On the journey of my DA I learnt a lot about my creative process as well as feminism, social issues and what my users are more receptive to. Being able to create short videos and images designed to a vintage aesthetic with my own feminist driven poetry has been very enjoyable and been great for educating my users on feminist issues through a creative perspective. If I were to do anything differently it would be to pre-plan posts in advance and give myself time to create videos and images to look how I envision them, a lot of the content I’m making at the moment doesn’t turn out exactly how I want it to, but I post it because if I don’t it doesn’t exist and I can’t maintain my feedback loop with my users. I wish I knew how engagement worked more from the beginning, to be honest I’m still a bit lost with how to put my work out there and gain more attention, the stand still I’m at right now just makes me feel like what I’m making isn’t good enough however, as of late, I’ve become more interactive with my audience in polls and asking questions to try to remedy this.
Skill development
I’ve also become so much more confident in sharing my writing, I used to be afraid to, but now due to the positive responses I’ve received, I’ve been really encouraged and less afraid to share it all. Knowing that my poetry can be helpful for my users to understand these concepts through a new artistic perspective motivates me to continue to share fearlessly. My editing skills have improved enormously, and this process has made me realise how much I really enjoy editing and that I’m actually quite good at it. My understanding of feminism and social issues has also deepened a lot and has improved how I articulate the ideas into my writing to be more cohesive for my users.
Navigating Instagram
At the moment I only use Instagram for my DA and promote new posts on my Twitter. Instagram as a platform is great in a multitude of ways, you can share content in videos, images, stories, reels and can find your niche pretty easily. However, Instagram is a very large platform and with the deterioration of audience’s attention spans in our generation you have to be strategic in the content you put out if you want more people to engage. I’ve found this particularly hard to navigate, I find myself torn between the content I want to make and the content that appeals most to my audience. On Instagram one of the best ways to get recognition is by getting recognition from someone with a larger audience sharing your content, however getting your content on the radar of those large accounts is hard in itself especially with the massive influx of content on Instagram already. Personally, these issues I take as something I will learn and figure out more as I progress further with my DA. Learning to not stress as much on the numbers and accepting the feedback from my small community of users is enough for me as long as I continue to enjoy doing it as being too strategic may deter me from creating. However, it is important to maintain the users I do have by applying some strategies of using appropriate hashtags and posting regularly to keep my users inform and engaged.
Breaking & Remaking
I found prototyping useful in establishing a style for my content, maintaining a focus on #fist rather than over editing. However, because I’ve had my DA running for a while now, I’ve been making a lot of the same and as a result wasn’t receiving any major increases of attention. At this stage breaking and making has been more beneficial to my process. Initially, when introduced to the concept of breaking my model I was hesitant, I’d established a style that worked for my users and that I could make #fist. However, upon the reading the article, Breaking Good, by Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman, I altered my view of the concept due to the comparisons they made. Appealing to my artistic side, they brought forth examples of artists continually having to make and remake in order to explore new avenues and not get bored doing what works over and over again. Without realising it, I’ve done this with small creative iterations to my work, different types of visuals, editing and styles of writing. By consciously breaking what’s good and traditional to discover something great or at least learn something has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of doing my DA as it has improved my creative process and introduced me to new ways of editing that I really love to do and have worked well with my audience.
I broke my model recently by trying to do some poetry that wasn’t specifically talking about any particular feminist issue and mainly just a relatable type poem, it performed okay, pretty much the same as my other posts. I also tried doing shorter quotes which seemed to work well for the videos. Another way I broke my cycle was by using other feminist quotes in my edits and not just posting them on my story. I’ve been against doing this because it goes against the creative perspective element of my DA, however as a way to break what was comfortable I did it and it received mixed responses from my users, from this I’ve learnt that I can incorporate these quotes into some of my art to mix it up now and then and cater to those of my users that enjoy it while maintaining the intention I’ve established. Recently, I attempted to do reels again, I had given up on them previously however, I wanted to test it out again using a different style of editing with voice over and much faster clips. In what can be seen as a type of advertisement for my account, I made a 15 second video representative of what it means to be a feminist. From exploring this I found that reels get a lot more reach then my normal videos (though they get liked significantly less), so by posting them I can push my content to a larger audience.
I’m going to continue this breaking and remaking at this stage to gage what works and what doesn’t with my audience, I’ve also experimented with glitch art for a new icon picture but after polling it with my users I was met with a preference for the old icon so I listened and left the old one up. I’m excited to explore using other feminist quotes more, to provide the education my users want while maintaining my creative aesthetic. Please check out my account and follow for all the new and different content I have lined up!!
Hallie Rutter 
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