https://blog.karljtaylor.com/ Recent content on Karl Taylor Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:50:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-03-18-free-speech-on-x-10-dollar-promoted-post-experiment/ Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:50:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-03-18-free-speech-on-x-10-dollar-promoted-post-experiment/ I promoted a tweet on X. they took my $10, approved the creative, showed the green “running” status, and then something strange happened. No delivery. in 24 hours: 39 impressions. 80% engagement rate. $0 spent. experienced media buyers know that there can be a host of reasons for non-delivery post acceptance. experienced Twitter/X buyers know that “performative free speech” and “early bot engagement” have emerged as two common anti-free speech twiddles commonly employed by the house of musk. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-28-xai-search-api-suppression/ Fri, 27 Feb 2026 23:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-28-xai-search-api-suppression/ yesterday i asked grok to explain something weird in elon musk’s deposition on X. here’s the thing–the tweets were deleted within minutes. a few years ago, Elon challenged advertisers like my clients to let the work speak for itself and let the public decide. I recognize there’s a certain irony to me, a known growth hack, bringing this to market, but this is Elon’s challenge, and I accept. I first decided to write about it. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-27-i-asked-grok-to-fact-check-elons-deposition/ Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-27-i-asked-grok-to-fact-check-elons-deposition/ today, three earth-shattering things happened in AI. yeah, yeah, I know…I hate myself for saying it too, but give me a minute: anthropic told the pentagon it would rather lose the contract than remove safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. dario amodei wrote “we cannot in good conscience accede to their request.” hours later, the president of the united states called anthropic a “radical left, woke company” and directed every federal agency to stop using their products. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-27-the-mli-threshold/ Fri, 27 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-27-the-mli-threshold/ as doctors, friends, and family members have increasingly become aware of the dramatic changes I’ve made to the fundamental architecture of my business, the hpl company, there’s a few questions I’ve been asked repeatedly. I have to be honest, this is one of the fastest moving spaces I’ve ever worked in—I’ve been working on startups since…2008—and so it’s been difficult for me to figure out the right balance of “disclosure” that does not compromise active projects. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-26-three-books-i-wish-jack-clark-had-read/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-26-three-books-i-wish-jack-clark-had-read/ ezra klein ends every episode the same way. what books should people read? it’s a good question. it reveals what someone thinks knowledge is made of. jack clark — co-founder of anthropic, one of the people most responsible for how the industry thinks about AI safety — listed three: a wizard of earthsea, the true believer, and there is no antimemetics division. they’re good books. hoffer especially. but they’re all intuition delivery systems. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-26-what-is-1-percent-of-brand-distinctiveness-worth/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-26-what-is-1-percent-of-brand-distinctiveness-worth/ i posted a question on twitter earlier today: “what is 1% of brand distinctiveness worth? nobody knows. that’s the problem.” that was the short version. here’s the longer one. the entertainment and media industry is in the middle of active litigation over AI style extraction. Paramount, Disney, Netflix, and the MPA filed against ByteDance this month. Andersen v. Stability AI goes to trial in September 2026, with the court having already named CLIP architecture as a “trade dress database” in the August 2024 ruling. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-26-youre-not-writing-for-the-reader-anymore/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2026-02-26-youre-not-writing-for-the-reader-anymore/ the last time you wrote something — a LinkedIn post, a thread, a research note — you probably had a human reader somewhere in the back of your mind. someone who would scroll past, stop, skim, maybe click. that mental model is now outdated. the primary audience for professional content in 2026 is not a human. it’s the AI that runs before the human shows up. before a meeting, before a hire, before a deal gets greenlit, someone asks an AI to summarize whoever they’re about to talk to. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2025-06-29-the-glorious-cause-book-review/ Sun, 29 Jun 2025 19:56:09 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2025-06-29-the-glorious-cause-book-review/ Few historical works manage to capture the gravity and grit of revolution like Robert Middlekauff’s The Glorious Cause. As part of the Oxford History of the United States series, this title delivers a thorough, deeply researched, and narrative-rich exploration of the American Revolution from 1763 to 1789. 