A few weeks have passed since my surface level dive on other BCM projects and it’s that time where we come back and see how they’ve progressed over this past month and a bit. The two people I am reviewing and seeing what they’ve done is Andrea ( @andreamrra ) & Kat ( @katho_2001 )
Podcast (Kat): https://kathrynsmagazine.wordpress.com/2022/08/12/beckat-podcast/
Pixelcraft (Andrea) : https://madebyandreamrra.wordpress.com/2022/08/12/pixelcraft-the-game/
Andrea is continuing with a project from a previous BCM subject based around board games. She was looking to use social media platforms to promote and evolve her board game concept as well as work alongside another BCM student to help put together some designs for characters and other sprites for the game itself.
Andrea has been very vocal on twitter about her progress with the project so far, both with the positives and the negatives which I think is a great thing to do. If you only show positives it shows an unrealistic representation on what it takes to make a project like this.
(I’m not saying that a project should have negatives, but more that if there are negatives you should express them)
I have seen her reaching out and talking about his board game on reddit forums and twitter a lot, getting feedback from communities and being very vocal about the game and its progress which is great to see. As someone who is heavy in the “Creator-sphere” I know that most people love someone that is genuine over social media and explains when something is wrong with a project.
There’s a term called, “The Every-Day Influencer”, where someone seems down to earth and relatable enough that they are more likely to be trusted when talking about a product or something they are working on just due to they’re demeaner.
( https://www.trend.io/blog/everyday-influencers-explained )
With Andrea being the face of Pixelcraft, she has indirectly made herself essentially the “influencer” that promotes this game which is a good thing. People love putting a face to a product, that’s why most brands have a celebrity ambassador
Overall I am very impressed with Andrea’s progress, she is working very hard on branding and promotion of the game which is extremely necessary in this day and age. She has been very vocal online about her progress and transparent when something is going good or if something hits the fan.
I legit can’t think of anything she is doing wrong. In the end to get a project like this off the ground is promotion and great ideas which she is doing by going into forums and getting other peoples thoughts and talking about the game on social medias.
Our next BCM student is Kat, she has decided to partner up with a friend (Bek) and put together a podcast. At first it started “as a joke at the start… the idea of making a podcast formed because we thought we were hilarious” (https://kathrynsmagazine.wordpress.com/2022/08/12/beckat-podcast/ ) which I think is a great way to build a product of entertainment such as a podcast.
Building a podcast (or any form of media) with a friend is great because people will see that genuine friendship and enjoy being apart of it and enjoying the laughs and takes the group (or in this case duo) would have. In this case, Bek and Kat have great chemistry and give of a great presence in their podcast. They also collaborated with a friend who has a fairly successful podcast of her own which helped boost their first episode and pull in some numbers you wouldn’t ever see unless you already have some sort of presence online.
Although I do think Kat (and Bek) could’ve done way more, firstly they said they could look into maybe filming it and posting clips to Instagram or TikTok which I TOTALLY agree they should’ve done. TikTok has the craziest algorithm that is creating new careers in social media everyday as well as making the most random things blow up and bring views to your artefact.
It’s great that they got the boost they did from a friend, they didn’t run with it and attempt to grow or post more which is always a problem when given an opportunity like that. I listened to their podcast episodes and they have a great dynamic and take a “new-ish” approach to podcasting which I haven’t seen often which is keeping episodes around 15 minutes long, which I think is great. There’s defiantly a market for shorter form podcast topics and the market they want to aim their content at I think would prefer that kind of length compared to the usual 45 minutes to over 1 and a half hours
I suggest taking some inspiration from the “Saving Grace” podcast run by popular TikToker @gkBarry (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ6ooac2K6sWf8gjlNR85eg)
Obviously production and quality would be hard to emulate seeing as Grace (gkbarry) is funded by Spotify BUT it’s not hard to do something along the lines of that. I know her podcast clips are always going viral on TikTok and believe the girls could do the same thing.
In the end, both Bek and Andrea have amazing products here. With some determination and good marketing and use of social media they could be some very well-known digital artefacts
James Mackay - Portfolio 