Alacrity on social media

Start here. Why we're on social media, who we're talking to, what we post, how we sound and look, and how we work. Every other social media page builds on this one.

The big idea: the lab does the work, the camera shows up. We don't invent content. Interesting things happen in our lab every week; we film them, and a small weekly routine turns them into posts.

The last one implies we have someone good at filming every time work happens. We don't, Albert is busy most days. Someone in the technicaly team will have to do it and I think I (Justin) will take the hit. Maria might join and help improve the situation tho.

Why we're doing this

The order matters. Mission content builds a real audience, a real audience builds trust, and trust plus the right audience is what sponsors want. Chase numbers or deals directly and we end up with less of all three.

Trust arrives long before 50k. A parent deciding whether to send their kid mostly needs to see that the lab is real and alive: recent posts, real kids, real projects, familiar faces. An account that's clearly alive at 3k does more for that than a stale one at 30k.

No shortcuts. We never buy followers, and we're careful with follow-to-win giveaways. Fake or uninterested followers make an account look dead to exactly the people we want to trust us, sponsors included.

Who we're talking to

Romanian teenagers who are into STEM, or could be. That's who our programs are for, and it's who most of our sponsors want to reach. The kids who most need us are the least likely to already be watching English engineering content, so they're who we make videos for.

Parents come second. They decide whether a 14-year-old shows up. Many of them spend more time on Facebook than on TikTok or Instagram, so our Reels go there too.

Views from the wrong people don't count. A satisfying soldering clip can pull in adult engineers from all over the world. Nice, but none of them are signing up for Bootcamp (tho some videos can be made to appeal to them, they might be helpful in some regards).

We post in Romanian. It's who the mission is for, parents forward Romanian videos to the family group chat, and the Romanian space is far less crowded than English maker content, so becoming the reference account is realistic. Moldova and the diaspora come for free.

One language per account. Platforms decide who to show us to partly from the language we speak, and mixing muddies that. When a video features a sponsor's gear, we also export a version with English subtitles for them. And the day Instagram can auto-dub our Reels into English, we turn it on.

What we post

The hero of every video is a project or a person, never the organization. Most NGO accounts turn into bulletin boards: event posters, thank-you graphics, "we're proud to announce". None of that travels. Announcements go in Stories; the feed is for content. This is kinda opposite to what we have been doing. The voice on Instgram is a lot of "we" "us" "alacrity" and so on and it makes it seem like every post is a LinkedIn post which is concerning.

The mission video, rarely. Once we have an audience, an occasional video about why we exist lands. Before that, it reads like an ad. Until then, the creed is a filter, not a topic: every post should show why we exist.

Our niche: real things built by real young people in Bucharest. Going viral: yes please, as long as it reaches the people we're for.

How we sound

Like the most interesting person in the lab, not like the organization that runs it. On camera, the energy is older lab-mate, not teacher. Students hosting their own projects is even better.

Talk like the lab, not the grant report. We say "tu". No "în cadrul proiectului", "beneficiari" or "activități". When a funder needs a credit, it goes at the end of the caption.

Serious about the work, never about ourselves. Ambitious in what we build, relaxed in how we talk about it. We laugh at the magic smoke.

Proof over adjectives. Nothing is "uimitor", "incredibil" or "revoluționar". "Eight weeks ago she'd never held a soldering iron" beats all of them.

Never condescend. Simplify, never dumb down. Assume the viewer is smart and just hasn't seen this yet.

Hope by evidence, not by contrast. We don't bash Romania or its schools to make a point. If we use the "school doesn't show you this" angle, we aim it at the gap (theory without hands-on), never at teachers. We want schools on our side.

How we look

Polish the frame, keep the content raw. Audio, captions, covers and the profile should look like a competent institution. What's inside should look like a real lab: real benches, real mess, real failures. No stock footage, no generic templates.