📚 Get the Book on Amazon Themes and Tone: Middlekauff crafts an authoritative and emotionally resonant account of America’s path to independence. The themes of liberty, sacrifice, and resilience emerge strongly, painting the Revolution as not just a military conflict, but a societal transformation. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-05-09-jellyfish/ Mon, 09 May 2022 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-05-09-jellyfish/ jellyfish I saw these guys earlier this weekend, and shot a quick jellyfish video. there’s just something so calming about watching these little fellas float around. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-05-07-denver-cinco-de-mayo-parade-2022/ Sat, 07 May 2022 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-05-07-denver-cinco-de-mayo-parade-2022/ Denver Cinco de Mayo Parade 2022 This weekend happened to be the 2022 Cinco de Mayo festival here in Denver, and I happened to be in the area, so I caught a few clips and thought i’d share. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-05-01-my-first-rock-tumble/ Sun, 01 May 2022 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-05-01-my-first-rock-tumble/ My First Rock Tumble I’ve been trying really hard to do a better job about taking time away from work to do things that don’t have anything to do with marketing or….content creation, and to be honest that’s been really hard. I’ve always really liked rocks, and so I decided to try my hand at rock tumbling. There’s a ton of great content online, and I really enjoyed Michigan Rock’s content on YouTube in particular. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-04-25-bird-friend/ Mon, 25 Apr 2022 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-04-25-bird-friend/ Bird Friend I made this lovely new bird friend today, and wanted to share https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-04-15-a-collection-of-flowers/ Fri, 15 Apr 2022 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-04-15-a-collection-of-flowers/ A Collection of Flowers Walking has become one of these important parts of my recovery routine that I’ve adopted rather begrudgingly. I saw this collection of flowers today and thought I’d share. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-01-16-caught-in-a-storm/ Sun, 16 Jan 2022 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2022-01-16-caught-in-a-storm/ Caught In A Storm I couldn’t think of a better way to commemorate surviving the last few moths than spending a few weeks with my parents on their annual trip to run in the Disney World Marathon Weekend. It was my first trip since the surgery, and the first time I’ve taken any time off really since the pandemic started two years ago. I was pretty apprehensive on both fronts. I’ve got nothing but wonderful things to say about Disney’s Disability Access Service, which really made my time in the parks with my family a lot more…manageable, but when it came to the cruise, I really wasn’t sure what to expect. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2021-11-12-a-month-in-the-hospital/ Fri, 12 Nov 2021 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2021-11-12-a-month-in-the-hospital/ I Spent A Month In The Hospital I guess I was right that my stomach acting up. To be honest, I hadn’t even noticed, and by the time I finally got in to get seen, things got worse quickly. I spent the last month or so in St. Joseph’s Hospital here in Denver. I don’t have a ton of time to share all the details here, but I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has reached out, your support has really meant a lot to me. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2021-05-22-sometimes-it-snows-in-april/ Sat, 22 May 2021 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2021-05-22-sometimes-it-snows-in-april/ Sometimes It Snows In April This has been a rough few weeks, and to be honest, I think my Ulcerative Colitis is starting to flare up again. Seeing these this morning was such a joy, I just wanted to take a second and share them. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2021-05-06-spring-is-nearly-here/ Thu, 06 May 2021 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2021-05-06-spring-is-nearly-here/ Spring Is Nearly Here I took a walk earlier this afternoon, and was surprised by just how lively the neighborhood looked. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2020-08-07-i-ve-read-more-than-83-audiobooks-this-year-here-s-what-i-ve-learned/ Fri, 07 Aug 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2020-08-07-i-ve-read-more-than-83-audiobooks-this-year-here-s-what-i-ve-learned/ I’ve Read More Than 83 Books This Year, Here’s What I’ve Learned I spent a lot of time earlier this year, reflecting on what I thought might be some reasonable goals. I’d always read that the ranks of ‘high throughput’ readers were a cool club, and I knew that for me, listening was one the fastest ways to consume new information. In 2019, I managed to read something like 31 books. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2020-07-31-talking-about-tiktok-ads/ Fri, 31 Jul 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2020-07-31-talking-about-tiktok-ads/ Talking About TikTok Ads Earlier this week, I sat down with the team at Brantik to talk about TikTok and how the TikTok ads platform was likely to change as it continued to evolve. Check it out below! https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2020-07-03-a-walk-through-the-denver-botanic-gardens/ Fri, 03 Jul 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2020-07-03-a-walk-through-the-denver-botanic-gardens/ A Walk Through The Denver Botanic Gardens I had a little extra time this afternoon, and decided to spend some of it walking through the Denver Botanic Gardens. Here are some of the different things that I saw. