This quick tip is all about alt text and making your social media content more accessible. If you're avoiding alt text because you don't feel confident with it, hopefully this episode will get you going!
Alexis' links.
I hang out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexisbushnell/
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaForHumans
Join the club to learn more about ethical and effective social media marketing: https://socialmediaforhumans.club/
Voice over by Hawke Wood: https://www.spotlight.com/3490-9081-8844
Alexis' links.
I hang out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexisbushnell/
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaForHumans
Join the club to learn more about ethical and effective social media marketing: https://socialmediaforhumans.club/
Voice over by Hawke Wood: https://www.spotlight.com/3490-9081-8844
This quick tip is all about alt text and making your social media content more accessible. If you're avoiding alt text because you don't feel confident with it, hopefully this episode will get you going!
Alexis' links.
I hang out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexisbushnell/
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaForHumans
Join the club to learn more about ethical and effective social media marketing: https://socialmediaforhumans.club/
Voice over by Hawke Wood: https://www.spotlight.com/3490-9081-8844
Alexis' links.
I hang out on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexisbushnell/
Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaForHumans
Join the club to learn more about ethical and effective social media marketing: https://socialmediaforhumans.club/
Voice over by Hawke Wood: https://www.spotlight.com/3490-9081-8844
Hello and welcome to Social Media for Humans, the podcast that empowers you to do social differently. Your host, Alexis Bushnell, and her guests discuss their experience of social media as business owners, users and, ultimately, humans. With insights and advice to help you find an effective and ethical strategy that works for you, grab yourself a drink
and join the conversation. Alexis:Hi, hello, hi, I'm Alexis, my pronouns are she her, welcome to a quick tip episode of the Social Media for Humans podcast. This episode is going to be super duper wooper quick because it comes with a challenge, prepare yourselves! It's very easy challenge, I promise, because of the content of the episode. So today I want to talk to you about making your content accessible. So I have had a few questions about this, I actually taught a class on this for the Fiery Well's membership recently, and I wanna only talk this episode about alt text. So alt text, image descriptions, for when you are posting images and GIFs, we'll get into that in a moment. My challenge for you is going to be to include alt text in your content going forward and, if you are struggling, if you've put a post up with some alt text and you're like "oh, I don't know if this is very good," send it to me, send me the post, share it with me, please do, I am quite happy to have a read of it and let you know. So essentially image descriptions or alt text is explaining what's happening in the image. That sounds really simple when you think about it but I tend to find a lot of people when they sit down to actually write it then go "which bits of the image? What is actually important? What is not?" So the things you're thinking about when you're writing alt text are how is it relevant to the caption that you've put with it? Why are you posting it, basically? So if you have an image say, of a hot chocolate, like a mug of hot chocolate, it's got some marshmallows in it and it's sat on a table on a sunny day. I don't know why you'd be drinking. I say I don't know why you'd be drinking hot chocolate on a sunny day, I drink hot chocolate all year round so that's why! So if you are a cafe that sells hot chocolate that might be a very different image description to if you are having a rough day and you made yourself a hot chocolate to cheer yourself up. So if you were the cafe who sells hot chocolate you might have an image description that is like "a luxurious hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream in a..." can I think of a way to describe mugs right now? No, so we'll just go with "in a mug on one of our outside tables looking out at the high street on this beautiful sunny bank holiday," shall we say. Whereas if you have had a really rough day and you're posting a photo of your hot chocolate on a sunny day outside and sat outside your image description might be like "a hot chocolate with marshmallows in a mug on my outside table, the sun is shining," might be a very different description because the necessity is different, what you're trying to get across is different and so try to think about how the image is relevant and what things are relevant. This is especially true if you have quite a busy image, so if you have taken a photo at an event, maybe and you took a photo, like there's recently been near me there's been an air show, so maybe you took a photo at the air show and you took the photo of a plane flying past. Why did I pick air show? I know nothing about aeroplanes but okay! And there was an aeroplane flying past that you took the photo of and also in the photo there are different people doing different things, some of them are drinking things, some of them might be eating things, some have got dogs with them maybe, maybe there's a band in the corner of the photo too. You don't have to explain all of that if the thing you took the photo of is the actual plane itself and the caption is about how you went to the air show and you saw this amazing plane, you were so excited to be able to see this specific plane, then describe the plane like "a photo of a plane, a Boeing 747," you are not going to an air show to see that but that is the only plane that I can name so "a Boeing 747 about to land on tarmac," why did I pick this example? "There are people milling around at the air show, you know, in the foreground, in the background, wherever" but if you have taken the photo of the air show as a whole even though that plane is coming in you will then probably want to explain like there's a plane in the photo, there are people who are eating different things, there is a band playing in the corner of the shot, because your purpose for taking it and your purpose for sharing it is different. So it comes down to what you are trying to get across and why you are sharing it. When it comes to images of text, so if there is text on your image, this is like if you're posting quotes, if you're posting like information and you've got text on the image with like dates, pricing, any text, any text at all, please please please please please include that in the image description. So you you can have like "text reads" or "text saying" or "quote saying" whatever, but include that text from the image in the image description and preferably also in the caption itself. So do include any text, if there is any text at all in an image. So yes, what you're thinking about is just what are the relevant bits of the photo, the image, the whatever it is that you are posting, what things are relevant to the caption, why are you posting it, what do people need to understand and take from that image for it to make sense that you have posted it, for them to understand what you are posting it for? Okay that's it, that's it, now I'm going to ask you very nicely to please go and give it a go because the other thing is you won't be perfect at it. I'm not perfect at it and I've been doing it for years. You will also develop your own natural sort of way of doing it. It will get easier, it will become more of just like a thing you just add but initially it's gonna feel hard, it's gonna feel awkward, it's gonna feel weird, you're gonna feel like "I don't know what I'm doing," do it anyway. Just just give it a go, just give it a go, just try, it's all I'm asking, just try. Like I say, if you post an image with some alt text on social media and you would like someone to take a little peek at it, please send it to me, I'm happy to give you some feedback, cheer you on, whatever you need. But yeah, I am on a mission to get everybody using alt text and other accessibility options but we will get to those in a future episode so prepare yourself for that! We're going to start small, start with alt text, we can all do it. Do it, do it, do it! Okay, if you would like some more advice on alt text or indeed how to make your content more accessible, I talk about a lot in my membership the Social Media for Humans Club, I would love to see you there. We also talk about lots of other things about social media, and making social media work for you and your business. Yeah, that is that's all I've got, that's all I've got. I very much look forward to my DMs being flooded with images with alt text, please make it happen, this is my Christmas wish even though it is July, bring it on! And yeah, just give it a go, just give it a go, that's all I'm asking. It is not gonna be perfect, it doesn't have to be perfect, what matters is that you are trying. Okay, I will see you next week for a very exciting guest episode, yeah, that's it! Take care of yourselves.
Hawke:If you want more regular reminders to find your own way to use social media, follow Alexis on your social platform of choice, all the links will be in the show notes. Until next time, be a human. you