Meleah's Fit
How might I go about creating content about a specific topic using Instagram?
Overview
To be a successful content creator you have to be able to create something that people can engage with. Something they relate to. For my first focused content creator project, I went with something that I engage with constantly on social media. That is, fitness pages. I wanted to create one for myself and try out all the trends I had been seeing lately on my social media feed. What better way to learn than learn from the people who are successful at doing just that, creating content.
Initial Planning
Some of my first thoughts when it came to doing a content creation project were what topic has a wide variety of things to explore and what do I find engaging? I wanted to be able to create a variety of content that related back to the same thing. Some of my initial ideas when it came to fitness was obviously workout videos. Since those can never really be overdone, I decided to keep looking into ways other fitness pages produced content. I looked into things like health and photos and background. How fitness came to be a part of someone's life. I also looked into things like sponsorships, many fitness pages are sponsored in someway or another by fitness brands so I wanted to create a post specific towards a sponsorship. From there it was putting my ideas on paper and getting to work to create the content.
Behind the Scenes
So this project really took me outside of my comfort zone. Although I love to follow those types of accounts I never really thought of myself as one be the person in the photos and videos. So some of my first posts have some small mistakes in them as I'm learning what goes into creating a seamless Instagram post or reel. Like in my oatmeal prep reel, I poured the water to fast into my bowl. However, as I've noticed on social media, followers enjoy these types of small mistakes, because we are all human. People don't like content that is too perfect, it ties back to content that people relate with.
Caption Writing
Do you ever feel when you post on social media you have the images but have no idea what to say? That's how I feel every time I post. But I'm not alone there are entire blogs dedicated to helping people write the perfect caption. For my posts I decided to go a little on the motivational, supportive, informational side. I wanted my captions to speak to the reader like a friend cheering you on. Social media is designed to let your followers engage with your content and one of the best ways to do this is by writing captions that let your followers interact with what you're saying.
Content Testing
If you are familiar with social media, you know that before you post anything it usually undergoes some sort of testing process, whether that be does it fit within my feed theme or will my video play my sound correctly. A few things I learned from testing my content for this project was to use the save as a draft feature. Before my post was ready to be posted I would double check that if I left my post for a minute it would still work as I thought it should when I came back to my draft. I also use another app called Planoly, it helps you see what your feed will look like and plan your posts so that your Instagram feed is aesthetically pleasing. I also own another account where I usually do my pre-post testing. I will post to this random account so I can see what the post looks like and test if things work properly before posting to the official account.
Lessons Learned
There are so many ways to use Instagram. They've continually grown with the times, by adding videos and now reels Instagram will continue to try and up their game. The only way to learn how to create content is to do it. Test out new ideas even if those ideas may include a few mistakes. It's the best way to learn and keep up with other creators. I don't think I give content creators much credit. This is hard work. It takes time and effort and retake after retake and not too mention even if you put in the work, users still might not even like or engage with the content you worked on. By completing this project I learned that content is never ending. Even if you put all your effort into one post, your followers will want another one in the morning.
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