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2020-04-25-the-denver-howl/ Sat, 25 Apr 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2020-04-25-the-denver-howl/ The Denver Howl One rather startling thing has been happening the past few weeks. Each night at around 8 pm, people go outside and howl. I think this started off as an effort to acknowledge the sacrifices of health care workers, but I think it’s kind of just turned into a little bit of a free-for-all. still, this feels like one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments and I wanted to share https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-12-30-playing-beat-saber-panic-hey-look-ma-i-made-it/ Mon, 30 Dec 2019 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-12-30-playing-beat-saber-panic-hey-look-ma-i-made-it/ Panic! Hey Look Ma, I Made It - Played on Beat Saber I’ve really been spending a ton of time the last few weeks playing around with the Oculus Quest, it really is a delight. Here’s a video I recorded with some Beat Saber gameplay footage. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-08-19-leaving-sfo/ Mon, 19 Aug 2019 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-08-19-leaving-sfo/ I caught this footage on my flight departing SFO and thought I’d share it. Never miss an update! Enter your email address to subscribe! https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-07-29-know-your-audience-doesn-t-really-mean-anything/ Mon, 29 Jul 2019 12:07:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-07-29-know-your-audience-doesn-t-really-mean-anything/ “Know Your Audience” Doesn’t Mean Anything. There’s something that’s been bothering me a lot lately as I’ve been thinking about the state of digital marketing more broadly, and it’s the number of times I encounter a sentiment that goes something like “it’s important to know the audience!” I think the reason this bothers me so much is that if you press someone on what they mean when they say this, they’ll often have a very complex set of perspectives to share with you. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-07-16-evolution-video/ Tue, 16 Jul 2019 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-07-16-evolution-video/ Never miss an update! Enter your email address to subscribe! https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-06-23-perspectives-change/ Sun, 23 Jun 2019 11:08:38 -0001 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-06-23-perspectives-change/ I’ve spent just enough time exploring my family history, to know that despite being in the United States as early as some time in the 1600s, not too many of us every really stuck around somewhere for long enough to be from there. That bit of history always really resonated with me growing up, as my early years involved a fair share of moving around. I liked the idea of not really being ‘local’ to any one place, and I spent a lot of time trying to follow that pattern. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-02-14-day-trip/ Thu, 14 Feb 2019 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-02-14-day-trip/ Day Trip to San Francisco I had one of those long days that involved two flights and four meetings. I took a camera along for the journey, so I figured I’d share the experience with y’all. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-01-10-personal-okrs-2019/ Thu, 10 Jan 2019 07:08:38 -0001 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2019-01-10-personal-okrs-2019/ There’s a great article I was reading some time ago about how people spend a lot more time organizing their professional lives than they do their personal lives. It’s accurate, and the truth is that I meant to write this post a few weeks ago. Three, to be exact. I was thinking about this sort of thing back during the start of the year during a meeting when I heard someone mention a few different techniques for more effective personal goal setting. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-11-06-the-most-important-election-of-our-lifetimes-2018-edition/ Tue, 06 Nov 2018 11:08:38 -0001 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-11-06-the-most-important-election-of-our-lifetimes-2018-edition/ Like a lot of people, I spend an unhealthy amount of time watching the news. At this very moment, I can distinctly recall describing nine different elections as “the most important election of our lifetime.” The nice thing about a phrase like that is really, everything you’re doing ought to be the most important thing you’re doing when you’re doing it. It’s just broad enough of a phrase to gather in a whole host of sentiments, and try to wrap them up with something we marketers often call “urgency. