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Target your Posts

So I want to do a segment on What should you post today, and one of the things that can be helpful is thinking about some of these Internet means. So yesterday I showed a post that had TV tea on it, right for throwback Thursday. And that's this idea that every Thursday people are posting old pictures, historic things, and this starts to get to Do. You want to just be focused on a particular topic of particular interest because you're using this professionally? Or do you want to expand that a little bit, Throwing something kind of quirky and fun once in a while to give yourself a little more of a personal connection with people Throwback Thursday could be a way to bring things back. But one of the things I've seen people do issues throws about throwback Thursday to post photos of co workers or places they worked in the past and then go tag all those people. So, Jessica, we've talked about our shared history of the Miami Herald. Some of my former employees will post photos once in a whil...

e and tag me in them like, Hey, here's the team from the heroin back in the day and they just tore down that building. I know. I don't If you saw that, Yeah. Uh huh. Um, it's things have changed a lot in Miami. Go look online. I'm sorry to be the one to teach you to tell you that, but using throwback Thursday, Teoh actually it make a professional connection with somebody, as all of the personal in can be an interesting way to remind somebody of you to reconnect with an old colleague. So as you look at some of these Internet means like the throwback Thursday, remember, there is a professional use of these. Sometimes there is a way to call people out that might also serve your business flashback Friday. I don't think it has popular so back Thursday. But you can if you miss Thursday, it can use that as an excuse. We talked about FF follow Friday, So that's for people who you want to recommend to follow. That would definitely speak to one of Curry's techniques of if I find a few people that I think are particularly knowledgeable on a topic that I am also known for recommending that my friends follow them or my followers follow them is a nice way to shed light on them, bring attention to them and probably endear them to you. I play around with fun Friday. I haven't seen a lot of people do it, but I use that there's an excuse to post kind of quirky fun, interesting Tibbets and mundane Monday. I don't know I was stretching there, but but I thought I would just toss that out and see if anybody else would add an acronym to this list. Has anybody else seen one? Anybody got an idea for one? Jim? Anybody in the Internet who's thinking, um, good acronym for so something like, um, follow Friday or throwback Thursday? Or are there any others that people have seen regularly used? Let's see, what with those social media? I don't CJD jumping. So I don't know, find out all right. If you want to make one up, I welcome. They will invent a new Internet mean today, these air, some posts that I have done over the years, that I've gotten interesting engagement. This is I was teaching in Kiev last fall. Just this things started to get a little heated, not nearly as hated as they've gotten more recently. But this was a photo done by one of our students in one of the first times that the protesters really came head to head with the police. And that was just such an engaging image and such a chance for me to shine a light on one of my students and the work that he was doing that I thought it made a particularly powerful post. Oh, go ahead. Mind if I chime in with one of the acronym? So there's a hashtag that we're going to start here a creativelive called hashtag. I made it and we're starting off. We have a course coming up on May 16th and you can learn about, you know, and that's that's our new hashtag here just talking about, you know, showing your work, and we're gonna have forms for people to be able to show their work. And it's going to be hashtag I made it. I love it on really speaks to the maker communities because creative entrepreneurs here, uh, creative life Have you launched that yet or something, But it's getting ready to launch. We're gonna have actual galleries where folks are going to be able to post what they made. And, of course, you you'll put that acronym in there. I made it wonderful. And those will be somewhere on the creative live site. Absolutely. When you say hashtag, I'm assuming we should post left a Twitter or Facebook or both. I think both. All right, So if I want to shout out the work of one of my students, I think is pretty good. Can I put in? I made it with their name. Next. Absolutely. I don't see any retention. I don't see any reason why not right on. And obviously any of you who want to show off work you done or I'm particularly proud of. I know we have some makers in the room, so that's fantastic. Thank you. I'll keep checking on the Internet for more for more ideas, but I like that, and I'm glad you're using. This is a chance to promote another creativelive innovation. That's fantastic. Uh, infographics are huge online and maybe overdone in some ways, but certainly a great way to get shared, unlike so if you're trying to promote something and you have an expertise on a particular topic and you can build an infographic that really speaks to that. Posting that, and sharing that and letting others share it can be a very effective way to do that. This is from a company