A Week Behind the Scenes with Texas Brigades at Coastal Brigade

One of the best parts about the work I get to do with Aptitude Outdoors is getting dropped into programs and projects that I might not otherwise ever get to experience.

Recently, that meant spending a week with Texas Brigades covering the 10th Battalion Coastal Brigade.

I was there primarily to handle social media coverage for the week. That meant taking photos, shooting video, writing posts and trying to keep up with everything happening throughout camp so people following along online could actually get an idea of what these kids were experiencing.

And there was a lot happening.

Capturing an Entire Week

One of the things I quickly realized about Texas Brigades is just how much they pack into a relatively short amount of time.

The cadets weren't sitting around listening to lectures all day. They were constantly moving from one activity to another, learning about wildlife, fisheries, conservation, leadership and the different careers available to them in the outdoor and natural resource world.

For me, that meant constantly moving too.

A big part of doing social media coverage from the field is figuring out how to tell the story while you're still in the middle of it.

You're taking photos while also thinking about what the post is going to say. You're shooting video while trying to figure out what moments are important. You're listening to instructors because something they say might completely change how you tell the story.

That's a lot different than getting a folder of photos after an event and trying to figure out what happened.

Being there matters.

And by the end of the week, we could actually see the difference that kind of consistent coverage was making.

In just seven days, Texas Brigades' social media generated 90,800 total views, 12,999 engagements and 86 net new followers.

Compared with the previous period, that represented a 181x increase in views, a 3,000x increase in engagement and a 22x increase in follower growth.

Those numbers were awesome to see, but the bigger thing for me was what they represented. A lot more people were seeing what these kids were doing and learning what Texas Brigades was all about.

More Than Just Taking Photos

I think there is sometimes an assumption that social media coverage is basically just taking a bunch of pictures and posting them.

There is definitely more to it than that.

My goal during Coastal Brigade was to figure out what was actually happening and why it mattered.

One minute that might mean documenting cadets learning a new skill. The next it might be covering a career panel where instructors talked about how they found their way into conservation and the outdoor industry.

I wanted someone following Texas Brigades online to feel like they were getting a look inside the program instead of just seeing a collection of highlight photos.

And the nearly 13,000 engagements we saw during the week told me that people weren't just scrolling past the content, but they were interacting.

For any organization, that's important.

Seeing What Texas Brigades Actually Does

Before covering Coastal Brigade, I knew what Texas Brigades was, but spending an entire week around the program gave me a much better understanding of what they are trying to accomplish.

These kids are getting access to people and experiences that can genuinely help shape what they decide to do later in life.

They aren't only learning about conservation. They're meeting people who have built careers around wildlife, fisheries, land management and the outdoors.

They're learning how to communicate.

They're being pushed into leadership roles.

They're meeting other kids who are interested in the same things they are.

One of my favorite things to cover was the career advice panel. The cadets were able to hear directly from people working in these fields and ask questions about how they got there.

I would have loved to have had access to something like that when I was their age.

The Opportunities Don't Stop After Camp

Something else I wanted to make sure we showed through the social media coverage was that Texas Brigades isn't just a week-long camp that everyone attends and then forgets about.

There are opportunities to stay involved.

A great example was the Assistant School Leaders.

Through the work they put in outside of camp, Assistant School Leaders earned more than $10,000 in college scholarship money that was awarded at Coastal Brigade.

That's a pretty big deal.

It also shows why staying involved with programs like this matters. There are opportunities to come back, take on more responsibility, continue building relationships and potentially earn scholarships along the way.

We even ran into several of the adult leaders from Coastal Brigade again while stopping by the Texas Brigades booth at the Texas Trophy Hunters Extravaganza.

The camp was over, but the outreach wasn't.

That says a lot about the people involved in the program.

Graduation and the End of the Week

Eventually we made it to graduation for the Coastal Brigade 10th Battalion.

By then I had spent the week following these cadets around, photographing them, filming them and watching them work through everything the instructors threw at them.

Graduation gave us a chance to wrap all of that up and recognize what they had accomplished.

It was also one of those times where having covered the entire week made the final posts mean more.

I wasn't showing up at graduation trying to figure out who everyone was or what they had done.

I had watched it happen.

That's one of the biggest advantages of actually being embedded in an event when you're responsible for telling its story.

Why Those Numbers Matter

I'm obviously happy when I see 90,800 views in seven days on content I've worked on.

But views by themselves aren't really the point.

The important part is who those views can potentially reach.

For Texas Brigades, more visibility can mean reaching a parent who has never heard of the program but has a kid who would absolutely love it.

It can mean reaching a potential sponsor who gets to actually see where their support could go.

It can put the organization in front of potential donors.

It can reach volunteers.

And it can introduce more young people to conservation, wildlife and the outdoors.

That's how social media becomes more than simply posting photos from an event.

You're building an audience around the work.

Why I Like Doing This Kind of Work

A lot of the work I do through Aptitude Outdoors revolves around conservation, hunting, fishing, wildlife and the people who dedicate a huge part of their lives to those things.

Sometimes that turns into a documentary.

Sometimes it's a conservation project in the middle of nowhere.

Sometimes it's a hunt.

And sometimes it's spending a week following a bunch of kids around Texas while they learn about conservation.

The subject changes, but the reason I enjoy doing it really doesn't.

I get to be there while it's happening.

With Coastal Brigade, I was able to spend the week learning about the program myself while photographing it, filming it, writing about it and sharing those stories with people who couldn't be there.

That's the part of social media work I really enjoy.

Not just scheduling posts from behind a computer, but actually being in the field, figuring out what the story is and finding a way to bring everyone else along.

Telling the Story While It's Happening

My week at Coastal Brigade was a good reminder of why I've come to enjoy this type of work so much.

I got to meet a ton of great people, watch young people get excited about conservation and spend a week learning about a program I previously only knew from the outside.

At the same time, I got to do what Aptitude Outdoors is built around: take something happening in the outdoor and conservation world and help tell that story to a larger audience.

Not from an office.

Not from a folder of photos someone sent me afterward.

From right there in the middle of it.

That's the kind of work I want Aptitude Outdoors to continue doing.

If your conservation organization has a project, event, camp or story happening in the field and you need someone who can be there to document it while also understanding how to turn it into content people actually want to follow, that's exactly the kind of work we do at Aptitude Outdoors.