What is Kaylee Makes About?
I started this blog post with some ideas surrounding content writing. But it morphed into more of an exploration about the purpose of my website. What does that look like? What is Kaylee Makes all about?
First off, I want to share my love for Fantasy, SiFi, and adventure stories. For me, that means converting audio books into cosplay, and sharing the process as I go along. But over the last year of working on my website, I’ve learned some things when it comes to content creation and my website goals.
But I hadn’t really solidified my main objectives for putting all this effort into making a website etc. But the bottom line is, I want to inspire people to learn how to make something cool! Crafting is such an incredible outlet for me. I find such joy and fulfillment while on a maker’s journey. I like the challenge. I love working on my own schedule and timeline, according to my own ideas and dreams. But here’s the thing, I used to get afraid. I used to be worried about failing. But after many years of being stubborn enough to keep trying, that I’ve learned that messing up is part of learning. Part of my goal with my Kaylee Makes website is to encourage you lovely crafters in the “whoops” moments and demonstrate my own problem-solving process.
To put these ideas into a draft mission statement could sound something like, “I inspire excitement in making things you love, enjoying good stories, and reveling in creative problem solving.” Wow, talk about amazing marketing cream cheesiness, but the sentiment is there.
Ah, and now to focus on the creative problem-solving part. One major problem I’ve been facing is my content, and social media channels. Which brings me back to the topic of dealing with how to create content. Looking back, here are some observations that I’ve learned about myself via trial and error over the last year:
I like to document and post about things I am working on currently. I’m really surprised by this because I am a planner. I thought I’d want to have a whole recipe and make a neat calendar of tasks but that takes too much effort. Especially when Facebook Business manager eats my posts and never schedules things properly. ARG!!!
If I write a blog post, and update my website first, then social media is easy. I have all these resources I’ve put together for my own website, and that gives me a ton of content to pull from. Hooray!
I’ve learned that social media videos and images are easy to pull from my phone, while YouTube videos and images are easier to create with footage from my camera.
Interestingly, I think that people like to hear me talk about my projects and the steps as I’m working on them. I think this may be because I am good at explaining things and I am animated. I can talk and work at the same time, which is helpful. Also, I don’t mind being a goof ball on camera because that’s just who I am.
I think that being honest about the problems I run into and have to solve are really important. I don’t want to portray a finished product without showing the many little decisions that add up to help make a super awesome final result.
To tag along with some previous points I’m not super crazy about voice overs at the moment. I don’t mind being on camera, so I think explaining as I go along will help me create more videos, showing my process.
Now, these observations are all about what I want to do in order to document my crafting projects, not some silly algorithm that is probably more arbitrary than I realize. To me, social media algorithms are just computer programs that aim to forecast people’s evolving preferences over time. I’m not going to try to make decisions based solely on some wishy-washy computer program. The search algorithms will pick me up if I hang around long enough. (AKA probably 5 years realistically.) Instead, I’m going to figure out an approach that’s tailored to what I find interesting. Because there’s lots of people I can join in conversation with, and that’s incredible!
One great thing about the internet is it makes the world smaller. I’ve learned so much from YouTube channels and tutorial videos. I have already met many new people who share my love of stories and crafting cool book-based cosplays. That is amazing! My content writing has to support my purpose, not drowning in an endless waterfall of social media posts. At the core, I want to encourage you to enjoy a good book, learn something new, and create handmade things you love!