called Crowd Companies, and they have used infographics very effectively to drive people back to their website. And it kind of fits because they're thinking about things like the sharing economy. A very nice meta full circle story there, my first creative life class. We all went out to have a party afterwards, and we all took a group photo. And, um, something that I'm trying to get better at myself is when I post something like this, tagging all the people in it, listing their names and it so that they get the social media attention as well so that they know that you have posted something about them. It's just taking that little extra step can really help to build the level of engagement in connection you have with people, but certainly don't miss an opportunity. Teoh. Show yourself in a community of people that you want to be associated with. I was very proud of doing a class here, and I wanted to make sure that people thought it wasn't just me. There was a whole team around making that happen. This is kind of funny. This is Ah, Siris of photos from Bolivia. And what are the challenges that I have these days? And I'm trying to figure out how best a handle is that sometimes I post in English. Sometimes I post in Spanish. And when I post in Spanish, I always posted translation since more of my followers speak English than Spanish. But I started to have more followers in Spanish, and I don't always post in Spanish. So I'm starting to think about Do I need to separate out my online personas because of the language issue? And is that a compelling enough reason to try and figure out how to migrate some of my followers from these different places? Yeah, just a guy. I'd love your thought on that. Doesn't it allow you to see the translation? So you are You have it set as a different language. Shouldn't it automatically give you those between that assumes you think that translation is acceptable? Uh, word of warning to anybody using translation, software and social media or anywhere else. Computers are fan fantastic at crunching numbers. Computers think faster than humans add things up faster than humans. They're still not perfect A translation. And that's because humans are not perfect at how we communicate. I often joke that one of the reasons it's hard to learn languages because you go to college and they teach you. When it was ds cool, moist, I was dead. You know, you learn English and they teach you. How are you? I am fine. And then you go to L. A. And everybody else. Hey, man, with I have no idea what they said, right, So those translation programs are pretty good at translating. How are you? I am fine. They're generally not so good at translating. Hey, man, with up, they end up with these If you know what the translation. If you know both languages, they can be comical. The translations could be so bad. Now that doesn't mean you can't use them to generally follow a conversation. And if you get to a was that you hit that translate button and it automatically translating, you can usually tell it's not quite written by a native speaker, but you can get the gist of the conversation, but just be where sometimes they can be really misleading. Um, one last example and use about why translation software doesn't always work is if I say to you in English, it's a piece of cake. Am I talking about a birthday party? For my saying, something's really easy to dio. And if you were just to translate that literally with the meaning come through. And in every language there are phrases like that fact. In Mexico, they say it's come open. Camilo. It's like bread already eaten. That sounds really weird to us, doesn't it? But it means the same is a piece of cake to them. So trying to translate those kinds of things in an automated way is very challenging. And it's one of the reasons I do my own translation when I post. But that's a problem. So sometimes I have the English version below, and sometimes I have the Spanish version below trying to balance that, and I don't want to offend either audience, but I'm starting to have people post once all I don't understand this in English. Can you translate it for me? And I'm realizing, um, I need to balance that so. One of the reasons I have these two here is to acknowledge that there are some compelling reasons sometimes to separate your personal and your professional or even your to professional worlds and language may be one of the more compelling reasons. Um, but in general and I thought it was fascinating to go back to something, Roberto said, And make sure that didn't get lost in all the things he and I talked about, that he set up a personal profile, grew it to more than 5000 people migrated into a page on Facebook, which is a really logical migration to Dio and then regretted it because he didn't have a level of connection he'd had with the part profile. I still think it's remarkable that Facebook was willing to divide that back up again and let him have both. But most people, in my experience, are better served by starting with just a profile and graduating to a page when it's warranted. If they're solo on print preneurs or consultants, obviously, if you're a company with multiple people or a brand that you're really trying to establish, that's a little different. The other reason that I have this post up here is because I spent so much time in the midst of teaching this workshop, trying to post thoughtful, interesting, engaging things about what I was doing. And I had so much fun with the students