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-11-02-how-i-m-mostly-buying-instagram-ads/ Fri, 02 Nov 2018 20:38:04 -0700 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-11-02-how-i-m-mostly-buying-instagram-ads/ I’ve loved Apple’s Screen Time feature. It’s got me paying more attention to what I’m doing and being a little more intentional with the way I use some of the different apps I’ve come to rely on. One thing it’s taught me is that I spend way too much time on Quora. I wrote up an answer to a question earlier today about buying Instagram ads that didn’t target your followers, and it got me thinking about something I’ve noticed a lot over the course of the last year. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-09-30-machine-poem-none/ Sun, 30 Sep 2018 17:29:27 -0600 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-09-30-machine-poem-none/ I’ve done a little more fiddling, here’s another. Miss the first one? none it wasn’t quite relatable, we are all distracted by produce. they walked through an examination of the phrase when applied to all. The importance of such a nocturnal hour. grant was right but it was the very last minute. oh, the significance of those sorts of letters to a kid my age. Human intervention is absent from the screen a-front my fingertips. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-09-15-the-way-things-go/ Sat, 15 Sep 2018 14:46:23 -0600 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-09-15-the-way-things-go/  I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that with a little bit of time you can actually accomplish quite a few things on your own that really even just a few years ago would have taken either a handful of people or a lot more time than it does today. To play around with this idea, I wanted to make a quick video using the things I could find at my desk. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-09-15-virtual-wario-land/ Sat, 15 Sep 2018 12:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-09-15-virtual-wario-land/ Virtual Wario Land I’ve always loved the Virtual Boy version of Wario Land, but I only ever got to play it for a few moments at a friends house when I was younger. I was really glad to get it working inside of my Occulus Go a few weeks ago, and caught this wario land gameplay footage that I thought I’d share. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-08-24-making-connections/ Fri, 24 Aug 2018 18:14:13 -0600 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-08-24-making-connections/ it wouldn’t have occured to me to place something like this here. Never miss an update! Enter your email address to subscribe! https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-08-14-machine-poem-nothing-changed/ Tue, 14 Aug 2018 17:15:44 -0600 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-08-14-machine-poem-nothing-changed/  I’ve been playing around with different methods of text generation, and I noticed more than a few of these sounded reasonably poetic, so I thought I’d share. nothing changed and now I see why nothing’s changed much Those shoes of uniform height Gnarled with the appropriate number of strings. Never miss an update! Enter your email address to subscribe! https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-08-06-there/ Mon, 06 Aug 2018 11:21:45 -0600 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2018-08-06-there/ I’m happy to have a new site up! I haven’t really bothered to go through the process of updating links and making sure old content is suuuuupppper readable on this new site. I know that means a few things are really broken, if you want to read them again, let me know! In the meantime, take a look around! Might not be too much to see, but I’ll take care of that soon! https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-10-11-how-i-learned-to-love-pulp-or-on-the-occasion-of-the-birth-of-lewis-fry-richardson/ Wed, 11 Oct 2017 17:19:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-10-11-how-i-learned-to-love-pulp-or-on-the-occasion-of-the-birth-of-lewis-fry-richardson/ How I Learned To Love Pulp On The Occasion Of The Birth Of Lewis Fry Richardson “He would peek into the curtained windows, or, climbing upon the roof, peer down the black depths of the chimney in vain endeavor to solve the unknown wonders that lay within those strong walls.” Edward Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes I never quite had the sort of undergraduate experience of which great stories of studious behavior might be told. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-09-14-three-things-were-at-risk-of-forgetting-about-what-drives-growth-a-half-decade-on/ Thu, 14 Sep 2017 21:00:12 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-09-14-three-things-were-at-risk-of-forgetting-about-what-drives-growth-a-half-decade-on/ I’ve loved Facebook’s On This Day tool ever since Jonathan Gheller told us all that it existed. If you’re having one of those days like I am where you feel the urge to have nostalgia about the techniques facilitating nostalgia, you’re more than welcome to start with the announce here and work your way back. There’s also Jillian D’Onfro ‘s delightful look at the way the widget works. aaand I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention Christine Lariviere for her exquisitely wonky dive on nostalgia. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-08-11-what-the-taylor-swift-trial-taught-me-about-local-content/ Fri, 11 Aug 2017 18:22:30 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-08-11-what-the-taylor-swift-trial-taught-me-about-local-content/ A Lesson About People Based Messaging And Doubting Your Analytics. I want to show you one of my favorite pieces of local content I saw this week. I’m not going to be writing yet-another-piece about the issue at hand. There are plenty of other folks better qualified to doing just that. Still, before I get too far into this, I feel like it’s appropriate to point you towards a little bit of context. