Throughout the Making stage of my Digital Artefact, I continued to focus on content creation and curation as I reflected on my project and began ideating ways of improvement. My Digital Artefact consists of the articles I write for Eject Music and an Instagram page (eject_ftremain) where I promote my work and create further discussion around new Hip-Hop music, news and issues.
While there weren’t any mandatory readings during this stage, I often found myself referring back to previous readings such as How Often Should You Post on Social Media? by Meltwater. When writing my contextual essay, the template asked us to consider what we would do differently if we could restart. While I wouldn’t necessarily change anything, Meltwater’s article highlights the importance of utilising multiple platforms and how Twitter . If I could restart, I would have created a Twitter account that would promote my articles but more importantly, allows for easier content curation and more casual and joking interactions with my audience.
I prototyped this theory but using my account to retweet and tweet memes and opinions relating to the release of Kanye West’s Jesus is King. Based on the feedback loop, this received decent engagement and showed potential as a useful platform to interact with my audience and an alternative way in promoting and building hype for future articles. Speaking of Jesus is King, myself and the other writer have collaborated on writing the review which should be posted over the next couple of days. Writing a review with another person made the process a lot quicker to structure and vocalise my opinions. With it being highly talked about, and the early release of our review, I intend to pay close attention to its engagement from my audience as well as the larger Kanye West audience.
As shown in the Types of Content graph, stories were heavily used throughout all stages of my digital artefact. While I’m proud of the consistent amount of content that I have produced, I would have liked to have released more Instagram posts and, as stated before, explored other mediums such as Twitter to balance out my graph.
Adhering to the Making stage, I continued to experiment with my photoshop skills for my Instagram post on my article on posthumous works in Hip-Hop. Originally I intended on breaking my page’s aesthetic but utilising the slide feature on posts but after further consideration and editing, I decided to maintain my aesthetic while still putting my skills to good use. Keeping this editing process online and open led to it being used for the actual article photo.
While this article is still in the process of being edited and out of my control, I have been hosting a topical voting bracket in the lead up to its release. I altered it from my previous voting bracket to be smaller in contestants and had the final round be a 1v1v1. Due to the feedback, I think voting brackets are becoming outdated and repetitive, indicating that I should seek out other forms on audience interactions possibly with trivia tournaments.
Based on my final analytics, my audience is gender balanced, dominantly Australian and aged between 18-24. Though my hometown and Wollongong were the top locations of my audience, I still gained an audience in Brisbane and Melbourne, and internationally in places like the United States and Ireland. This indicates that I have an audience who actively engages with my content outside of BCM114. I’m looking forward to expanding this audience as I intend to continue my project after this semester. This will be used for building my online presence as a music journalist, but hopefully again in future subjects where a digital artefact is required.
If you’d like to check out what I’ve produced throughout the Making stage, or would like to stay posted on all the new content coming, you can find me at Eject Music or on Instagram.
Frank Tremain.
Frank Tremain 
Hey! So first of all, I have to say I checked out your apple music account and actually loved some of the songs you have on there! They sounded super good!
On the topic of making a Twitter page, I also thought of making one for my DA but thought it would be too much to handle at the start. It’s good because you get to build a foundational audience that you can then bring over to other platforms such as Twitter or Instagram. Only managing one page allows you to do that as well as create a closer relationship with your viewers!
Another really good website to use if the American Press Institute. Whilst they are more journalism based, you can still get some tips on how to use social media and how to establish credibility for your audience!
Good luck and I hope you continue your DA in the future!
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Haha thanks! Glad you liked it.
I would agree with you but I think Twitter could be a platform that has a different audience, as my Instagram audience probably wouldn’t have Twitter outside of those in 114. So I was thinking maybe Twitter to almost be as a different DA with just Hip-Hop shitposting and the occasional post about my articles.
I’ll check out that websites, thank you. Congratulations on finishing the subject!
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Hey Frank,
Followed your DA closely. I really appreciate the amount of critical thought focused on audience interaction throughout the project so far. The avenues in which you have allowed your audience to get involved and provide data to optimise your project are fantastic. For example, the use of instagram analytics in conjunction with the content graph is a great way to analyse the ways in which you connect with your audience. A suggestion I have for wider international engagement is to interact with similar pages that have an active audience from different countries that enjoy involvement in the critical evaluation of music.
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Congrats on the awesome project! I loved your use of ‘How Often Should You Post on Social Media?’. You should check out Christopher Moore’s ‘Five Dimensions of Online Persona’. It is incredibly helpful in continuing to build a media profile and as a result attracting people to that profile. Your critical analysis of your work is extremely important in continuing to grow as a person in the media industry. You were able to jump into the ‘making stage’ of the digital artefact, and as a result have achieved a positive outcome. Your use of Instagram as well as the content graph is awesome. Instagram can be a content funnel, yet by adding an extra platform you have dodged that concern. Well done!
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