#abdyear2

[thefavouritechild]

TUMBLR’S QUEUE SYSTEM AND HOW TO USE IT

With Tumblr, you don’t have to use an outsourced app such as Buffer to schedule your posts to upload - it has it’s own in-built ‘queue’ system, wherein you can choose how many posts a day to post, within what hours. This gives a bit less control that Buffer, as with Buffer you can select specific times down to the minute, and Tumblr just chooses a time within the hours you’ve set to post it, meaning you could miss a peak time by just half hour if that’s when it chooses to schedule it, and you’d have to rejig what hours you want ALL your posts to upload to just to try and get that single post to a specific time, which is very fiddly and inconvenient. However, unlike Buffer (which merely sends you a reminder that it’s time to post, and it’s up to you to actually push it through) Tumblr’s queue system is completely automated, so once it’s set you don’t need to manually post anything at all, it will just immediately upload it to your blog when the time hits. 

This is very convenient if you want to keep your blog running when you’re not going to be online for a while - people utilise it during exam periods, or holiday times, to make sure their blog will be updated a decent amount of times per day to maintain interaction with their followers without them actually having to be present themselves. Pretty savvy to ensure you don’t lose anyone’s interest in periods of absence. 

[thefavouritechild]

POST-IT-NOTE-IT

BEST TIMES TO POST ON TUMBLR

Likewise to what I did with Instagram, I wanted to research the best times to post on Tumblr - the results are drastically different from what I found out about Instagram, proving that one size really doesn’t fit all. Unlike Instagram, Tumblr’s best hours are really early morning, or really late at night, seeing as their userbase are usually in some form of education and will be mostly checking their phones when they wake up and when they get home. 

Source: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/timing-everything-tumblr

[thefavouritechild]

USERNAME

WHY CHALLAHCHALIC?

My username Challahchalic is a pun based on the pronunciation of Challah - the CH in Challah make a ‘H’ sound, and the A makes an ‘O’ sound, so Chalic = Holic. I am a Challah Holic. I’m so funny. Please grade me for my humour.

[thefavouritechild]

TYPOGRAPHY?

POSSIBLE FONTS FOR POSSIBLE USAGE

Research into possible fonts to use if I decide to do anything typography based/include any typography within my project. These fonts are stylised to be reminiscent of Hebrew, so that it almost doesn’t even look like English. This would fit in perfectly with how I am using Challah in the non-intended fashion - it is like I am trying to insert myself within a community that is not my own, and am wilfully ignorant about Judaism and the culture, and using a font that looks like Hebrew but is actually the English alphabet would further perpetuate that idea.

[thefavouritechild]

MEDIUM: PHOTOGRAPHY

WHY DO I FEEL THIS IS THE MOST APPROPRIATE?

Using photography as the medium for my social media postings allows me to more closely control the persona I am presenting. As my model is not a professional (in any sense of the word), I don’t want his embarrassment or lack of experience to influence my audience and how I come across on social media. Photos capture mere snapshots, videos are harder to control when you are working with someone.

As for other mediums, such as illustration - my strat revolves around wearable Challah, and for this to be consistent and successful I feel the most appropriate presentation on social media is documentation in the form of photography to capture the reality of how stupid and absurd this is. With illustration, the boundaries of reality are lifted, and people expect to see some weird and wacky shit. I want to keep the realism of someone actually wearing Challah, for the pure absurdity of it.

[thefavouritechild]

PRIMARY RESEARCH: CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP

It turns out, I’m a very shitty Jew, and forgot a Jewish holiday, which means no going out to eat Jewish chicken soup this week. As a substitute, my brother offered his services to rival my mums cooking, wanting in on the challenge to beat her out as the supreme maker of Jewish Chicken Soup. 

He did not beat her. 

Firstly, he didn’t use a boiling fowl - lazy. You don’t shred the chicken and put it in the soup, you use a boiling fowl so it soaks up all the good tasty juices, and likewise the juices soak up the meat flavour. 