• Audio first. People forgive average video, not bad sound. Anyone talking on camera wears a lav mic.
• The lab is our set. One filming spot with good light and a signature element, so people recognize our videos in the first second.
• Hands and close-ups. Macro shots of boards, solder and moving machines. They work muted and in any language.
• One caption style. Same font, same accent color, same position, big enough for a phone. Proper diacritics: ș and ț with a comma below (te pup Tina, asta e pt tine), never a cedilla. Auto-captions often get this wrong, so check.
• The lab's own sounds. Printers, motors and clicking relays are more distinctive than trending songs, and business accounts get a restricted music library anyway.
• A profile that reads as one thing. Consistent Reel covers and three pinned posts: who we are (the open lab and the ISS story), our best build, and a student story. Same name, picture and bio on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

How we work

Shot list for every session:

• The payoff moment (the thing working, glowing, failing or coming out of the kiln)
• 3-5 close-ups of the process
• One reaction
• A 20-second "what are you doing?" with a student
• Everyone in frame has consent on file

Start with formats that need almost no editing: the reveal (one shot, one caption), the 30-second explanation at the bench, the timelapse. For how to build each video, see the HEAT strategy.

The cadence follows our hours, not the other way around. We decide how many hours a week social media gets, then set the cadence. Two posts a week we can keep up beats five a week for a month.

Tools: phones (multiple), a tripod, lav mic, studio mics, boxlights, color lights, phone stabilizer, multiple cameras at our disposal (Iris, Albert, Eduard) and a green screen. A big plus is that we also have the whole studio from FNT available to us at basically all times. A content board (ideas -> filmed -> edited -> scheduled -> posted). Meta Business Suite to schedule Instagram and Facebook together, with the same cut going to TikTok.

Consent, credit and safety

No consent, no camera. Many people in our videos are minors. Every sign-up form includes consent for filming and posting on social media, signed by a parent or guardian for anyone under 18. Consent to photos for grant reporting is not consent to post on TikTok.

• Admin access stays with adults. Team members get roles in Meta Business Suite, not the password.
• Credit every sponsor and funder. Tag them, and follow the visibility clauses in our grant contracts.
• Label every partnership, gifted gear included. It's what EU disclosure rules expect, and it's what keeps people trusting us.

Sponsors

Sponsor gear shows up in builds, never in unboxings. We only feature gear we actually teach with, and we show it in students' hands. The feed never turns into an ad wall.

What a sponsor gets from us: credit in every video featuring their gear, English-subtitled cuts they can reshare, a "shot on" credit for filming gear, and a short report with the numbers after every package. Our first media kit comes about four or five months in, once we have real numbers.

The brands we work with or pitch come in three kinds:

1. Engineering brands (Nordic, Keysight, Prusa) support the lab, the students and the projects. Our audience is a bonus, and Nordic said yes to a lab, not to a follower count.
2. Consumer brands (Samsung, HONOR, Flip.ro, iSTYLE) want young Romanians and their parents. Until our numbers can speak, we sell them the plan and the credit.
3. Companies that hire engineers in Romania (Bosch and others) want future engineers to know them, and that's exactly who watches us.

The plan

After that: a long-form YouTube series, launched to the audience we've built, with its best moments cut back into Reels.

Growing the team

We're short on people who can film and edit. Here's where we look:

• Students who already make TikToks. They're native to the format, and they're our audience. A student media crew, with an adult approving what goes out, also learns a real skill.
• Film and journalism students (UNATC, FJSC) who need portfolio work. Drones, kilns and robots beat another wedding video.
• A paid editor, per video, once there's budget. We add a communication and visibility line to every grant budget for this.

House rules

1. The lab makes the content; the camera just shows up.
2. If it works, smokes, glows or surprises someone, film it.
3. Fixed days, fixed rhythm. Consistency beats bursts. (this is more like an idealized situation, given the difference in our schedules, probably won't happen)
4. Consent before camera. Credit every sponsor and funder.

Pages in this section

As we add pages (brand kit, series plans, sponsor packages), we link them here.

Open questions for the team

1. How many hours a week can we give social media, and whose? The cadence follows from this.
2. Our caption font and accent color. Pick them once and write them here.
3. Who's in the media crew?

Where this comes from. The strategy we put together in October 2026. It's a living page: when the weekly reviews prove part of it wrong, we change it here.