15th October, 2024
Helloooo to BCM Twitter, Richard & The Void!
If you don’t know what my DA is all about, have a look at my OP1 post, however, its name clears up most of the mystery.
In the time between now and my last update, I’m going, to be honest, my investment in Oddly Specific Playlists has varied. When I don’t have the energy to make playlists, I try to keep active via my story & Twitter but alas – the DA continues with a steady level of interaction and success.
I have continued to follow a cycle of receiving feedback and reacting according to said feedback, following guidance given in lectures, as can be seen in my model below.
So exactly what changes have I made to my DA since our last catch-up?? glad you asked! Here’s a list!
I’ve tampered with my caption format to include more hashtags – I figured it might boost visibility and grow my user base – so far, it doesn’t seem to have a massive impact in gaining new followers – but it has attracted some fan account of artists who have liked posts, so that’s something.
As you’ll recall from my OP1, I was sourcing playlist cover images to use from Pinterest – I recently began tracking down the artists behind these pieces and making sure to tag their Instagram accounts in my captions where possible – although this hasn’t had any visible impact on interaction, it’s always ethical and well-meaning to give credit where credit is due.
I also began writing and posting a track-by-track breakdown explaining my song choices for each playlist – an idea I got from user feedback. This has been well received and although it makes posting a little less #FIST, it has proven rewarding. And besides – my workflow is becoming easier and faster as I go on creating my content.
After receiving advice to have some back-up content when requests are slow – I decided to experiment with some new formats for playlists – I’ve engaged with other DA accounts in hopes of creating a collaborative project which benefits us both in terms of exposure and new kinds of interesting content.
After doing my collab playlist for Alana’s bookstagram, I observed that her DA encourages more user interaction by asking a Question of the Day, or ‘QOTD’ in the captions of her posts. I quickly adopted this idea in hopes it would encourage my users to interact more with my posts – it has seen some success which is great because it assists me in catering to my user’s tastes as well as going toward my goal to create an online space for music lovers.
I also experimented by switching up the model and creating a playlist where I gave my users a prompt for inspiration and THEY chose songs to make a playlist – this has also been successful.
When I found my requests lacking (numerically or just in terms of my liking of them), I asked people to send in more. This batch was smaller than the first lot, but excitingly, very creative and inspiring. I’m really looking forward to making the playlists! (which is great because my motivation was lacking for a bit there).
I created a playlist last week which was inspired by two separate requests I got – combining them helped me to make a more creative and conceptual playlist – responses to this seemed positive as well.
I noticed that when i posted the Spotify link to my playlists to my stories, people weren’t clicking it. I asked whether or not this was an issue with Instagram and my users quickly cleared up the mystery. I stopped posting the links to playlists, as they weren’t producing the ease of access I had hoped they would.
I’ve continued to post on my story to gather feedback from my users & their preferences, and based on the latest, I’m thinking I need to develop a posting schedule. I’m also thinking of expanding my DA to other social network platforms – something like Twitter would create an ease of access to Spotify links that Instagram does not – and Tiktok could be home to a more active audience.
I’ve continued to work towards and see success to do with the DA’s social utilities. I’ve had feedback from users that indicates that my DA is:
providing exposure for lesser-known artists,
a thread of artists who’ve taken notice of my DA
helping people emotionally, and
creating a space for music lovers.
going forth, I am looking to experiment with platforms & aesthetic changes & hopefully build more of a user base.
Until next time.