Getting to Grips with Social Media and Promotion

Well hello there lovely readers!
I have spent the weekend being very techy and in fact I'm feeling so clever I'm pretty sure I could navigate Mars in a space-ship, should I need to! Broom broom! *crash*

Sorry. Anyway...

So, for a while I've been thinking about learning to make videos. I used to be quite good with the old video camera and editing software in my teens when I was doing projects with the Ormlie Community Association (OCA) and the youth club, but times have moved on ENORMOUSLY, and that plus the fact that I don't have access to a mac anymore, plus the fact I've gotten old (aahh!), means I'm just really not that sure what I'm doing anymore. But lately I've noticed that the volunteer work I do with Team Cultivate could use a video-etic dimension so I really wanted to figure it out. And yes, I did just make "video-etic" up, but it sounds good, no?

I should explain here that I am forever posting Word documents on the Team Cultivate Facebook group page. Because we are rarely all present at every meeting, sharing the "minutes" of each meeting online is a good way for everyone to keep up to speed. It is, however, BORING to read. I don't in any way mind writing them, but coming online to find screels and screels of words on a page is uninspiring and difficult to absorb. Cue, me spending most of Saturday morning trying to work out how to open the webcam on my laptop (I told you I had gotten out of practice). After some googling I figured out I had no webcam driver software, and then after some more googling I figured out how to get said webcam driver software, and then hey ho! Within seconds I was on my merry little way making silly videos of me pulling faces just to test it out. I had a slight momentary blip when I realised Facebook has banned me from uploading videos because of "copyright issues" - a while back I tried to post a video of my friend pulling faces with the song "Sexy and I Know It" as the backing track. Facebook didn't like that. It was a HILARIOUS video though!

So to get around this I posted the video on my Google+ page (which is here) and then shared the link with my Team Cultivate buddies. This sparked the genius idea of creating our very own Youtube profile, which of course these days means having an entire Google account. My whole afternoon, then, was spent creating a team cultivate email address, google+ profile, Youtube account, and public calendar. We've been needing a calendar that we can all access at any point for a while so it all couldn't have worked out better. The pages are in the early stages and there isn't much on them yet but I'm so excited to get making more videos and also to get everyone else involved in using them! Once everyone has access to them we can share info as well as market and promote ourselves much easier. We will be UNSTOPPABLE! We'll all be driving space-ships on Mars!

My only concern is that our Youtube page is public, so everyone else will be able to see the videos. As these videos are, for the moment at least, going to be videos of me talking about our meetings and therefore not really the kind of thing we want to share with the world, it would be better to have them hidden. I can make the videos accessible only to certain people by using email addresses but I foresee there being problems with that - I am willing to bet you need to have a gmail account which no-one in the group will have! BUT we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!

For now, we have our very own google+ page and a calendar full of all our activities and events :)
And I happen to have a little insider info that tells me that calendar is going to get VERY full up over the next few months because we have plans to be really squeally busy out and about in Aberdeen.

I know you're all DYING to see our page now, and so without further flibbertygibbiting from me, here it is!
Our google+ page

And also if you check my page you'll be able to see the wee video I made to test my skills. And yes, I was still in my jammies at 2pm and I'M NOT EVEN SORRY.
My google+

As usual, feel free to comment in the sections below, follow me on twitter @NaomiBegg1, or check my about.me for other ways to get in touch :) 

Over and out!
Love to everyone!
Naomi