Franklin Taggart's Unconventional Life Blog

I've been revisiting Instagram and learning about TikTok in recent weeks. When I joined Instagram, it could only be accessed by phone, and I think I may have been using a flip phone. You took pictures of whatever you were doing, wrote a brief message, and posted. The people who followed you saw it. Simple. I've become a fast fan of TikTok, with the exception of the potential human rights and privacy violations, in large part because their algorithm is really paying attention to my viewing preferences and adding more of what I'm watching to my timeline. All the other channels? Not so much. It is probably because I've only been active on TikTok for a short time, but I don't have any idea how the other platforms choose what to show me. It has made me wonder how I decide what to share. There doesn't seem to be a way to predict what the algorithm or audience will favor, so I'm left to my most reliable guide - my hunch. I believe that our intuition is connected to...

Social media captions and hashtags are powerful ways to be found online, but many creative people make common mistakes in how they're used. A musician may be inclined to talk about their composition or recording process and reference the music in their hashtags. [hashtag]musicperformance, [hashtag]Americana, [hashtag]songwriter, [hashtag]originalsong. I suggest the captions and hashtags be more about the audience's story related to the creative work. If I wanted to make my caption and hashtags for my song, Hard to Be a Cowboy, I might want to write it like this: My Uncle Charlie was my [hashtag]boyhoodhero, a real [hashtag]wyomingcowboy who was a [hashtag]familyman, a [hashtag]proudamerican, and a positive [hashtag]malerolemodel. This song is my tribute to him  https://youtu.be/z8JgVaJGETg This caption and hashtags give a glimpse of the story of my Uncle and make it visible to the people who may see it in searches for keywords and included hashtags. #marketingtips #creativebusi...

  Friday potpourri... Sometimes we need to find part-time or full-time work to do to cover financial bases while we build a career, a business, or finish a passion project. My encouragement is to think strategically about the jobs you apply for and see if they can be one of the stepping stones in the direction you're already going. Want to be a professional speaker? Look for jobs within organizations that will be important partners as you pursue speaking opportunities. All these organizations require people with a variety of skills and experience. See if they have an opportunity for you that will also help you build your network for future opportunities. Also, stay tuned for a recorded version of my talk, Marketing LEssons, from the First Dau of Kindergarten. I gave that presentation again today, and it's fun to see the aha moments happen as people realize they've had all the relationship skills they need for marketing since their earliest friendships. Finally, you're m...

Today on the Coffee Break, we're talking about what algorithms do and why it's important for businesses and marketers to make friends with them rather than fight them. They're learning about us constantly then taking what they learn to build more experiences we'll want to have. If your posts aren't getting much response, the main thing to wonder is what can be changed to satisfy the algorithm's rules. If you want more people to see, interact with, and share your social media posts, join the workshop on Saturday. Details here: https://franklin-taggart-coaching.teachable.com/p/the-care-and-feeding-of-your-social-media-algorithm #socialmedia #smallbusiness #contentmarketing

I get almost daily inquiries from people about why their social media posts aren't being seen. Most of them haven't heard about algorithms, and if they have, they've heard mostly negative things. In this Franklin Taggart's Virtual Coffee Break, we ask and answer the question, "What is a Social Media Algorithm?" and we learn why that matters to businesses and marketers. The main thing to know is that the primary goal of an algorithm is to generate users' experiences. Social media platforms want people to stay engaged on their apps and they use algorithms to direct those experiences. I'll be offering a workshop this Saturday, January 8th, 2022 that will help people start to work with algorithms to create better-performing social media experiences. The workshop will be recorded and available in my school the day after the live event.  More information at https://www.franklintaggart.com/p/workshops.html  #socialmedia #algorithm #userexperience

I'm feeling energized and optimistic going into 2022. One new commitment is to upload a coffee break vidpod every day this year. They'll be short videos on a variety of topics and points of view. I'm also reintroducing my monthly workshop series after a five-year hiatus. The first workshop will be live on Zoom on Saturday, January 8th, 2022 on Zoom. We'll be learning how to play along with social media algorithms to build better relationships, reach more people, and get better results from our social media activity. Visit the workshop page on my website for more info. If you can't attend the live workshops, the recordings from each will be posted at my school the day after the live events. Enrollment will be opening very soon... https://www.franklintaggart.com/p/workshops.html #podcast #workshop #socialmediaalgorithm

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