Secondly, his Kneidlach is too small, and he only made 14 for 3 people. I’m sorry, but I can put away at least 6 of those bad boys just by myself, I don’t like to share. It turned out even being 13 after he made the rookie mistake of leaving them uncovered on the bench - my baby girl Ebony (my cat) swiped one of those babies right up and ran under a chair with it and we never saw it again. 

Taste wise, it was good. But it’s not Mum good. Sorry Jack, better luck next time.

[thefavouritechild]

CONCLUSIONS, THOUGHTS, FEELINGS.

THIS PROJECT DIDN’T LIKE ME AND I DIDN’T LIKE IT EITHER.

I definitely struggled with this project, and I know why - I know where I had my falls and where I fucked up. Visuals have never been my strongest aspect, nor the aspect I ever have any interest in doing; I put all my energy into my research and my strategy, and drop the ball when it comes to actually producing the outcomes needed to bring my project to a conclusion. I was steered in the direction of copywriting and strategy in the past year, and told to keep my visuals super simple so that those two things can shine through it and be my main body of work, but when confronted with a project that puts emphasis on the visuals, I overwhelmed myself and bit off more than I could chew in the timeframe I had available to me. This is definitely a project where I should have either kept it very simple content wise, or worked in a group with someone who excels in visuals and maybe falls flat in their strat, so that we could have shared the work 50/50 and collaboratively come out with a solid bulk of work. Getting back into the rhythm of class after months being away, and retaining the momentum and progress I achieved last year has definitely been difficult - it’s felt like starting an engine on a vintage car that hasn’t been driven in years, and I think clawing my way back up to the point I was at last year is definitely going to take some stops and starts, and some trips and falls, but that’s just how the creative process works. Not everything can be a win, and this project just wasn’t the one for me, son.

But I bit off more than I could chew, and didn’t spit it out. I continued to struggle through it because some work is better than no work, and I knew if I backtracked and tried to start from scratch with such a small amount of time left, I’d panic and get further behind and end up having nothing to show for it. I’m proud that I was able to put some work out into the world, but not proud of what work I’ve put out into the world. Social media, whilst being perceived as being fast paced, actually needs time to stew in order to engage an audience and get the reaction and responses you want - you can’t put out little content and expect a lot back, you have to pile it on and keep at it to get the results you desire, which was where I fell behind and got lost. I didn’t leave myself enough time to push out enough content to keep on stirring up engagement and get myself a foothold with my target audience. The engagement I got was minimal, at best, and nonexistent on some platforms entirely. I stubbornly refused to use other peoples content because it felt lazy to me to do so, and I didn’t want to ride on the coattails of others and fall into this trap of being able to use what other people have produced and then fall out of motivation to produce anything myself, but in this day and age stealing content from other people to use on your page is fine, it’s what everyone does. Brands capitalise on memes, repost from people who use their products to make themselves look more authentic and approachable - it’s all part of the strategy of inserting yourself into an online community and getting a basis there to start pushing out your own content that they’ll then be more inclined to engage with. 

Though, this project wasn’t a huge flop - going wrong is just as important and valuable as getting something right. You learn from mistakes and adapt to correct them next time, and if I had more time on this project I would know exactly where to push it next to start to generate more engagement. I would just rapid fire more content, keep uploading and inserting myself into those spaces, follow a lot more pages, message a lot more people, comment on a lot more stuff, really make my presence known where I haven’t done so far. 

[thefavouritechild]

DUNE, YOUR SHOES SUCK.

LAST MINUTE IDEA. 

Thanks Mum, she thought of this one. Using her Dune box from the boots she recently bought, we had one last ditch attempt to get some engagement on Instagram - before my Challah shoes completely fell apart, too. I put the shoes in the Dune box, and presented them as a new purchase, and uploaded the image to Instagram. It’s the image that has definitely gotten the most likes out of everything that I’ve uploaded so far, excluding Junaid from all the results because he’s ruining my experiments (5 likes total, 4 excluding Junaid). Whilst some seem to be from my target audience, others seem to be from elsewhere, including a makeup blogger who god knows why they’re here.

I also took photos of my breaking Challah shoes, and messaged a complaint to Dune about how unsatisfied I am with my latest purchase. Predictably, they didn’t reply. Typical, big corporations never want to admit to their wrongdoings.