[SPEAKER] Experimenting with #OpinionMinute on Tik-Tok

I’ve been playing around on Tik-Tok a bit this week, been thinking about this for months… As an academic, we’re encouraged to prepare, and think, and prepare some more, before committing to speaking/writing. Even my media work, which can be relatively ‘off the hoof’, I’ve got a good idea of the story, and have done some prep and reading. I’ve barely used Tik-Tok, so thought it would be a good space to experiment … although it then offers the option to share to Instagram, which I have set up to share to Facebook and Twitter, so that’s brought in some interesting stats.

For these videos, Tik-Tok has a limit of 60 seconds, so have to get whatever my thoughts are out within that time frame. I have a couple of ring-lights – this one is set on my desk and happens to be the right height, though I need to play around with how to set it up properly because only seem to get phone in one place. I have a second bendy ring light that can be shoved in a bag (for all those times we’re allowed out and about at the moment, ha ha ha).

Anyway, for these, at present, I know I have the minute (can see the timer counting down on my phone), I’ve generally thought a bit about what I might want to have an opinion on (I’m a trained historian, as my friend Justine said, we’re very well trained at sitting on the fence with authority (based upon evidence)), then doing just one take – which means I might not have time to say all I want … feels like a ‘fun’ experiment at the moment – we’ll see how long it remains fun/interesting, and has had a surprising amount of engagement – including reposts, responses with people saying that I have captured what they think, or encouraged them to think differently – already! I mean, I guess these topics are already near the top of my head so have been ‘rehearsed’ in other settings maybe.

So, here are the first 3 that I’ve done – next step is working out what app let’s me give written captions for the content – ‘Mix Captions’ did a half decent job when I tried with the third one – it’s one coin per second, with £4.99 buying you 60 minutes – but it did miss some bits out and I had to edit quite a bit. And I need to get better at tagging within the limitation of Tik-Tok captions!

@drbexl? original sound – Bex Lewis

Views: Tik-Tok: 282; Instagram: 403; Facebook: 622; Twitter: 511

@drbexlToday’s ##OpinionMinute on ##FamilyChristmas – thinking about ##cancer and ##covid? original sound – Bex Lewis

Views: Tik-Tok: 286; Instagram: 318; Facebook: 941; Twitter: 515

@drbexl? original sound – Bex Lewis

Views: Tik-Tok: 117; Instagram: 313; Facebook: 495; Twitter: 782