Below is a video with my refections on the social media module, component C, at Leicester’s De Montfort University. Learning in this module has been immense with the discovery of how to do a podcast, edit it, add a jingle at the beginning and end and post it as a blog in its own right as well as on my dedicated podcast page.
The podcasts were facilitated via a Skype audio call, recorded within the Skype software, with participants ranging from Australia to Los Angeles, Toronto, Delhi, Togo, Vancouver and London. The audio on my side of the conversation was recorded with a Blue Yeti Pro X podcast USB microphone and on the recipient’s side with either a laptop or a mobile device. The connection was generally good.
The resultant audio file, Skype actually saves an MP4 video file which must be converted into an MP3 audio file, is then edited in Adobes’s Audition before it is placed into the timeline in Apple’s Logic audio and music creation software. In Audition peaks are corrected, the beginning and end is adjusted, long pauses are deleted and dB levels are raised or lowered. Once the file is in Logic a jingle is added to the beginning and end in the multi-layer interface. At the end of the process the audio file is bounced down to a single MP3 file which is then uploaded to my WordPress blog.
As we can see, the entire process involves some time and work, however, it is very rewarding once the finished blogpost is placed on Twitter and shared with the world. What is even more rewarding is when Twitter folks react to the posting with likes, retweets and comments. Above all, through this process of podcasts new friends are made and social networks are established. Although the idea of podcasting was not new to me, I always wanted to do it, through this Communication Arts course at Leicester DMU, and especially through my tutor and mentor John Coster, it became reality. Therefore, all credit goes to him for inspiring me, enabling me and giving me the necessary confidence and know how.
Campaign
When working with social media or running a social media campaign there are a number of points to be considered such as the tweet itself, appropriate content formulated or related to the prevalent narrative of the time, hashtags, time of tweeting etc. These are all important factors to have people interact with one’s tweet. All of this takes time and experience.
I had recently some unplanned and surprising success with a tweet in relation to the coronavirus outbreak. The tweet was a comment placed into the top position on a Twitter thread with 7,403 retweets, 14.1K likes and 551 comments, counting on 23 March 2020, at a significant high point of the corona conversation and just before a likely lockdown of the entire country. This tweet received 143 likes, 24 retweets and a considerable number of comments, most of them positive, in fact it created a thread in its own right. The discussion is still ongoing but with less vigour than at the beginning. Regarding a social media campaign, much can be learned from this experience.
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