You wouldn’t call me an early adopter when it comes to taking advantage of developments in technology and communications. After a break of around a month from painting I decided 2025 was the year to finally get to grips with social media.
Why bother?
For the first time I will be taking part in Open Studios North Fife (OSNF) and it seemed as good a time as any for me to up my game. To that end, I took part in a Zoom session, organised by OSNF, on developing skills for social media. The aim of the session was to provide an overview of the features of Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, with additional content on the demographics, interests and preferences of their respective audiences. To date I have been content to offer occasional posts to Instagram and Facebook: I haven’t used LinkdIn at all.
What did I learn?
The session was very helpful, particularly the information about the demographics of the populations who favour each platform. Each platform speaks to a different audience: Instagram appeals to a younger age group ( 18- 35 years) featuring visual storytelling such as process videos and high quality images. Facebook appeals to an older audience and is good for local sales, event promotion and community building. LinkedIn promotes professional and business connections such as establishing links for galleries. In addition there were tips on creating appropriate and interesting content, and how to engage with and retain your audience. In order to gain traction increase visibility, particularly on Instagram frequent posting in key, ideally on a daily basis..
Surely not. Is that even possible? Where to start?
Rising to the challenge
I decided, in the first instance, to try and expand my repertoire of social media skills to include stories and reels for Instagram. Stories are one-off, time limited content that disappear after twenty-four hours. This most often consists of photos with captions. I managed to create these without too much difficulty and was able to add captions and music with relative ease. Although there is doubtless room for improvement I am quite pleased with what I have produced so far.
Reels are more permanent remaining visible for as long as the poster wants to make them available. I have, from time-to-time posted a basic video of my process. Creating ‘all singing, all dancing’ content was a different proposition: I needed to learn how to edit videos, format captions, and tailor music to the length of the reel. I anticipated a rather long learning curve.
How to make a reel
The internet abounds with ‘how to’ videos and I had no problem in finding the information I needed, the main difficulty I encountered here was that often the speed at which the presenters talked and demonstrated their points was much too fast. In addition, the location of the editing tools on their technology seemed to bear no relation to what I was seeing on my phone. I realised later that this was probably to do with a mismatch between operating systems. The presenters I watched used Android and it didn’t occur to me at the time to look for an iPhone demo. None-the-less, I did acquire some idea of how to set about the process; the rest I had to learn by trial and error.
Overcoming the challenges
The main challenge was to edit my video down to a maximum of 90 seconds, then line up and time the captiions to suit the images. Cutting the video wasn’t too difficult but adding and editing captions was a bit hit and miss. Captions which I had intended to last for a few seconds, mysteriously appeared throughout the length of the video. This was due to my initial difficulty in finding the cut function on my phone: one of the features that differed between my technology and that of the YouTube presenters I had watched.
The final cut
The final cut is a bit rough and ready: a couple of captions appear toward the end of the video which I don’t remember inserting but I can’t seem to get rid of them (any thoughts on this would be welcome). For someone who finds the learning process in relation to technology a bit of a trial I think the overall result isn’t too bad:I think with practice I should improve.
What next?
I am now on day six of my one-post-a-day challenge so it is early days yet in terms of increasing my reach. Any discernible impact will take commitment and perseverance. In the meantime, my next project is to have a look at LinkedIn.
The photographs on this page are examples of the stories I have posted and I have included my reel below. Do let me know what you think. Any constructive criticism or hints and tips would be helpful.
Art by Smart 
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