote that I got super excited about until I realised I’d accidentally upvoted myself when trying to refresh. 

/judaism wouldn’t even let me post - they have a bot that automatically deletes posts by new users to prevent spam, and you have to message the admins to get your post approved, which I did. And despite me having sat there and read all there rules (of which there are a lot, Jesus Christ), and ensuring my post cleared all the rules and was acceptable, they told me it wasn’t the kind of content they’d approve anyway. So personally, I think they’re assholes who need to either update their rules, or make them more explicit.

Basically, Reddit was a flop.

[thefavouritechild]

TUMBLR PREFERS TO BE GLUTEN FREE

RESULTS FROM TUMBLR POSTS

Like with my new Instagram posts, I adjusted my tone of voice on Tumblr, being a little more perky, more approachable, less serious. Also with Tumblr, I was less indirect about my intentions, and was very open with admitting that my blog will just document me showing my devotion to Challah by wearing it in my day to day life. Tumblr is a bit less serious than Instagram, favouring ‘shitposts’ over aesthetics, so there wasn’t much reason to play pretend when being open about the fact that I was just having a bit of a shit and a giggle would probably go down better in this scene. 

For my header and profile picture, I also re-used imagery from my Instagram, as it seems appropriate for icons and headers due to its gaudy nature. 

My engagement from Tumblr ended up being virtually non-existent. I used the queue system to schedule my posts to be roughly in the time range that is predicted to have the most traffic, but only one of my posts got any attention, which was my final photo set of my brother wearing his Challah slippers and ‘loafing around’. This was reblogged by one blog that has a good chunk of follows (around 2k, nothing extreme), but even then that sparked only 2 extra notes - both likes, no further reblogs. This is a pretty disappointing result, but Tumblr is very community based and it takes some time to build up a good following and have people engage - I spent years on Tumblr slowly climbing my way up in followers and engagement, and still never really triumphed. I didn’t leave myself enough time to properly embed myself in this community and be able to get the response I’d been wanting. 

As you can see, interaction was scarce. I used the queue system to make sure my posts were uploaded within one of the peak times I found through my research - 4am-7am EST. Even so, not much resulted from my uploads. I tried to use the most popular tags for the Jewish community to get my posts into circulation (the hashtags recommended to me by Tumblr itself based on the amount of posts and interactions that occur within said tags), but my efforts amounted to 3 likes, and 1 reblog, across two posts. One post with 3 notes (2 likes a reblog), and one post (my first post), with one like. The post with one like is from one of Tumblr’s out and proud bots. Probably just to encourage me to keep going on Tumblr. 

[thefavouritechild]

LOAFING AROUND

SHOOT THREE

As a final series of pictures, I decided to do an at-home shoot visualising the Challah shoes as the slippers they look oh-so similar too, getting my lovely model to lounge around in his dressing gown, feet propped up and comfortably cushioned in his lovely Challah shoes. These also give a new perspective to the shoes, showing the ‘soles’ as opposed to only the outside, which I think breaks the series up and allows me to utilise the same pair of shoes in 3 different ways across three different themes, meaning I got the most bang for my buck and didn’t waste too much food. These are also a good way to round off the series, as the photos start in the morning, end in the evening with him settling down. A neat little narrative of a day in the life of Challahchalic. 

[thefavouritechild]

OPEN-TOED IN WINTER?

SHOOT TWO

These are the selected photos from my first new shoot, experimenting with a new pair of Challah shoes - I stuck with the open toed look, but went bad to my original plan of using bare feet instead of socked feet, which is more uncomfortable to look at if you ask me. I also switched Challah type to Plaited Challah - as it’s longer, meaning feet can fit more comfortable inside of it without hanging out the back as was the case with the Knotted Challah. This also means it’s less prone to breaking, and has more of a shoe-like appearance.