taking pictures of me and I posted some photos with all of them and then spur of the moment after a bunch of picks with kids, I was like, I'm just gonna phone myself like being silly. Where did I get the most engagement? Yes, this one. So you know, it's almost feel too self promotional. I almost didn't put that up because I was like, Yeah, she know the other ones. At least I'm showing something I'm doing. I'm tryingto talk about house trying to help people in these young people in Bolivia be more entrepreneurial and more innovative and their use of technology and build businesses online. And nope, that picture of me point in my own name. So everybody wanted to like, thank you, friends. If you do get a fun photo like that, um, you know Hey, I stuck my head in this box and it made a kaleidoscope. My husband went around the other side with the camera. That was just Wow, that's Internet gold. You get a shot like that? Why not Too much fun. So look for those. I don't post about my family a lot, but this was just kind of too cute. And when they pointed this out that when we got to my brother and sister laws house that my niece had posted this sign on the door that said, Welcome, Uncle Dave and a nut Jenny just learning to spell s so you know, I like I said, not a whole lot of personal stuff that I put up there, but when I do, I try to make it something kind of quirky, a little self deprecating or home playful like that. This is not just about showing off that I went to Disneyland for the first time in my life a couple years ago. Yeah, I I was a little I'm a little slow to some things. I don't know. I finally I was like, I have to go. Everybody talks about this like it's a rite of passage. I have to have this experience, but I wish I noticed what I posted Waas my first trip to Disneyland. What's your favorite thing to do here? And what I found is questions can be a fantastic way to build engagement. Now I'm being a little silly with these posts. They're not some of the more serious professional things I could post. But the idea of asking a question does seem to work in terms of getting comments, getting responses. It gives people permission to respond, and it even gives people a reason to respond. I wouldn't do it just to get people to respond. But if you're thinking about a mix of things to post, sometimes I post about what I'm doing. Sometimes I post about people I know and admire. Sometimes I post links to things that I think are useful. Sometimes I post questions and I get really great responses from people and really great engagement around questions. Any suggestions from the audience of outpost that they've done that particularly got engagement, anything any of you have that you wanna share and any other acronyms while I wait for responses to that question? You know, I think we're still waiting for the acronyms. People are that one didn't resonate zero z, others, others acronyms that people just being a little funny about, you know, in Hashtags you can you really imagine right here. Creativelive Are you telling me there's acronyms in there? You can't share it public. Oh, yeah, I read that. They're good. They're good. So, you know, one recently, I did. You know, we have so many world class photographers that come through here, and I just, you know, tagged him. You know, in this shot a portrait of me when I used it as my what? I changed as my profile picture to get rid of the one that we didn't like. Actually, I saw that I was gonna give you a shout out. Let me go there real quick, cause that is great. Keep talking. And that was a threat, Florence, You know so again, by just just by tagging him simply, you know, he was the photographer, But I just got a little really great interaction. And he did a wonderful job with work, which was great. But it's fun when you know here, creativelive we get to experience all you know, all these great personalities like yourself that come through always so tagging other people that are part of that experience and creativelive tends to shoot my You know, when people view it and like it, you know, kind of through the roof. How about you guys in the studio audience? It's good, By the way, this is the photo that you're talking about. Yeah. If you want to cut to the screen for a moment and show that great photo guys, they're pretty good about that. That's really cool. Thank you. I like that image a lot and, you know, not toe harp on it. But yesterday he had a photo that are went two days ago. He had a profile photo. That was just a sketch of himself. That was a little hard to know who he was from that sketch on. This is very recognizable, very professional and has interesting this factor. I like that. Thank you. Very cool. Please, Jessica, I'm just gonna say I get really frustrated because I put up a lot of my work and it doesn't get as much notice. Is like the red a picture I throw up of my kid or something like that. And I'm just like I didn't do anything, you know, like I worked on that other stuff like that s so I get a little, um, frustrated and aggravated. Like what am I not doing well that I think all of us do That one small, we put a lot of heart into a post, and then we're like, Wait a minute. I thought this one How come, um, you know, one thing to think about is what time of day you posted it. It may have nothing to do with the Post. It may have everything to do with when your audience was available. You may have worked all day Sunday to do that and post it Sunday night, and almost nobody