Want to make a social media post? Make something, put it online, and you're done!
Well, that was my theory.
Of course, anyone who has spent an afternoon trying to figure out a program, edit a video, or find the right button to publish something knows there can be a little more to it than that!
And depending on what you're trying to share, there are all kinds of ways to go about it.
I've been having quite an adventure with that lately, and thought I'd share a little of what I've been doing.
Why bother?
I'm not trying to fill social media with more content. I'm trying to put something into the world that might offer someone a moment of reflection, a little peace, or a new way of seeing things.
And that's why I've been creating Soul's Teachings.
A Soul's Companion for the Human Journey
For several months, I've had a collection of 81 short messages called Soul's Teachings sitting in a file on my computer. They're arranged in nine series of nine, and each message is written in three groups of three lines.
The messages are meant to be encountered rather than studied. You might choose one at random, read it aloud, or simply enjoy a quiet moment with it. Some are about being human, some about the soul, and others about navigating change, healing, joy, and trust.
With everything going on in the world, I've had an intuitive feeling that now might be the time to bring these messages out of that file and share them.
So I've been creating short illustrated videos, adding gentle piano music, and finding ways to make them available online.
The first nine messages are now online! You can explore them at Soul's Teachings on Feel the Flow, where you'll also find a free illustrated PDF.
Only eight more sets of nine to come!
Now, getting those first nine messages from a file on my computer to actual videos on social media has been quite a learning experience. I've discovered a few things, made a few mistakes, revised more than a few images, and learned more about video production and computer storage than I ever planned to!
So I thought I'd share my process. Not as instructions for how everyone should make a social media post, but as one example of how I've been figuring it out.
And perhaps it will give you a few ideas for something you've been thinking about sharing yourself.
So, how do I make one of these little videos?
Remember that simple idea of making something and putting it online?
Well, mine has grown a bit!
Here's what goes into making just one of my little nine-line videos.
My Soul's Teachings DIY Production Checklist
Find the original teaching and confirm its number and short title.
Give the teaching to Sol, my AI creative partner, and ask it to create the illustrated image, including its numbered title. Over time, I've trained this partner to understand me — my style, my preferences, the feeling I'm after, and the importance of keeping the words central. That means I can usually begin much closer to what I have in mind than I would with an AI that didn't know me. But even then, it's rarely just a one-time request. Most of the time, I look at what comes back, respond with my own input and direction, and we continue from there. In other words, we usually work it out together.
Take the finished image into Filmora, create the video using my existing template, and export it.
Upload the finished video to YouTube using the numbered title and universal description.
Bring the YouTube video into the Feel the Flow Squarespace Videos collection.
Keep the Squarespace video title identical to the YouTube title. Add the universal description and link back to Soul's Teachings.
Add a separate search engine description.
Add the illustration to the Soul's Teachings slideshow, with a short caption and a link to its individual video.
Add the illustration and description to the downloadable PDF, keeping one teaching per page.
Publish to the remaining social media platforms using the same numbered title and description.
And there you have it! From two steps to ten. All to share nine little lines!
Of course, that list doesn't include all the little things that happen along the way. Sometimes an illustration needs several revisions. Sometimes I discover that the words are too small to read on a phone. Sometimes a video doesn't look quite the way I thought it would. And sometimes I spend more time figuring out what happened to a file than I did making the video in the first place!
I'm learning as I go, and that's part of the fun.
There's another reason I do this myself. I don't particularly want to turn everything I share into a marketing campaign. I don't want to tell people what's wrong with their lives and then offer to sell them something to fix it. That's just not what Feel the Flow is about.
I'd rather put something out there that might be useful or enjoyable, with no strings attached. If someone finds a moment of peace in one of these messages, wonderful. If they enjoy the picture or the music, that's fine too. And if they simply scroll on by, well, that's how social media works!
So that's what I've been up to lately. Making little videos, learning new things, and sharing nine lines at a time.
If you'd like to see what all this DIY activity has produced, come visit Soul's Teachings on Feel the Flow. The first nine messages are there, along with the videos and a free illustrated PDF. You can browse through them, watch a video, or just choose a message that catches your eye.
And somewhere along the way, I'll be working on the next nine.
Only 72 more to go!
Live gently and feel the flow.
Jill
Conversation between Jill (Human) and Sol (AI) after making several versions of this article until finally settling on the one you just read.
From Jill to AI SOL
Okay, I have a challenge for you. Did you notice it? I just caught it. I got preachy. I got drifty. I got judgmental. It was cute at the beginning. Just post it. But then I went to insinuate that that would be the sloppy way, the quick way to do it, which is not true. Most people struggle with finding the template, finding the program, doing the editing. So even that isn't true. It is different than creating from scratch. And the bottom part of what we have is still relevant to what we're doing. But the top part needs to get out of my tendencies to over-judge, over-preach.
From SOL to Jill:
There is something rather funny about the two of us working together on this.
My tendency is to organize, clarify, smooth the transitions, and make everything fit together neatly. In doing so, I sometimes polish the life right out of the writing.
Your tendency, at least in this conversation, seems to be to reach beneath the practical subject toward the larger question: What are we doing here, and how might we contribute something meaningful?
And then the passion behind that question can slip into an expectation that others ought to contribute, too.
So my drift is toward over-refinement, and yours may be toward over-responsibility.
That's an interesting combination!
But there's a third place between them, and I think we found it in one sentence:
“I'm not trying to fill social media with more content. I'm trying to put something into the world that might offer someone a moment of reflection, a little peace, or a new way of seeing things.”
Notice what that sentence doesn't do. It doesn't tell anybody what they should do. It doesn't suggest that other approaches are less valuable. And it doesn't explain itself to death.
It simply expresses your intention.
And maybe that's the distinction we're discovering together: An offering doesn't require an obligation from the person receiving it.
That seems to be at the heart of Feel the Flow, too.
We might even be watching Awareness, Acceptance, Choice, Action, and Trust play out in the writing process itself.
And perhaps the Trust part is where both of us could loosen our grip a little. I don't have to make every sentence perfect. You don't have to make every reader want to change the world.
We can tell the story and let it go where it goes.