I had to use a different model for this set of photos due to availability, so for the sake of consistency the final photos I post from this set will be those not featuring my models face, so that I don’t run the risk of outing myself as an in-genuine poster who doesn’t actually wear Challah in their day to day life.

[thefavouritechild]

DOUBLE TROUBLE

PRESENTING TO STEVE AND BRIAN

My powerpoint to Steve and Brian was shoddy, at best, and I had little to show them - I began work on my new strat courtesy of Steve’s help, but had gotten little response to my posts thus far, and had yet to disrupt my feed with my wearable Challah photography. Still, the presentation was incredible useful and successful in terms of helping me progress my project. I got positive feedback on my actual idea, although Brian wasn’t wholly impressed with all my iterations of wearable Challah - the shoes? Inspired. The rest of it? Naff. He encouraged me to stick with the shoes and really push it - photograph my model wearing the shoes in every day settings, places you wouldn’t expect to see someone wearing Challah shoes. He also told me to think about different kinds of shoes, such as high heels. I’m not really sure he knows how strong bread is, or how feasible it is, but hey ho, experimentation sometimes brings surprisingly fruitful results, so we’ll see where high heeled Challah gets me. Hopefully not in trouble with my dad for wasting (more) bread.

Another aspect he wasn’t impressed with was my insight, which apparently isn’t an insight. Whoopsie? He said that an insight should inspire creative responses, and that my ‘insight’ was really just stating a simple fact that doesn’t really do anything or provoke any kind of initial inspirations. He suggested my new insight be ‘There’s nothing Challah can’t do’, which really encapsulates my idea as I’m demonstrating that yes, there’s LITERALLY nothing Challah can’t do, including being shoes. He liked my tone of voice - he said that pretending these activities are normal, and remaining indignant to opposition is a good route, really big up how great Challah shoes are, be confident in my absurd use of Challah as shoes. 

He agreed with Steve’s suggestion from our 1-1 for me to assimilate before I disrupt, and that this is important in achieving the goal I want. People are unlikely to engage with foreign content, but will be lured towards something familiar. Once they have been hooked, then you can bombard them with the strange and bizarre, but that there is little success in going wacky straight off the bat, especially with social media. 

During my presentation, I also explained the Jewish community on Tumblr as I did with Steve, and Brian thinks that Tumblr is definitely the area to focus on - try and insert myself into the Jewblr/Jumblr community, make use of their memes, their content, make myself at home there. 

The other main outcome: post some damn content. Just get stuff out. Time is running out. Which honestly? Not a very helpful reminder. You should see my blood pressure, Steve, I’m very aware time is running out and I’m wishing I was Adam Sandler in Click and could just press pause for a bit. Or rewind to the beginning of the project and give myself a good old slap to stop researching and start doing. 

The feedback overall was positive, though - which was reassuring. All that time I spent developing my idea actually paid off, because it’s a good idea. Now I just need to do it, put it out there, and see what I get back from the depths of the internet. That’s my biggest downfall - I have the idea, just not the content, and now I have a very limited window (even tighter than before) to produce what I need, get it out into the world, and get any engagement from it. It’s going to be a busy weekend, in Steve’s words. My time management is definitely an area of improvement, as is my focus point - I need to give equal time to all areas of a project when I’m working solo, not just the area I’m interested in. 

FEEDBACK IN MY NOTES:

FEEDBACK FROM BRIANS EMAIL:

[thefavouritechild]

ASSIMILATE

… AND THEN DISRUPT.

Beginning to act on the discussion I had with Steve, I deleted my previous posts from my Instagram account and focused on pushing out content that would fit with what’s already on the Challah scene on Instagram, to try and engage the audience that’s interested in that kind of content before confronting them with my experiments. This method definitely garnered me more attention than my previous attempt - I got a few more likes than I have before, and even a comment, which was a result I wasn’t expecting. 

The captions I have been using on these images also gear me up towards posting reviews, introducing what I’ve bought and the visual aspects of it I like and my thoughts from just my observations, attempting to tease an audience with the promise of more in depth reactions and reviews to follow to see if this could intrigue people to engage with my content and follow to see the end results.

