Why can’t you see me?

Wanstead teenager Grace Wolstenholme invites you to watch her YouTube channel for an insight into life with cerebral palsy. In the eighth of a series of articles, Grace sets herself some social media goals

So, let’s start where we left off last month. I was saying I am pleased to be getting my message out about awareness of cerebral palsy to so many people via this magazine and through social media. My goals for 2021 are to obviously stay healthy – physically and mentally – but also to hopefully reach 5,000 subscribers on YouTube, to reach a million followers on TikTok and 10,000 on Instagram.

You’re probably thinking: ‘Why does every platform have different numbers?’ Well, it’s because some platforms are easier to gain followers than others; for example, on YouTube, people mainly upload once or twice a week, but there’s a lot of editing to do. One day, it took me eight hours to edit two videos and it can take up to a whole day to film (I mean a good 14 hours to film one or maybe two videos, depending on what kind of videos they are), but it’s so rewarding and worth all the work I put into it, otherwise my content wouldn’t be that good!

Moving on to TikTok, the key with this is that you have to be consistent with regular uploads, and by that I mean at least three to four times a day, be that a vlog or a dance video. With TikTok, the way to gain followers is to use as many hashtags as possible, especially trending hashtags and sounds. If you use a really popular sound and hashtags, then you should get on the ‘For You’ page, where people who don’t follow you can see your videos, as it shows random posts people have made. If someone likes what they see on the ‘For You’ page, they might start following you.

With Instagram, again, the way to gain more followers there is to post consistently, but you don’t have to post as much as with TikTok. I aim to post a picture once a day, but the picture has to be good quality, and like TikTok, use as many trending hashtags, or even create your own so others will start using it. For example, I’ve created the hashtag #journeywithcerebralpalsy. I have my regular hashtags saved on my phone so all I’ve got to do is paste them in. At the moment, I’ve worked out that I get one or two likes per minute because of the hashtags.

There’s also a livestreaming platform called Twitch. I’m interested in starting to use that, but because of my anxiety, I’m a bit nervous about it!

Author: Editor