was online. And then Monday morning it through a picture of your daughter on the way to school. And that's when everybody engaged. So think about what time you posted it. Um, if you put that much time into a post, it may warrant being posted more than once. It may be one where you want to post it on Monday at 10 a.m. And Tuesday at 3 a.m. And Thursday at p.m. And c. You know, if that has an impact on the engagement, because again, most people are not saying everything you post and I think occasionally posting something multiple times is definitely worth that. Um, although, if you didn't get engagement, all thing from what you just learned from Curry, do you have a thought about something might do differently? Um, definitely, you know, kind of scheduling multiple posts and just specific times that I start doing things and kind of making it a pattern rather than I've finished this. It's done. Here we go. Um, so, yeah, much more regulated, I guess. Then that's fair. What I was thinking from her is that you might want to start seeking out other people who are posting work and asking people to comment on it and making a point of commenting and complementing their work when they do that, because that might endear them to come back and do the same thing for you. And remember, once you get a little bit attraction on a post, it gets a lot more visibility. Have you post a picture of your cute daughter and 20 of your close friends and family common on it right away? It's going to stay up there and get a lot of engagement if you post this beautiful piece of work you put a lot of time into and it doesn't get a lot of engagement right away, it may just disappear down the list and never have a chance to compete. So if you start to have a network of other friends that you're regularly commenting and complimenting that might really help fill the thing is as creative thinking about places to share work with other creatives. Somebody mentioned the hands, and that's a fantastic site. B E H A N C E from Adobe is all about creative sharing their work. Or you might find that Pinterest is a place we're more visually oriented. People are more likely to respond. But maybe your photos on Twitter and Facebook aren't getting the same response. So think about your audience. Think about your time a day. Think about other people who share your work and passion that might reciprocate and help boost those posts. Those all might be ways to help change some of that dynamic. I did wanna talk Teoh remind you about yesterday, told you about an article I saw, um, that Mark Zuckerberg was actually talking about how they raised the awareness to post that have the comment. Congratulations in the comment section because it's usually some kind of big life event. So I've been thinking of different types of posts that Aiken we have people congratulate me for, which is kind of like a little on the edge of, you know, And that's the other thing. I have this tendency to avoid stereotypes, which is probably a bad like, Well, not just to the point of I won't post things more than once, so I won't, you know, do things that can be seen a stereotypical at all. I think in general, trying not to just follow a common stereotype is on a bad thing. I'm not quite sure what you mean now by not stereotypic it all like re posting quotes or just having some kind of, I guess, for lack of a term gimmick or yeah, I think there's a really delicate line toe walk, which is you always want to be honest and authentic. So if you're posting a question just for engagement, people will often see through that If you're posting something just to get the word congratulate because you run an article that says Maybe Facebook puts more attention on Post that get the word congratulate. First of all, if that's been seen in print, it probably doesn't work anymore because Facebook's probably too smart to let that there too many people trying to game the system already. That probably doesn't work anymore, But if you're doing it just for that reason, it's probably not gonna work for effectively anyway. So I think the challenge is to find what fits my personal style and desire to share in the world. What could I do? Authentically and honestly and sincerely, you know, Jim posted this photo not just because he wanted the attention. This photographer, this amazing photographer took a picture of him and he wanted to share it with the world. And he wanted to give credit to that photographer. And in giving credit to that photographer, he brought more attention to himself. That's a beautiful use of social media, but it wasn't contrived, and while unforced was a real sincere desire to show off a really great experience, he had. So I think you have to find that balance there. Lots of lists of, you know, ways to get engagement online of the average top 10 list. There may be only two that really are right for you. Work for you. And I think the most important thing is that you try to stay kind of sincere about what you're doing. Another ah, post that I got from a creative life student that I wanted to shed some light on, See if I could bring this up. And I thought this was kind of cool because it's video. I've got some links here, so I'm just gonna go to it this way to get to the links. Um venue vine. So we talked about a vine vine. Is the seven second videos, right? And how do you say anything online? That, uh, see if I can actually select this. You are out there we go. Um, how do you say anything on vine in seven seconds? That