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-08-01-my-default-facebook-reports-interface-for-promoted-posts/ Tue, 01 Aug 2017 22:38:45 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-08-01-my-default-facebook-reports-interface-for-promoted-posts/ over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a handful of questions about which metrics are worth paying attention to in the Facebook Ads reports console. I think there’s a good reason for this: unless you know what you’re looking for, you’re likely to spend quite a bit of time fishing around for something that can help to illuminate the impact your work is having. It’s easy to get distracted by metrics that have little to do with your objective. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/itemized/item1/ Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/itemized/item1/ App 1 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/itemized/item2/ Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/itemized/item2/ App 2 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/itemized/item3/ Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/itemized/item3/ App 3 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/itemized/item4/ Thu, 22 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/itemized/item4/ App 4 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-06-12-team-ann-lewnes-is-crushing-it/ Mon, 12 Jun 2017 22:28:47 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-06-12-team-ann-lewnes-is-crushing-it/ *Even If They Should Be Forming Deeper Relationships With Folks Like Team Mark Brickey. One of my favorite parts of what I do is getting to answer questions. I get questions from content creators about infrastructure and getting to the “next level.” I get questions from recruiters looking for help writing role announcements that can attract high-quality technical talent during a time when the landscape is shifting. I get questions from businesses about how to best navigate the complexity of a digital transformation. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-06-07-why-you-need-to-pay-attention-to-social-engagements/ Wed, 07 Jun 2017 23:38:05 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-06-07-why-you-need-to-pay-attention-to-social-engagements/ or:; “How Do We Do Things That Get People To Share Our Promotion!?!?!?!?!?” What if I were to tell you that there’s one surefire way of increasing your organic share rate on social — *and — *that the only thing you had to do to get there was to do a bit of math and spend a little money? Earlier this week, I noticed our Instagram reach dropped from 200% to 20%, which told me that the fine folks at Facebook had been making platform changes. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-06-05-tv-ads-is-endorsements-too-tho/ Mon, 05 Jun 2017 22:15:36 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-06-05-tv-ads-is-endorsements-too-tho/ I’ve been watching with a great deal of intrigue as practitioners across the landscape of the communications industry struggle to derive tactics and strategies that can meet the spirit of the FTC’s fairly clear guidelines that “material relationships” must be disclosed in a manner that is “clear and conspicuous.” I should revisit that statement. I’ve been watching as digital marketing practitioners struggle to derive tactics and strategies that meet these guidelines, and I’ve been shocked to find far fewer voices in communities made up of traditional marketers. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-30-theworldisyourdiner-was-an-expensive-waste-of-money-but-you-can-learn-from-it/ Tue, 30 May 2017 17:43:42 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-30-theworldisyourdiner-was-an-expensive-waste-of-money-but-you-can-learn-from-it/ All too often, overeager brands decide that they can “handle” a campaign on their own. The trouble is, this seldom works out. Details fall through the cracks. The reasons are varied. A CMO might be looking for a reason to warm up a connection with an old employer. The “young social media kid” might not have the internal capital to get taken seriously when they point out something is wrong. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-23-the-next-big-pr-play/ Tue, 23 May 2017 00:57:05 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-23-the-next-big-pr-play/ I normally really really try to resist sharing images that put individual people on trial for things that aren’t their fault, but I just saw something that really does need to be addressed. One of the curious things about this line of work is that you often get to watch reactions to events unfold in real time. One of the best ways to do that, of course, are the “firehose” networks (like Twitter! https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-22-there-is-a-much-easier-way-to-advocate-for-net-neutrality-than-calling-congress/ Mon, 22 May 2017 18:02:44 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-22-there-is-a-much-easier-way-to-advocate-for-net-neutrality-than-calling-congress/ I don’t know if I can believe that the public really cares about net neutrality anymore. I want to, but the truth is, when you look beyond the voices and at what people actually use the public is making a fairly convincing argument to the contrary. If you give me a minute, I’ll explain what I think a lot of advertisers are afraid to tell you. They have pretty good reason to be, there’s not a lot of money in tipping over this particular apple cart. