Editing The Pen Addict 208/transcript (section)

== Instagram ==


'''Adam Blaine:''' Well, Instagram is one of the platforms I think I have the most fun with, um, just because I can create a cool picture. Um, I've always enjoyed photography and I always like criticize myself more with my photography because I always see things that could be improved. Um, but that little series I did on Instagram, it was kind of inspired by Tessa's posts because she does a lot of the stationary organized neatly. Um, so I just did the one, the first picture, um, just because I had all of these black things lying on my desk. So I did that one and I thought it'd be kind of cool to do, um, one for each color. Um, but I just have, I tried to have fun with Instagram and, you know, make things look cool. That's why I really enjoy the blog and Instagram mostly is because I can make, there's so many well-designed stationary items just to photograph them in a cool way, um, is what I enjoy most about this.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I'm, I don't know what to say about these. I'm just in love with them so much. I, I think the blue one's my favorite just cause I'm a big blue fan. Um, the pink and purple one is killer. Um, I I'm a big fan of, of both of those colors. I just, I don't know. I'm, I'm a big fan. You really well done as I've fallen over these pictures.

'''Myke Hurley:''' How long does it take to put something like this together? Like the, the, the images I'll put one in the show notes for illustration, just, you know, where you've got all the color products and stuff together. How long does it take you to, to, to put something like that up?

'''Adam Blaine:''' Um, it doesn't really take that long to put them together. Um, the actual pictures and finding the products. Um, the ones that took the most time were like the, the color specific ones, like the, like the yellow and orange one I did, um, and the pink and purple, just finding colors that actually match together. Um, the longest process is finding the right light because that is an, like a long going battle with me and finding the right light for a picture. Um, but I don't, I don't try to edit them a lot. So I try to, you know, take it and tweak it a little bit using Instagram's tools. But, um, I just, I just have fun with them mostly. I don't really go through like a process of how to take them. Um, I mean, most of these were from start to finish about half an hour, really. I don't want to go make it a huge process where I'm not having fun anymore.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Cause then it just becomes like a chore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Adam Blaine:''' And that's kind of the approach I've taken with the blog as well. If a post is taking too long and I've stopped enjoying writing about something, I just, you know, stop and take another approach to it. That's a very interesting topic we're going to cover in next week's podcast.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm glad you brought that up. So back on these pictures in the green, when you have, uh, um, what looks like about 10 green stamps. Do you have that? Did you have that laying around or did you have to go get those?

'''Adam Blaine:''' Somebody sent me those a long time ago when I started YouTube. Um, I mentioned like a few years ago, I mentioned that I wanted to try, um, like crafts, like, uh, card making or scrapbooking or something never took off, but somebody sent me a bunch of like, uh, paper things that to include in crafts. And one of the things that included was like hundreds and hundreds of old stamps and there's just loads of different colors of them. And I just needed a space to fill in the green picture cause I don't own a lot of green stationary. So I found those and just included them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's ideal. I've, I've been going through all these just over and over again. I love it. So you, you mentioned YouTube and we're going to get to that, but first let's talk about our good friends at Squarespace.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Couldn't be a more perfect episode to talk about Squarespace on, I think, because Squarespace are the simplest way for anyone to create a beautiful landing page website or online store. You can start building your own website today at squarespace.com and use the offer code Inc at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. With easy to use tools and templates, Squarespace helps you capture every detail of what drives you because if it's worth the effort, it's worth sharing with the world. If you're sitting here and listening to, uh, award-winning blogger, Adam Blaine, and you want to be an award-winning blogger like him, Squarespace is obviously the place to start because they give you all of the tools that you need to create something that looks professionally designed regardless of your skill level. Like for example, um, a moment ago when we were talking, uh, about some of the products that Adam has reviewed, um, I went to his site to find the post to put in the show notes and I could very easily search it because Squarespace has inbuilt search functionality. It's very easy to enable all of that sort of stuff. So you don't need to worry about it. If you don't know how to code a website from scratch, if you don't know how to do all the security updates, or if you just don't want to, Squarespace is the platform for you. They have state-of-the-art technology to ensure security and stability and to keep your site up and running at all times. They have 24-7 support. They have their commerce platform to sell physical and digital goods and just so much more. I've used Squarespace for so long and I know that Brad has too and now of course Adam as well. So, you know, you can trust us. We know what we're doing here. If you sign up for a year, you'll get a free domain name allowing you to choose exactly what you want your site to be called and Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month. You can sign up for a free trial today with no credit card required and start building your own website straight away. Just go to squarespace.com and then when you decide to sign up, because I'm sure you will want to, make sure that you use the offer code INK at checkout, INK. You'll get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the pen addict. Thank you so much to Squarespace for their continued support of this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, Adam, video is one of those things that I haven't latched onto yet, but I want to. I don't know if it's just a time thing, if it's a I'm not good enough thing, especially when looking at your videos. You do a wonderful job. You've been doing this for how long have you been up on YouTube putting videos up? At least a couple of years around the time of the blog, right?

