Good content and bad content

Sometimes my job is strange. Today, something happened that shouldn't have. I posted a picture, a collage of seven vehicles with a little safety message tacked on. It was only posted just for a toy company to have a look at our range of trucks and it became very quickly the most successful posting ever on Facebook. Now what is so strange about it is the trucks weren't doing anything sexy, five of them were parked, sitting there doing nothing.

Now again this is just like an earlier blog below, but more stranger. People have liked us and followed us to see what we say, and in this post,mew said nothing, nothing at all. Or at least nothing we hadn't said many, many times before. Which again leads me to one conclusion. Social media is a very strange type of work.

We are all looking for something that will go viral, but no one can say what will go viral. Anyone who makes a viral video on YouTube that was seen by 5 million people in 1 week would probably admit in the bar, when no one is listening that they have 19 videos with 1000 views between them.  If you build it, they will come only works for baseball fields in the middle of nowhere. Social media is much more hit and miss.

If you look at your followers on twitter, ask yourself how many are friends? If you have several thousand, ask yourself how many you already follow? How many of them look at your links, your photos, or even read your content other than cursory look? Odds are not very many, which is a depressing thought, because if you don't care about what others are posting, do you really think anyone cares about yours?

If you have a lot of followers, say well over a 1000, but only following a few, have a look at your avi. Are you an attractive woman? if so, how many of your followers are women, and how many men are only interested when you post a photo of yourself? If you are happy with that, I'm happy for you.

In case you think that I'm jealous, I'm not, I can get love on hate on my work account, pick up 50 followers a day on it.  My personal account is just for fun, and I barely post on it. I'm more proud that I only personally know a couple of my followers and one I've never met is a very good friend now, so that to me is a success.

Sorry, I seemed to have rambled a bit of topic there, this is meant to be about what you post.

Basically I'm saying, that what you post could be anything, there are no rules to what is good, what people are likely to want to see, just content. There is no such thing as good content, or bad content. To paraphrase William Goldman, the screenwriter when talking about the films The Postman and Titanic, "there is content people want to see and content they don't".

I hope everyone always wants to see your content.

(This was an interesting and very honest blog about working in social media, if you want to know what it's like, have a read.....http://socialmediatoday.com/rachel-strella/1255821/5-tips-avoiding-social-media-burnout)

Your opinion is wrong

Social media is kind of weird. You have to keep creating interesting content to keep people hooked, and of course there are the people who get annoyed with you. Everything says you should try and talk to those you upset, but to be honest, I can't be arsed with that. Quite simply some people are too stupid to engage with. A very intelligent man once said, that stupid questions should be ignored. A very wise statement.

So anyway, this very small group of people don't like me, or to be fair, they don't like that their argument is so weak it needs them to shout and be insulting when they don't like the answers. I'm a great believer in science and what it can teach us, and it teaches us one thing, to change our minds. We once thought that we sat at the centre of the universe with the stars spinning around us. We now know that is wrong, and we changed our minds. This is because facts change opinions.  No matter how strong our opinions are, opinions cannot change facts.

It's important to remember that, and that you will sometimes need to change your mind. I'm not an expert,but I understand that if I want facts I go to the experts, who give me the facts that will change my mind. If I don't like those facts, my opinion is wrong.

And this what I'm getting at. If you work in social media, then you have to put up with those people, the trolls. It's a pain in the arse, but then so is sitting on an uncomfortable chair, and I'd rather do that than stand all day.

It's an opinion and a fact.

How to get over a 1100 new followers a month on Twitter.

(From 2500 to over 10300 followers in six under six months with only 756 tweets, including retweets)

There’s a lot written in social media blogs about ‘content’.  And when I say social media blogs, I mean ones written by professionals, those of us who work in social media.  ‘Content’ by the way is what you post, the text, the pictures and videos that you put up on your Facebook and Twitter accounts.  The professionals need to call it content as it makes it sound like a product and to be professional you have to have a product.

Which is why I like what I do. 

As it’s a government account, I’m not trying to sell anything.  I’m also limited in what I can post as it’s mainly used for press reasons, anything else that is posted (content) is just general PR to tell people what we do and make sure they know how to contact us.

So is the ‘Content king’ as they like to say?  Not even slightly.  People do not ‘follow’ or ‘like’ you because you are constantly posting interesting content. 

Why do you friend and unfriend people on your own account?  You want to know what they are saying and you no longer want to know.  The fact that I managed to get so many new followers isn’t anything to do with my creativity in saying the same thing over and over again in different ways.  It’s because people want to know what my organisation is saying because what we say is important to them. 

The same is true if you run a corporate account for a large department store chain or anything where you want to try to sell something.  People follow you because you have something they want, when they no longer want it, they will lose interest.