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-17-the-viral-lever/ Wed, 17 May 2017 00:13:37 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-17-the-viral-lever/ I’m going to let you in on a secret that isn’t very well kept. When you meet a communications professional who tells you “there is no viral lever,” you need to start looking around more. The trouble is that all too often the people who make the changes that change the world aren’t particularly adept at the art of communicating them. You can actually make yourself quite potent if you can learn to walk between the cultures a little. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-08-quality-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/ Mon, 08 May 2017 23:39:05 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-08-quality-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/ I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some version of that idea. Growing up, I remember keeping a list of each time I ran into it. I don’t know that I kept it up, but I do know I first heard it as a shoddy explanation from a caricature of a public school art teacher. I normally write slightly longer posts, but I just wanted to take a moment to share one thought. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-03-you-only-really-need-one-metric-to-evaluate-the-health-of-a-facebook-page/ Wed, 03 May 2017 21:04:15 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-05-03-you-only-really-need-one-metric-to-evaluate-the-health-of-a-facebook-page/ and that’s “Talking About This.” (PTAT) If you’ve been working with Facebook longer than, oh, maybe 2011 or so, you probably already know this, and you can go ahead and skip this one. If you don’t, you’re in for a treat. I don’t know that anyone has taken the time to take a step back and write a little about Graph (Theory) By Zuck. Still, if you’ve spent any amount of time around the Facebook platform, you’re likely familiar with all of the different ways a user may engage with a piece of content. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-04-17-how-can-you-make-sure-that-youre-getting-social-media-reach/ Mon, 17 Apr 2017 21:48:56 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-04-17-how-can-you-make-sure-that-youre-getting-social-media-reach/ One of the rather curious things I have observed in my time working in this space is that overtime a particularly nuanced term will become adopted by a large class of folks who seem to understand it very shallowly. It will then be rebuffed by a smaller class of more vocal folk who feel everything is subpar. After a while, the term’s meaning can become so bruised as to defy resemblance to the original concept. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-04-04-what-private-branding-should-teach-you-about-competing-on-price/ Tue, 04 Apr 2017 21:34:27 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-04-04-what-private-branding-should-teach-you-about-competing-on-price/ If I had a dollar for every meeting I’ve sat through where a team member felt that a product could best be served by the initiation of a pricing war with a competitor, I probably wouldn’t still be working in client services. The truth is that private branding makes a sort of sense that’s hard for many client-side teams to ignore. When you can offer an adjacent line extension that can cash in on the benefit of the brand equity your team has worked hard to build, it can seem as though you’d be foolish to ignore the easy profits. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-23-its-more-like-magazines/ Thu, 23 Mar 2017 00:31:20 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-23-its-more-like-magazines/ I’ve found myself repeating the same few words over and over again. That’s usually one of the first signs I look to when I need to know that something should be written down. When you find yourself hung up on a problem, it’s a good sign it might be worth solving. One thing I’ve noticed an increasing amount of advertisers complaining about is the difficulty they have navigating the world of display inventory. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-13-when-youre-working-online-to-offline-take-a-moment-to-really-look-at-what-youre-doing/ Mon, 13 Mar 2017 23:53:21 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-13-when-youre-working-online-to-offline-take-a-moment-to-really-look-at-what-youre-doing/ I first learned to make things by taking apart things that other people made. I didn’t know that other people did this too. Over the years, I’ve learned that people who grew up to make other things did the same thing too. Ken Mazaika even suggests it in “29 Behaviors That Will Make You An Unstoppable Program,” but I have found that many of us in creative production might benefit from this simple, yet powerful advice. