Whale Tales – the Beginning

Well here we are. Eleven days into this new adventure (are you enjoying these real time updates? So exciting right?!) and hopefully putting up my first blog post tomorrow! #nervousbutexcited

So. Social Media management. How the heck did I get into that? Well, let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start)

via GIPHY

A little over three years ago (November 22nd 2014 to be exact) my two best friends and I started a website called Whale Tales. A living library of cetacean (whales, dolphins, and porpoise) stories for all to read and share. We wanted a place to record the amazing stories we’ve heard in the past, somewhere where anyone could read them, regardless if you were a whale watch naturalist who saw them every day or a 14-year-old girl living in Winnipeg who loved dolphins but wouldn’t see them without a plane ride. After a lot of talking and planning (and wine drinking) we launched at the BC Marine Mammal Symposium in 2014. It was pretty exciting especially after talking about it with our peers and getting some enthusiastic feedback. We were on our way!

Like all things in the world now we needed to have social media accounts to go with Whale Tales. Not only would they help us get our word out to our friends but over time they would become essential in our quest to collect more stories. At the start we didn’t really know this or how to work them, but we signed up for accounts on all platforms. I mean all. Pinterest, Vine (#RIPVine), Google +, Tumblr, everything that you could sign up for at the time. We decided that it would be good to have a “Social Media Czar” to oversee them all and post appropriate content. One person would do it for a month and then we would rotate, passing on what we knew.

I was the first to start so I had to create all our accounts, figure out how to Tweet, how to schedule posts, what hashtags to use. I didn’t know how to do any of it! Luckily Google is your friend and we discovered that you could schedule posts on Facebook as well as use platforms like Hootsuite, Buffer and Latergram (now Later) for scheduling tweets and Instagram posts. I wasn’t sure what to post aside from links to our website and the few stories we had up at the time, but I started following other accounts and slowly but surely started sharing things and coming up with more original content. We wanted to get people to go to our site to read, and more importantly share, stories of their own, but I realized I also wanted to educate people. We were starting to get a following and unexpectedly found that we had this (albeit small) megaphone in our possession to pass along our knowledge. Luckily my cofounders LOVE educating the public and so were super on board. We (mainly Nicole) came up with some blurbs and stats that we could share for species or issues whenever they were relevant, and we still use them to this day. We’ve tweaked a lot of things, but it was that first month or so when we really honed our message and our goal to educate the world about these amazing animals.

Since then we’ve become a worldwide phenomenon!  We are super famous and have saved the whales! Okay that’s not exactly true (unless it happens between me writing this and posting it???*) but I like to think that we have helped people learn about cetaceans and the issues facing them and even if that has caused one less piece of plastic in the ocean or one less fish taken out of the ocean than we’ve done something. And as for becoming super famous you’ll just have to wait until my next post about how we took over Instagram(ish).

Until then, head over to whale-tales.org to read some stories or share your own! ?

via GIPHY

 

*it did not happen…yet

12 thoughts on “Whale Tales – the Beginning

  1. And then we decided you should be the czar for all time because you are awesome!

  2. Hello ,

    I saw your tweets and thought I will check your website. Have to say it looks very good!
    I’m also interested in this topic and have recently started my journey as young entrepreneur.

    I’m also looking for the ways on how to promote my website. I have tried AdSense and Facebok Ads, however it is getting very expensive.
    Can you recommend something what works best for you?

    Would appreciate, if you can have a quick look at my website and give me an advice what I should improve: http://janzac.com/
    (Recently I have added a new page about FutureNet and the way how users can make money on this social networking portal.)

    I have subscribed to your newsletter. 🙂

    Hope to hear from you soon.

    P.S.
    Maybe I will add link to your website on my website and you will add link to my website on your website? It will improve SEO of our websites, right? What do you think?

    Regards
    Jan Zac

    1. Hi Jan!
      Thanks so much for your comment and your subscription! I will have a look at your site on when I am free on Friday and get back to you! 🙂

    2. Hi Jan,
      You have a great site! I would love to talk to you further about ways to increase traffic to your website, would you like to email us at physarumconnections@gmail.com to continue the conversation?
      Have a great weekend!
      Lindsay

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