I’ve read a lot about how much and often content should be posted, but frankly it’s bollocks.  You should only post if you have something to say, and the same goes for your personal account.  I will quite happily unfriend someone who posts a lot of random crap all the time, but the people who don’t post, they become a ghost, someone who is there and I am happy to leave there, as they don’t bother me anymore. 

I’m not afraid of ghosts.

But the ones that put out a ridiculous amount of posts, trying to get new followers and likes, it’s a bit, well, desperate.  It’s like the kid in the playground shouting out “like me, I’m funny!”  They are just another wannabe community radio presenter, a noise in the background no one listens to. 

Maybe it has to be different for them, they have to worry about ROI (return of investment) another word to make it look like content is a product.  They need to somehow make people think that they are generating enough trade to pay their wages. 

And if you talk about annoying TV adverts, then they you talk about the company, so if they annoy you with ‘content’, you’ll talk about it right?

Say what you need to say, when you have to say it, and say it for a reason.

Social Media, is it really work?

I haven’t done any filming for a while.  There’s all sort of reasons for that, but one is I have a new job.  It’s a kinda cool job, I work in social media.  I want to say where, but one aspect of my job is that I write a social media policy, and it tells employees not to say where they work.  There’s a reason for that, some of what people write could break the data protection act, so if they can’t say it, neither can I.  I have to set an example, right?

I will say it’s a blue light emergency service, which means it’s one of four and not the AA.  They can say it as much as they want, but they are not the fourth emergency service. 

So what does my job involve?  I get to spend about 60% of my day on facebook and twitter.  It sounds like a dream right?  Wrong.  There are all sorts of reasons why it’s wrong.  Firstly, it’s work.  I’m not chatting to friends, playing dumb games or doing stupid quizzes, I’m working.  And work shouldn’t be fun, it should be work.  I’m keeping an eye on things, making sure I post stuff at the right time of day, all those things. 

Secondly, I’m having to make sure what I do post is in line with a social media policy I am still writing, for employees, press officers, CEO’s etc.  It’s a lot of pressure, it has to be right, it has to meet corporate branding, it has to apply across the board.  It also has to have sections that mean I can monitor what some people are saying, not to spy on them, as I will be making them an official branch of what I do, so they will have to meet my standards.

And my standards are kinda low it seems, I need to create new standards just for the job.

And here is the problem.  Before I started the job, I did a little bit of social media work and I was out of my depth.  I did study it a bit as part of my media degree and the one thing I know about working in social media is……no one knows how to use it in the work place. 

A lot of people write about it, call themselves experts in this or that aspect in social media, but really, all it comes down to is this.  Social Media is a branch of Public Relations and Marketing so all the usual rules apply, it just happens faster.  When you start a campaign you can see instantly how it works, what’s wrong with it, how to make it better. 

This is the biggest secret in social media, I read all the blogs (the relevant ones anyway, I’m not trying to sell anything).  Most of them are just common sense – how to avoid a bad comment bringing your business into disrepute? Simple, delete the fucker!  Should you correct bad information online? Of course you twat, it’s called public relations!  Can social media bring in more business? If you treat it as marketing it can!

See, there are no experts in social media, it really is just PR and Marketing.  And that makes me feel like a fraud sometimes, but what I do is important.  Because of what I do, I have saved one life for sure.  I have probably saved a couple more, or at least stopped some people from getting very seriously injured with a ruined life and that’s is good. 

So if I’m a fraud, are the lives I’ve saved fake?  If I can do that in 12 weeks of the job, can I be the first to make social media really make a difference for some people?  I hope so.  What I do is important.  

Editing Continues.....Forever

So I've been editing, not as much as I should have been, I've been getting distracted because I've been wanting to be distracted, but that's a whole other story to be saved for another day.

So the issues with the sound have been causing me a nightmare, do I reshoot or do I dub it all, ADR as it's known in the trade. I had to look it up. That's what happens when you avoid going to film school and do journalism instead, every day is a learning curve, and an interesting one at that.  The HELP button becomes a firm friend.

So fixing the problem.

I've decided to do a mix of ADR and creative technical wizardry, in other words, It's going to be too difficult to get everyone back together to repeat everything, so I'm being creative instead.  using the on camera sound, which is terrible, I've removed as much unwanted noise as I can, then made it sound like a telephone call.

Why a telephone call I hear you quietly asking no one in particular, well, all the dialogue apart from about 10 lines are spoken over the phone, so it works, sort of.  The bit I've done so far is about three minutes in, so if I get the start sounding perfect, this bit should pass as ok, but I won't really know until there are bums on seats in front of the film.

The one bit about the audio issues is it means I'm now going to have to use music more, I really didn't want to have to do that, I really wanted everything to stand on it's own merit, with just a little bit of music, now it will take a more important place in the story, which is a worry, as I'm not a composer.  I do have a music man on the case, and I'm going to get another to have a look as well, I may be able to mix elements of both, see what works best, but for such an emotional piece, I'm nervous.

