Playing the role of content creator

I think I have become what I never thought I would – a social media content creator. 

 

I’m not saying I don’t like content creators, I just “knew” it is something that I wouldn’t ever want to do, or especially not do full time. It seemed stressful putting in all the work and not knowing whether it was going to do well or I would get any income from it. Plus, I’m not a huge fan of recording my life and putting it out there for all to see. 

 

But with my wonderful job at the “Colorado Parent” magazine, social media is on my list of tasks to perform. I have to create 10 social media posts every week–two posts every business day. Usually, it’s pretty fine. I just take stories from our website or our latest edition and put one up on Instagram and Facebook. Or I’ll go to Canva and make a cute list of things to do over the weekend. And occasionally, I’ll make a video to post about whatever event I was just at. 

 

When I was interviewed for this job, she asked me if I had any social media experience. I said yes – I had created a Waseca County Pioneer TikTok a couple years ago, but gave that up once I went back to school. Still, I figured since I’m a 22-year-old who is almost chronically online, I feel like I could pretty easily make some social media posts. The magazine gave me the job anyway, and here I am. 

 

My boss told me the magazine had built a good social media presence, but for some reason got locked out of their account by Meta or whoever was in charge of it. They tried to fight back, but never managed to reacquire access to their account. So they started a new one. When I was given access, the new social media account had around 230 followers, compared to more than 6,000 followers associated with the previous account. 

 

So while I may not be a professional or expert content creator, it has been very satisfying seeing the numbers go up showing higher stats on each post. The professional dashboard on the account says I’m up over 10 thousand views in the last thirty days (which is when I started, over 30 days ago). And I’m up over 40 new followers since I started. 

 

But now my company has hired a real social media person, so I will no longer have the job of posting to social media. Which might be for the best. The amount of time I spent on those posts instead of doing other work was probably more than it should have been. 

 

And work has been hectic. We get two weeks off at the end of the year to celebrate Christmas with our families, so we’re working on getting January’s publication done before a few weeks ahead of schedule. 

 

My Determination: “You want to remember that while you're judging the book, the book is also judging you.” ― Stephen King, Night Shift