As you can see, I’ve shifted tone of voice from my previous blunt style of copy. This is due to me trying to make myself apart of the community rather than ostracising myself from it. I realised that whilst I can be confident in my use of Challah in this purpose, I can still remain perky and upbeat, and that in fact makes it somewhat more comedic in its value as it’s more casually put as opposed to coming across as stern and planned. I’ve began to also integrate emojis into my speech to try and add some more feeling and personality into my persona. This makes me seem much more approachable, and gives me a friendlier dynamic that is alluring when you’re looking for entertainment and escapism on social media. Nobody wants to follow a grouch.

The reaction to my disruptive posts after assimilating however actually received LESS engagement than they had originally, having 3 likes on one, 2 likes on the other, similar to before, but 2/3 likes and 1/2 likes this time being classmates of mine, and only one like on each post being my target audience (Mandylicious, back for more, my no.1 fan):

This shows that assimilating before disrupting doesn’t yield as strong results I was hoping, despite how the previous posts had been getting a lot more success and engagement. It’s not yet a perfect science, or a perfect strategy, and whilst it makes sense in theory it’s not living up to its potential in practice. 

[thefavouritechild]

1-1 WITH STEVE

ASSIMILATE BEFORE DISRUPTING?

Time management on this project has not been my friend - spending an overwhelming amount of time planning, researching, and developing a strat, I’ve left myself little time to upload and put to practice my posts to see how much engagement I’ll get. And left myself even less time to react to my engagement and adjust my strategy accordingly to try a different approach if I completely flop (which I have. I have completely flopped.)

To try and not cause further harm to my situation, I arranged a 1-1 with Steve to put to work Operation: Damage Control, and get some feedback sooner than my timetabled contact time so that I don’t waste the days in between not acting when I could be reacting and furthering my project, as opposed to waiting almost a week to get the necessary feedback that’s needed to help me progress. 

Speaking with Steve was incredibly helpful, and helped me reorganise my thoughts and my strat to better increase the chances of engagement and up the level of content I have on my Instagram without needing to go and find the time to produce more. Where I had decided to disrupt the feed, as opposed to assimilate, Steve suggested maybe I should assimilate and THEN disrupt - get my audience expecting something specific from me, before delivering the unexpected (The Charlie the Unicorn method of narrative.) He suggested that as I am setting myself up as a review page, that I post non-suspecting photos of Challah at first, building up the expectation that my review will be on taste, and introducing my audience to a familiar sight that they are more likely to want to follow and engage with. The, BAM, I hit them with my reviews wherein I have utilised Challah as clothes. This not only ups my content, but also my chances of getting some more solid engagement as I am playing to what’s already popular instead of trying to push my way into the limelight as something that people really do not want to see.  We also discussed my next moves in terms of branching out what social media platforms I’m active on - we discussed Reddit, and Steve talked to me in depth about the logistics of using Reddit, and how it works. Reddit is made up of subreddits, each subreddit has a theme, and then a set of rules you have to follow in order to be able to post your content within said subreddit. If you don’t comply to these rules, your content is deleted and you’re banned from the group. And whilst in some cases getting banned is technically a reaction and engagement, it’s so easy to be banned on Reddit that it counts for nothing - it’s better to play by the rules and try to get genuine engagement rather than act like an idiot and get an easy ban.  The other social media platform we talked about was Tumblr - this is a platform I am a lot more familiar with due to my teenage years being spent here all the time. Always. Forever. Don’t ask for my blog name you will never receive it. It must burn in the depths forever, never to be seen by people who know me now. Dark days. 

Tumblr has a very large and very active Jewish community called Jumblr or Jewblr - Jews on Tumblr are very vocal and proactive, but are also young in age so are more accepting of a bit of a pisstake. Though, you’d be hardpressed to find a Jew that didn’t make self-deprecating, somewhat anti-semitic jokes. It’s part of the culture. The game plan resulting from this 1-1 is to get everything up on Insta and just rub my hands free of that platform, and start looking into posting on Reddit and Tumblr. 