'''Adam Blaine:''' The YouTube was about a year and a half before the blog.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Okay. Okay, cool.

'''Adam Blaine:''' So just under four years.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wow. So you do a lot of, you started, you did a bunch of Filofax videos and you've done some more videos that tie in more directly with what you're doing at the Desk of Adam. Talk about like putting together like one of your YouTube videos for the Desk of Adam. Like I'm looking at just the homepage of your YouTube page. You have a bunch of the field notes videos. You have what's in my bag series, some things like that. Just talk about like the process of putting together one of those videos and why someone like myself needs to do this. And it's, it's a good thing.

'''Adam Blaine:''' I think with videos, I try to have more, show more personality than I do on the blog. With the blog, it's geared more about the actual product. And that's why on YouTube, I'm kind of, I'm kind of more relaxed with the sort of content I post. Like I'll do more videos like the what's in my bag one, which was me just chatting about how much I'm a hoarder for like 20 minutes. And then stuff like the field notes one, I wanted to just go through like some of the old X. I have quite an unnecessarily large collection of field notes. So I just wanted to go through some of the old ones. And I thought instead of photographing them and making a huge post about it, if I just talk through a video and talk through some of the history of the, of some of the additions, then it's a better format. Um, and then some products like the, uh, the vanishing point, I did a video with that just because I felt I could show the product better in some of the, the parts of it, um, in a video better than I can in pictures. Um, so it's more of an, uh, a free way to, to display things and you can definitely get your personality across more through videos than you can, um, in writing I found. And the engagement on YouTube is, is really great as well. People seem to enjoy that format more than most.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, that I really enjoy watching. I need to, YouTube is one of those things I need to get more involved in. Um, I enjoy the format. I enjoy sharing. I enjoy watching what other people do. I just haven't been able to fit that into my, uh, my workflow yet. But, uh, I, like, I, I just love seeing your, your videos and I'm not going to lie, Adam. My favorite videos are the collaborations with your sister.

'''Adam Blaine:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So we, we have to talk about this. So your sister's name, Sarah, and I've gone through some of these videos and, you know, knowing Myke, like I do, I mean, when Myke travels to the U S you know, he stays with me, you know, when we're doing the Atlanta pen show and we always talk about, you know, the differences between the UK and the U S and a lot of it revolves around food. Um, so, you know, Myke's had to take, Myke's taken special deliveries of things. People have brought him from the U S back home. And in turn, Myke has brought things just from the UK to bring to us here in the U S. So you have a series where Sarah and Adam eat American candy. And Oh my God, I, I think I've watched, I think I've watched through them at least twice, like both of them. And tell me why y'all decided to do this and you know how it is working with your sister, because y'all do a really good job and I enjoy these very much.

'''Adam Blaine:''' Um, well, the first one started because of one of my viewers who I started talking to wanted to send me a bunch of, um, a bunch of just candy from America. Um, so I got that package, which was crazy. Uh, just having somebody send you like candy from a different country. Um, so we thought a way to show appreciation for that was to just try them on camera. Um, and then I visited the States last year and I thought while I was over there, I'd pick some stuff up for us to do another version of it. Um, and we just have fun with it. Those collaboration videos, they're just an excuse for us to hang out and, and we're and do something fun and we just film it. And I don't know that they're the more, the fun side of my YouTube channel.