It’s October! And that can only mean one thing! Halloween!
No, wait. It’s #OctoberStudyChallenge time!
With prizes to be won and lots of fun tasks on Instagram – and TikTok too, it’s well worth getting involved with.
But, what is the #OctoberStudyChallenge? Let’s take a look at this year’s challenges, and see…
First of all, there aren’t 31 different challenges this year, which was pretty hard to keep up with when there was something new every day – or at least that’s what I found last year.
This year, the challenges are spread over a couple of days each, so they’re much easier to handle, whilst still keeping lots of the fun ideas from previous challenges.
Can you just do the ones that interest you, or just follow the hashtag and see what others are posting? Of course! Even if you’re just an Instagram lurker, or not very confident about making your own posts, you can still enjoy the fun and find new accounts to follow.
Two day challenges also mean that you’ve got a chance to see what other people have shared before you make your own posts, and this might be the ideal introduction to Insta you’ve been looking for.
But it’s not just Instagram this year. There’s a chance to post on TikTok as well for some challenges, and I’d certainly enjoy making more OU friends on TikTok.
However, if all this is utterly incomprehensible to you, here are some key concepts that might help you get started.
Instagram: Instagram is an image-sharing app designed for mobile use. People post pictures and videos and can use fun and arty filters (creative image and video manipulation tools) to give their posts more impact. You can add tags (tag other people’s accounts using the at @ key, like on Twitter and Facebook), hashtags (searchable phrases denoted by the hash # symbol, so you can find all posts using that hashtag, some of which are VERY popular – see below. You can also choose to follow hashtags that interest you.) a location if you choose to share that, and a more general text description to tell people about your post. All of these are optional, of course. You can just post your visuals, and let them speak for themselves – unless you’re taking part in a challenge or contest, of course! You’ll need your #hashtags then. Why not try searching for a few phrases of interest, and see what you can find?
TikTok: TikTok started as a music video and performance-sharing site, letting people share short videos, much like Twitter lets you share short text messages. It began as a merger between the Chinese app Douyin and the US video-sharing site musical.ly to take advantage of the wider market outside China, where Douyin is still going strong. TikTok has changed and grown, and now you can post clips up to ten minutes long, add music and captions to your videos, buy and sell products and services, duet (combine your video reply with another person’s post, and even literally duet with singers and musicians) or stitch (add your video response to a short clip of another person’s post) – or simply reply with a short message or emoji, or even just hit the like button (or the ‘not interested’ option on the reply menu). There’s always something fun or educational to find on TikTok, and again, it uses #hashtags to group subjects and ideas together. Just make sure you set aside plenty of time, as you can end up down endless rabbit holes of content. The hours can vanish before you even realise, and you can find yourself with whole new areas of interest. Who knew Asian ladies unboxing household gadgets could be so riveting!
I hope you’ll take a look at this year’s #OctoberStudyChallenge, as I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, and you can catch up if you miss any days and still want to play! It’s a great way to make new friends and find new fascinations.
And of course, just drop me a message if you have any questions I’ve not answered; either here, on Insta or TikTok too.
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