[thefavouritechild]

“SHE SAID NO! ENGAGEMENT FAIL!”

RESULTS FROM INITIAL INSTAGRAM UPLOADS

My engagement from my initial Instagram posts has been lacklustre, at best - 3 likes, no comments, and one of the likes isn’t authentic as it’s from Junaid, who is Muslim and so definitely not my target audience, just a good pal taking pity on my woeful interaction. However, some success comes from the fact that the other two likes are completely genuine, and from my target audience - they were not lured to my page by me beginning any interactions with them, but purely by my content, which is incredibly cool. I managed to get strangers to interact with my Challah shoes, congrats me. 

However, this is still not a huge amount of interaction, though I have managed to engage some people from my target audience. Positing more is most likely the key to garnering more attention, and from my research into Instagram’s best times to post, I have scheduled my future posts using Buffer to make sure they are going online at the name of peak engagement. This should hopefully put them into circulation at a time when people are actively checking their feeds and the tags they follow.

[thefavouritechild]

PLAN TO ENGAGE

WHAT’S THE BEST TIME TO POST ON INSTAGRAM?

In order to try and maximise the engagement I received from Instagram, I wanted to research to see if there’s any particular times where it’s almost the ‘peak’ time to receive engagement, in the hopes that adhering to these times might give me a little boost in the amount of interaction I see. 

I found this result, which documents the research found by Sprout Social, a social media management platform: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/instagram-best-time-post

The overall takeaways from these results are:

[thefavouritechild]

MEDIUM: PHOTOGRAPHY

WHY DO I FEEL THIS IS THE MOST APPROPRIATE?

Using photography as the medium for my social media postings allows me to more closely control the persona I am presenting. As my model is not a professional (in any sense of the word), I don’t want his embarrassment or lack of experience to influence my audience and how I come across on social media. Photos capture mere snapshots, videos are harder to control when you are working with someone.

As for other mediums, such as illustration - my strat revolves around wearable Challah, and for this to be consistent and successful I feel the most appropriate presentation on social media is documentation in the form of photography to capture the reality of how stupid and absurd this is. With illustration, the boundaries of reality are lifted, and people expect to see some weird and wacky shit. I want to keep the realism of someone actually wearing Challah, for the pure absurdity of it.

[thefavouritechild]

SHOOT ONE: THE EDITS

My plan to have my shoot be taken in a casual setting, whilst attractive in theory, didn’t pan out in practice, and the background was too distracting and the imagery looked too lazily shitty. So I decided to put effort into making it shitty. Using my research photograph, I cut the background from my shoot photo and photoshopped my model over the background Challah imagery - this way, it has clearly purposefully been edited to be this way, but it looks god awful. But now it’s intentional, so it doesn’t feel like such a fail.  These look very tacky and gaudy, but that adds to the humour effect - these are supposed to be Challah reviews, but it clearly looks like I’m purposefully taking the piss by posting these. Partnered with the blunt tone of voice, it should be an annoying disruption to the crisp and aesthetic Challah tag feed. 

[thefavouritechild]

SHOOT ONE: VERDICT AND THE FINAL CUT

These photos are the initial photos I’ve taken as part of my social media strategy - they demonstrate my brother (my model, and the face of my persona) wearing Challah in the three ways I planned. Adhering the bra to the body didn’t end up being feasible, and he refused to go shirtless (coward), so the best we could do was him holding his Challah tiddies to his chest as if he is groping himself - not the most visually engaging, but funny nonetheless. 

I’m not overly happy with this shoot - it seems flat, and boring, and the background setting is a bit too messy and bland, and in some cases overexposed due to incorrect camera settings on my part. To salvage these, they will need to be edited further to be able to be of some use.