At 4 AM yesterday I knew next to nothing about Instagram. Sure, I could publish an image, square at that, write something interesting, and sprinkle some hashtags in the mix. See what I mean? Next to nothing.
A couple of months ago my alma mater, Pine Crest School, interviewed me for the November Alumni magazine. After the interview, Andi, the Pine Crest School Marketing Communications Manager, casually mentioned a Tuesday Instagram Take Over program she had initiated with alumni and asked whether I’d be game. Without hesitation, I said “Yes”. I do that a lot. Say ‘Yes’. Most of the time it serves me well.
How hard could it be? I had a couple of months to figure it out. YouTube was lousy with tutorials I was certain.
You know that expression “Time Flies”? I think the rest of it is ‘when you’re having fun’. I propose an amendment to the saying. I think we should change it to: ‘when you’re an entrepreneur’. What happened to all that time I had to prepare? Yes, I know entrepreneurs don’t have exclusive rights to ALWAYS running out of time, by the way.
Back to 4am yesterday morning. I woke up in a sweat. I had said ‘Yes’ to something that I did NOT know how to do. When I reached out to Andi to get some guidance I got “Just have fun with it” Have fun??? What the F was she talking about? I was in a panic.
The requirement of three feed posts throughout the day; multiple images encouraged was manageable. I could craft a storyline, sweeten it up with some pics, and tie it back to Pine Crest – easy peasy. The, as many ‘stories’ as I liked part, gutted me. I hadn’t done stories. I’ve watched them. I’ve seen the fancy moving images, the hashtags, the polls, the ‘tap here’s. I’ve admired them and brushed them off as something to tackle in the future. Something to hire someone younger to do. Time to pay the piper… cause there was no time to find a new hire. I was it.
Just like when I built my two websites, to YouTube I went. Luckily, I am smart enough to know that if the guidance was more than six months old it probably was rubbish. As far as I am concerned, those people at FaceBook need to take a vacation. Slow down the product development please.
I pulled up a few tutorials…and within seconds dumped several of them. I am 55 don’t talk so FAST at me and please don’t let your fingernails cover the tab you’re asking me to tap. Geesh. Don’t even get me started on the ones where it was a full five minutes before I realized it was targeting an Android phone.
To make matters worse, there were tons of ‘10 Best Hacks’…. Do people not get the concept of JUST TEN?
There was How To:
- Make a photo collage
- Make cute, funny square letter block
- Write the text backwards
- Add color block to the text
- Pick a color from the actual image to use for the text
- Add a question
- Take a poll
- Add animation
- Change the background color
- Make it look like it’s moving with Hype Type
- Upload a video longer than 15 seconds with Continual (I didn’t even know there was a limit)
- Take a video of your movements on your phone
- And on and on and on….
Which to choose? Nine am was fast approaching. And, there was no ‘testing’ them. They just go live… just like that. Thank goodness the worse you can do only lives for 24 hours.
I buckled down. I decided upon a few. Not one of each of the more than 30 ‘Best 10 Hacks’ – see the issue here? Some worked. Some not so much. But, did I did. I was exhausted by day’s end but pretty freaking proud of myself. I unwrapped fear and got to the good stuff as I am wont to say.
If there’s any lesson here, and it is certainly NOT that I need to pursue a career in social media management; it is that we are never too old to take on new challenges. With a little determination, curiosity, and apparently YouTube, we can conquer anything. We are unstoppable.
Disclaimer: The YouTube Video above only captured the story snippets that had video or animation in them. If it was just an image, the video is blank and grey. This is NOT a limitation on the creator…..just sayin’
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