Creating and Publishing Digital Content
1.1 Content Destinations
SEO and SMO Optimization
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is when businesses will try and make an online presence by starting up a website and gaining an audience on the website. Usually, people will have a few concurrent page viewers and will try and increase the popularity and visibility of their site. This can be increased by working on the keywords and content that is shown on the site, for example if you are the owner of a bakery and you want people to know more about your store and products, you can use other sites like Google Ads, Ahrefs and SEMrush to see the best key words and terms to incorporate into your writing (These terms would be around cooking and baking). After optimizing your site, you will see a steady increase in the amount of people viewing your site. That is why SEO is so important when trying to make an online presence.
Although you have optimized your website, there is still a lot more to do if you want to improve your business even more. Like SMO (Social Media Optimization). Making a presence on social media is a great way to boost your sales as social media is used by almost everyone, whether its Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, ETC. You can use sites like HootSuite, Buffer or Socialpilot to automatically put out posts over your social media accounts as they have a timed service that will post whenever it hits that time. This means that you can focus on the other parts of social media like getting links with other companies so that you can get some of the traffic from their site.
1.2 pre-production for e-portfolio
Wildlife Raw Footage
Wildlife Filming Social Media
This is the content calendar I have made for my Wildlife filming portfolio on Instagram and YouTube. This calendar goes from the 3rd May to the 19th and will show the content or objective I will be completing on that day. For example, today is the 3rd and I have created an Instagram account where I can post the wildlife content, which I have posted a quick video showing the best shots of Red Squirrels I filmed.
This is the YouTube upload which is only 28 seconds long, however it is the start of my wildlife filming portfolio on Instagram and YouTube where I will post anything I film about animals or nature (Wildlife). The content that I upload will range from short form videos like this and longer more informative videos that range from 10+ minutes. As well as this, I will also post BTS and funny bloopers that happen whilst filming.
This is a quick graphic I made to promote my new account by screenshooting my new account and writing some text over it to tell people what it is and what I'll be posting there.
I will be making more professional looking graphics
This is a 3 minute long video of the Seals I filmed in Norfolk. Whilst filming, I had to keep my distance as there were a lot of Seals and they were quite aggressive and defensive. I had a 75-200mm lens which allowed me to film safely from a distance. When I edited this video, I added an adjustment layer so that the colours on the Seals would pop more and the sand as well. I also added some ambient music to fit well with the Seals as I hear this type of ambients a lot when I see aquatic wildlife on YouTube. Overall, I took the best bits from all the videos files and compiled them into this 3 minute long video.
It has been 4 days since I uploaded this to Instagram and since then, it has received 23 views and the Red Squirrel video has got 25 views which is really good for a new account. Since making it, I now have 15 followers as well. Judging the success these videos have received, I can see that most of the views have come from the early followers and people who have seen it through the tags and handles I used in the video description.
This is a 2 minute long video showing the Peacocks at Brownsea Island. I filmed this along side the Red Squirrels video as they are both at Brownsea. I also used the same 75-200mm lens when filming this. What I wish I did better was filming the Peacocks whilst zoomed out, as when zoomed in it makes the shot shaky and unclear to look at sometimes. I uploaded this to Instagram 6 days ago and it has received 15 views and 2 comments. On YouTube however, It has received 1 view in 6 days as my YouTube has a lot less interaction and not many people know about it. I posted it to there as it shows I can reframe the sequence in (9:16) and (16:9).
This is a collage of photos that I've uploaded to Instagram to show the image side of this unit as I have uploaded a few videos and made a new channel art graphic for my YouTube account. These pictures were taken at Stourhead National Trust and show the nature reserve and its picturesque side.
This is the graphic that I made for this unit, it is a channel art for my YouTube channel and shows some images I've taken in the past. Above is what this would look like on a phone or laptop and to the left is what it would look like on a television. To make this, I opened photoshop and made it in the size 2058 X 1080 pixels and moved the images so that it is symmetrical and laid out nicely. This only took 10 minutes to make, however it is annoying that the whole graphic isn't visible on all platforms.
Unit Evaluation
With unit 303, there are many strengths and weaknesses. For example, a strength of mine would be being able to post my content when and where I like, as I’m not creating content for another company/organisation, so posting it to my Instagram and YouTube is simple and easy. This also helped with my content calendar as it made it accurate. A weakness of mine would be filming the content as I didn’t plan ahead of time so it would’ve been nice to have a tripod to use as I needed to film from a distance and without one it makes the shot quite shaky. What I can do in the future is plan ahead of time what I’ll need to take with me when filming, like a tripod/monopod or gimbal. Another strength from this unit would be creating the content (using Adobe Premiere and Photoshop) which includes editing the videos and creating a new YouTube channel art. Another weakness would be my promoting skills as my YouTube received a lot less interaction than my Instagram, this is probably because people don’t tend to check out links on other social media accounts (like a link in my bio going to my Wix and text saying my YouTube name). To improve this in the future, I can plan the pre-production better by releasing teasers for a bigger project, like the Western Wildlife idea that I changed for my passion project, and just keep promoting different aspects of my content, like behind the scenes of me filming wildlife or just regular updates on where I have been filming and what animal I’m filming.
Initially when posting the content on Instagram, I struggled to get a good thumbnail which showed a high quality shot of the Red Squirrels I filmed, but this video still received a good amount of interaction and views for a new account. For the Seals at Norfolk, this is where more interactions were happening, as the thumbnail was high quality and showed a baby seal looking at the camera, this is now the joint most viewed video on my instagram with the red squirrels, but i posted this later. I got a couple comments on the Peacock video, which say to promote my content on @filmmakers_world this is probably a bot trying to promote their account, however it is legit and I could get my post promoted on their Instagram.