On the plus side, next weekend I'm going to the Brit Flick Film festival in Portsmouth, which should make for an interesting couple of days. Not least as I think I have a short in it. I'm not sure about that yet, I haven't been told or seen a programme list, I only know as one of the organisers told the actress in it on facebook that it will feature, so I'll wait and see.  If you want to come along and see it, look the festival up on facebook, or get in touch with the Goundlings Theatre for tickets.  If you can;t make, it, you can watch it on YouTube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnjoWVoEUHM.

Now then, seeing that I don't want to work on the film right now, I'll be doing a lot of ADR tomorrow, I'll get back to that distraction again.

Live well, Love Life, Have fun.

Roger.

Editing Part……Forever!

So the process has begun, but filming hasn’t finished.  I need to wait for it to stop raining, or it will look a bit strange.  Still, at least I have something to keep me entertained.  And when I say entertained, I mean massively annoyed.

The footage looks good, but the problem I now face is sound.  It looks like a technical issue means I’ve lost about an hour’s worth of audio recording, which puts me in a bit of a pickle.

Do I reshoot everything missing, or do I use the audio gained from the camera’s on board mic?  Part of me says I should reshoot, but as there’s no budget, I don’t want to ask people to give up their time again for free. 

It was all indoors, so I can play about with it, and it should be ok, but it’s an issue, and it means the overall quality of the sound will drop.  This is a bad thing.  There is nothing worse than bad sound, bad pictures can be forgiven, but the sound…..well not so much.

So what do I do, do I continue and see if I can get away with it, or reshoot?  I’m thinking of putting the hours in trying to fix it, but having tried to do that before, I know how hard it is.  I suppose the best option is to see if I can fix it, but basically I’m just trying to put it off.

On the plus side, even with a very basic, quick edit, I’m pretty happy about it.  It could be a lot worse so I can’t really complain.  Time to put the hours in I think, more syncing, more mind numbingly boring work, but essential.  Then it will be time to start thinking about the music I will need to include to try and hide the audio problems.  Not a good solution, as Mike Figgis says, once you add music, you can’t take it away.

Other than the filming and editing, I'm extremely happy.  It's nothing to do with filming in any way, but I just wanted to share!

Live well, love life, have fun.

Filming, Days 1&2

So, filming has begun, cameras rolling, or least, the little red light in the corner saving data to the memory card.  As always, with filming there are nerves before you start, so in retrospect I'm happy that I was waiting around for a while before we started.  Happy because it meant I wasn't thinking about it what needed to be done, only getting myself annoyed for no reason.  It distracted me from getting nervous about everything and the huge job I've created for myself.

The first day's filming did create one issue I could have done without.  Namely, having to sack an actor and get a replacement.  Never a nice thing to sack someone, and I suppose I really should let him know he's surplus to requirements, but then, they never got back to me......

The replacement wasn't what I expected or wanted, I know they can act a bit, but they didn't really want to the part, hates being on camera, and dislikes the whole process.  Namely, me!  Thankfully it's a very small part, and doesn't take up a lot of screen time, so I should be able to get away with it.  Taking the role was a slightly traumatic experience, and as always, I'm amazed anyone wants to be an actor.

The actual technical aspects to filming went very smoothly, the lighting rig worked perfectly, looks ok and everything so no complaints there.  All I used were a couple of desk lamps, with spot light bulbs in.  Worked a treat.  The rest went smoothly, the shot list worked, although there is the continuing fear that I didn't shoot something, despite all precautions I doubt that will go away till I finish the edit.  I arranged the shot entirely by camera set up, so it wasn't just shot out of order, but all over the place.  As I was acting as director/cameraman/1st AD/production manager/actor there was so much to think about I had to put the fear away.

Day 2 began with the lead actress, who has a lot more experience than the lead male.  She's also an excellent actress, meaning she comes to the table with an actual character in mind, knows her lines, and needs minimal direction.  All things that help to make a day go well.

Her preparation meant that the first two scenes/segments finished 45 minutes ahead of schedule, despite starting 45 minutes late. That's how I like filming to happen.  I didn't even feel an once of stress, until we were on our way to the next location, when we had to turn round to get an important prop.

The scene filmed today was the ending, and this meant that the two leads would be meeting for the first time, and they had good chemistry on meeting.  I can't imagine what it must be like to use two actors that hate each other.  It must be really draining to everyone on set.

I was very tempted at this point to move on and film the last scenes for the lead male, but decided to give it miss.  Partly I was tired, but mainly as there was a market near the filming location.  A market being visited by Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman.  They were in town filming as well, and why it would have been fun to have tried to get them to do a cameo, I really didn't want the extra hassle.......

Jesus!  What the hell am I talking about.  Getting them to do a cameo would have been brilliant!

I should have done it.