In the “One Month of Layouts I Love” post, I talked about changing my social media from personal posting to this new project about layouts and design, my planning process, and beginning to make videos. Here’s what happened in the last month.
I was posting in too many places
I wanted to begin this project with wide distribution, and then narrow in on the areas where I was getting traction. I posted to Threads every time and didn’t get a single like, so that’s out. I did get some attention on Substack, but not enough for me to want to continue to be there, so that’s out. I also tried making a Tumblr blog and posting, but found it to be an extra hassle. And while Bluesky remains low attention, I like the place enough to keep it up. Same goes for Pinterest, which was very annoying to use for this purpose.
I’m still up in the air about whether to make a Mastodon account. I’ve had little luck there in the past.
Of course, there’s the question about whether or not to just post to this blog as well. I haven’t decided on that yet.
I caught up on my video production
I began posting Layouts I Love On Jan 1. I began making videos for the same posts a few weeks later. At first, they just went to tiktok, but eventually got reels and shorts up and running. I took until mid February for me to get to the point where I was posting my images and videos at the same time.
I take photos of the layouts first, then write the script. Then, I shoot the video and save it all to a folder on my pc.
Some notes on video uploading
Instagram: really wants you to use Edits, their mobile video editor. If you upload a video to Instagram and want to edit any part of it, it’ll shoot the video over to Edits. I actually did all the editing for my first ten videos in Edits. Then I realized, I have a full PC. I don’t have to live like this. I’m currently using Clipchamp. I like that it has a built-in-teleprompter. So now the only thing I’m using Edits for is adding an instagram-approved music bed.
Youtube: both Instagram and Tiktok provide royalty-free music beds when you upload a short. you can pick more popular songs, but the royalty-free ones are right there, and your video won’t get pinged. Youtube just lets you search Youtube for audio, and it often only lets you use 15 or 30 seconds of them. So some of my Youtube videos have no music bed.
Tiktok: when you upload a video to tiktok, tiktok will save it right back down to your phone. There’s a setting to turn this off, but it’s per-video, so if you don’t remember to do that you get an extra video in your camera roll.
I’d love to find a way to upload to all three services at once without them thinking I’m some kind of AI bot. I’m just a person with limited time!
Views
On Instagram, my posts are doing between 50 and 200 views. I’ve gotten a few nice comments. My reels are doing between 150 and 500 views. Here’s a screenshot of my dashboard. When people tell you the grid is dead, they mean it. My posts are being seen by 0.2% of my audience. Here’s my 30 day viewcount.
My Street Fighter HUD video is the most popular of the month, which I’m grateful for because it took up the time of 5 regular posts:
On Youtube, I’m getting lower numbers, but I’m still pretty happy with it. I’ve had my Youtube account forever, but have only used it for video game and podcast archiving in the past.
Tiktok is, however, where my numbers are higher. The Street Fighter video is where that spike is. But even if you take that one out, I had double the views on Tiktok than the other two platforms. Of course, some videos performed worse here.
Momentum
I’m treating this project a bit like a publication. I have some posts scheduled over a month in advance, while keeping a little bit of room for last-minute things. With practice, I want to get my posting time down, so I can focus on other things, like finding more people online who could like what I do. That’s always been the hard part for me.
See you next month. Until then, you can follow this project at:
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