Short project summary
My original digital artefact (DA) started as a group task utilising Instagram and YouTube titled, UOW4Dummies.
Our plan was to deliver useful and relatable content to meet the needs of other students at UOW, however, our account received a lack of engagement and responses from our intended audience. Consequently, this combined with conflicting schedules lead our team to split and pursue our own individual digital artefacts.
My current digital artefact is a YouTube channel with a corresponding Instagram account, where I deliver ‘generic’ and ‘basic’ content targeted generally towards teenage girls like myself. This concept encompasses videos like vlogs, challenge videos, get ready with me, suggestion videos etc. My ambition behind this project was to be able to assist individuals by providing them with entertainment through interesting videos as well as, some tips and suggestions.
I thought this content would be useful for the ‘basic’ teenage girl as these are the main types of individuals both making and watching this content. For example, similar YouTubers I have been influenced by such as; HeyItsThalia, Keaton Milburn, DESDAMONA and Olivia Vargus all fit into aspects of this starter pack.
A starter pack for the audience I intended to target:
Event 1 – YouTube beginning
Throughout the course of my DA my YouTube channel ended up with 107 subscribers, experiencing an increase of 60 from my beginning amount.
The audience response to my first video, a university vlog was the strongest as it was the most successful video in terms of views and likes. This video improved my channels prior state and also lead to a rise in subscribers.
Comment from the video
My second video didn’t receive as much positive feedback with fewer views and likes, however more comments. I attribute this to the video content as I tried to experiment a little, while still trying to appeal to my audience. At this stage, I conducted polls on Instagram and Twitter in an attempt to engage my audience with the subject of the video. Despite this, the video did not perform as well as my previous one.
Instagram poll deciding the video 
Comments from the video
At this stage, when reflecting on the progress I had made thus far I was aware that I needed to return back to more ‘basic’ type of content to appeal to my audience, instead of experimenting with challenge videos.
Analytics at this stage
Some feedback
Event 2 – Incorporating an Instagram account
During my DA process, I also created an Instagram account dedicated to my YouTube. Thus far, I have nine posts and also various stories on the account.
Overall, there has been mostly positive engagement as each of my posts received similar analytics and I also experienced an increase in followers. Also, using hashtags helped attract other users to my page.
In addition, using polls and other features on Instagram stories has also allowed me to gauge what my audience wanted to see as well as, interact with them. I also used the story feature heavily as a form of promotion for my videos.
When reflecting critically on my Instagram I am aware that my page isn’t exactly a success statistically. However, this account and my personal account has acted as the main traffic source for all of my videos. Consequently, although engagement could have been better I believe that overall using Instagram as a form of promotion and interaction with my audience was a success.
Event 3 – More YouTube
My third video was a get ready with me and it generated improvements from the last video. Although the video received some positive engagement and I gained subscribers the overall response was still quite poor when compared to my first video. At that stage, I attributed this to the video having a longer running time thus, I made sure my next video was shorter.
Also, I did receive more comments compared to my previous videos. I think this is because of the nature of the video, as it was more funny and relatable.
For my final video, I did a part 2 of my most successful video throughout the entirety of my YouTube channel. I also made the video shorter than my previous ones and tried to deal with audio issues I had been experiencing. Despite this, the video still hasn’t received overly positive results. Thus far, the video has generated an alright response relative to my other videos and it is still early days.
I would also like to mention that my audiences private feedback was quite surprising. This being as I actually received quite a few unprompted compliments about my videos. For example, before releasing my first video someone I don’t talk to much actually sent me a snapchat asking when I was going to release another video and they stated that they actually really enjoyed them. All of these comments were voluntary, spontaneous and lead made me feel more inspired to create better content.
Overall
“Creating your own content is often more valuable than curating”. In terms of production for my DA, I believe that creating my own content was more beneficial to reach my intended audience. In addition, if I were to have curated content for this same demographic I would have had to compete with extensive amounts of individuals and businesses who would be better at curating than me.
For the future of my YouTube channel areas I believe I could improve in would be posting more often and other technical aspects such as, lighting and audio quality.
Sources
HeyItsThalia YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXemCTUhSnY
Keaton Milburn YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwbRK6IU6kU
DESDAMONA YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDVNspapADg
Olivia Vargus YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvn0jADgJSQ
How To Use Content Curation The Right Way – Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/09/01/how-to-use-content-curation-the-right-way/#1cd59375b63e
Simply Sez 
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