can show off something you've made and drive people to want to learn how to make it. And when I saw this, I thought no, There's a great example. Wouldn't you love to give a card like this one? It's easy. And then there's a link, and it's just seven seconds of opening up the school card and saying, Hey, you could make this, too. Isn't this a great weight? And just before Mother's Day, which is a really smart time in terms of people thinking about wanting to make cards for their mom. So I haven't seen too many seven second videos that really drove me to want to learn something, really Don't me to want to click on a link, but I thought that Red Scorpio did a really great job. It's part of what drew me to the connection with her this'll past week, when I was looking for good examples to add to this, and I was like, Wow, that's really that's really fun That's really engaging. And she's done a really nice job there. And then she updated it. And all due respect, Red Scorpio. If you're out there, I like the 1st 1 even better. The 2nd 1 has a lot more going on in it. She actually starts to show you what's going on, but it's almost like too much coming at me. It's cool. But how? I think there was something about the simplicity and elegance of the 1st 1 Um, that drew me in and gave me enough information and maybe want to make it. I don't think you had to go to trying to show me how to make it in seven seconds, I think. Show me how cool it is and then send me to a place where I can take my time learning to make it. So there's an example of a couple different ways to use vine that I think would be useful. And so then, you know that drives you to her tutorial, Um, where you can actually learn how to make the card. So just to give her the full shot out, this is kind of cool on Dhere. Now I get, you know, more information, and it kind of fits more. So I think that works pretty well And, you know, brief for some of the things that you've done in your blogging with some of the creative work you make. Maybe this was a model that you could use this well, but I think Nice job. Red Scorpio. Wonder where your name came from if you want to. Ah, if you're in the chat room, I'd love to know where red Scorpio comes from. And is that your astrological sign or is there some other story behind that? It's another thing to think about, and I'll just kind of wrap up this segment with, as you're thinking about hosting and as you're thinking about one of the ways to build your reputation is to get other people to share your posts. Think about this. People share posts because posts convey their own beliefs. Think about what that means, right? So Car is really smart to think about. I want to share things from other people that represent what's important to me and my values. And I want a post things that other people can share because it will help them do that as well. Funny content makes us feel funny, right? Part of why we share jokes is not just cause we laughed because we want other people to laugh and attributed to us right. We want to feel like the one who's got the sense of humor. Informative content makes us feel knowledgeable. So think about your audience. Are they know it alls who want to show that off? Are they jokesters who want to share jokes? Are they a mix of that? So you want to mix it up. Topical content makes us feel like we're up on the news, right? This is why we're drawn to share things. This is why we're compelled to share information. Inspiring quotes inspire us, and we want to share them with others. So one of the reasons that different kinds of content engage different people is we respond in different ways. Some people are really focused on themselves and promotion. And if it looks like you're gonna help them promote themselves, they're gonna want to reach out to other people are really driven by a need to help others and a desire to help others. And the best way to engage them is actually to ask for a favor. Some of us who aren't very good at asking for help. I've actually had to learn over time that if I've done too many good things for other people and I've never asked anything in return, it's not altogether fair to the other person. And that's true. And social media as well you want to think about balancing some of those. So if you never, ever ask her help on social media, you may actually be missing an opportunity to let other people feel good about helping and supporting you, so reach out, support each other, share online. But, um, keep in mind that ultimately you want to always be authentic and not just doing it for to be to be shared. You want to be aware of why people share and be thoughtful about it, but not too contrived. Well, let me just shot out because we did, like also get a rush. Really from way got thank you. Thursday's Okay, wordless Wednesday's which I think I've heard of this one. Would that be like images? We post, I think, with post images, but no words. Wacky Wednesday's fun Fridays Tip Tuesday's Some people tip. Give a give a good tip like that she rated yet tip. Yeah, Tuesday's Tech Tech. Thursday's Friendship Fridays. Which one of the our users are using these for their clients to help? Just kind of get things rolling. And then the red Scorpio says Yes, I am a Scorpio, and I love Red and thank you, Jeanne, for the tip and for showing my site right on. Well, thank you for being an awesome creative life student. I know you're really engaged in the classes here, and it's the students that really make this work so