Sarah Hutchins shares her experiences and tips on how to get started with your own social media content.
Ideas Planning and Getting Started
If you have an idea, my advice would be to go for it! My adventures in developing content for social media have involved a teeny tiny bit of lateral thinking and what started off as ‘Oh my goodness, me, I could never ever do that and where on earth would I start?!’ moments have now become a YouTube channel called Magical Mrs Hutchins.
Creating a Brand and finding your unique selling point
I began with thinking about who I am as a person and an educator. My philosophy in both life and education is to share Magical moments of Learning and Fun with everyone I am with. I have always loved reading and sharing stories along with being in the incredibly special position of teaching phonics in Early Years. Reflecting on my own philosophy enabled me to then think about how I might turn my love of sharing stories and phonics into ideas for social media. I came up with the name ‘Magical Mrs Hutchins’ through my brainstorming.
Coming up with a plan
To create content for social media I had to make a plan and break down what seemed like an unachievable task into little manageable steps. This involved brainstorming ideas. Ask yourself:
- What is my target audience?
- What sort of thing do I want to share?
- What might I need to do this? (logistics/resources)
- How can I make this possible? (timeframe/ support from other people)
- Where might I want to post and share my content?
Making a list of and researching Social Media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram Reddit, X/Twitter to see what people post, say and do can be a helpful place to start.
Top tip: Put your initial idea in the middle of a page and then ask the who, what, why, when where and how questions.
Market Research
Once I had come up with my idea of wanting to film short phonics videos, stories and nursery rhymes I then did some research across Social Media platforms to see what I could learn from people already doing what I wanted to do. I had a list of questions that helped guide my research:
- What was the content that they were filming?
- Where were they filming it?
- Who was involved?
- What kind of audience were they aiming for?
- What was the setting/environment/context of their video?
- What types of resources/props did they use in their videos?
- How long did these videos last?
- Were the videos stand alone or made in a mini-series?
- How did the person/people filming them interact with the camera?
- How did they come across as they spoke to the audience?
- What kinds of language choices di they make in their videos – formal/informal?
- How were they filmed (close ups//far away shots)?
- What did the introduction and end sequences of the video look like?
- Did the videos use a soundtrack cut in at the beginning and end of their videos?
- Did the content creators acknowledge use of other people’s materials (e.g. a story book)?
I also looked at how people shared their content and came up with a list of questions to help me work out how and where I might want to share mine:
- Which Social Media platforms did people use to share that they had made a video/content?
- What did these posts say to attract people’s attention?
- Who were they aimed at – caregivers, professionals, general audiences?
- Were #hastags used? If so, which hashtags were used?
- Where were these posts posted?
- What sorts of groups did they reach on places like Facebook and X/Twitter?
- What did the posts look like in terms of style, content and formatting?
- Where posts mostly words or just photos or a mix of both?
- What time of day/ part of the week were posts released to let people know about new and uploaded content?
Armed information from a variety of perspectives I was then able to pick up lots of tips which would help me to make a plan and begin filming my own content. This research also helped me to see my own unique selling point for my content.
Top tip: Time spent researching how other people do what you want to do will enable you to clarify your understanding of your own idea. It can help streamline your thoughts to work out what it is that you want to do with your Social Media content.