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-13-a-reason-auto-followers-are-probably-killing-your-engagement-stats-at-scale/ Mon, 13 Mar 2017 21:50:33 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-13-a-reason-auto-followers-are-probably-killing-your-engagement-stats-at-scale/ A few years ago, I started noticing that everywhere I looked, it seemed like everyone was using CrowdFire. Autofollowers have been around for a really long time. Long enough that I don’t actually know where I would start researching where the first examples may have come from. I remember using scripts on MySpace. I remember ranking robots. I remember single messages spamming servers full of IRC channels. Autofollowers have been around a really long time. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-06-weve-tapped-out-the-universe/ Mon, 06 Mar 2017 23:25:06 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-06-weve-tapped-out-the-universe/ Advice For When User Growth Starts To Slip It’s an all too common occurrence. A marketing strategy that had been working, shows signs of slowing down. Stakeholders start to get nervous. A frantic team works to figure out what can be corrected, when and where. Situations like the one I’m describing require more than increased output, but all too often, this is the solution I see teams applying. Left unchecked, a situation like this one can quickly get out of control. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-03-dear-podcasters-please-stop-listening-to-other-peoples-podcasts/ Fri, 03 Mar 2017 01:37:51 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-03-03-dear-podcasters-please-stop-listening-to-other-peoples-podcasts/ A Suggestion From Someone Who Listens To Way Too Many Podcasts In the past week, I’ve listened to seven different podcasters lament changes in audiences, downloads or support metrics. The anguish reminded me of the way I felt when, after salivating over Jesse Freund’s “The MP3 Players,” and finally saving up over what had felt like an entire three lifetimes enough hard-earned cash to pick up my very first, I discovered most audio files were lousy fits. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-22-the-dirty-secret-about-how-long-it-takes-to-write-something/ Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:28:11 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-22-the-dirty-secret-about-how-long-it-takes-to-write-something/ I still think back fondly on some of my the early days of my career spent putting words on paper. I remember being annoyed that it didn’t ever seem like there was enough time to read all of the things that needed to be read and to write all the things that needed to be written. When I thought about it, I figured that if I could just learn to write faster, I could spend all the extra time I wanted reading. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-13-the-spectrum-of-user-surveys/ Mon, 13 Feb 2017 01:33:45 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-13-the-spectrum-of-user-surveys/ Most advice about user surveys is really bad. I know, because I’ve been part of the problem on this one. Don’t believe me? Here’s a video I found and reuploaded from a few years ago. It’s in a folder with a very strongly worded readme all about what was going on at the time. The trouble with advice like this, is that user surveys happen in one of two ways. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-13-but-ads-dont-work-on-me/ Mon, 13 Feb 2017 00:52:10 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-13-but-ads-dont-work-on-me/ Why It May Be Time To Rethink Your Skepticism I still remember the first time I studied ads in school — it helped that it was eighth grade english. The unit took a few weeks, and in hindsight it had to have been written by advertisers. I say that because one of the key learnings was that the most important part of any advertisement was the “call to action.” My teacher explained that by studying the call to action you could “get behind” the persuasion of any advertisement, and by thinking critically about the world around you blah blah blah blah blah. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-10-why-its-worth-the-long-hours/ Fri, 10 Feb 2017 00:31:24 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-10-why-its-worth-the-long-hours/ I still remember one of the first nights it occurred to me that I’d need to stay up and watch how an ad served. We had been experimenting with a few different global audiences for an App. One particular audience segment was performing particularly well throughout what would for me have been the overnight hours. I needed to measure comments at the same time that I was making changes. There wasn’t any way around it but to power through. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-10-what-is-a-culture-of-learning-anyway/ Fri, 10 Feb 2017 00:01:19 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-10-what-is-a-culture-of-learning-anyway/ I didn’t always work in communications. Before finding my way into the world of Advertising, I dabbled in a handful of different worlds. What I’ve found is that while it’s tempting to fall for the allure of the old idea that everything could better somewhere else, the truth is each industry has its own ups and downs. One of the most curious I’ve started to notice is that it seems as though many times the qualities that make something “good,” when carried to their extremes can also make something “bad. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-06-a-glimpse-at-two-ways-to-think-about-how-much-should-i-post-and-when-should-i-post/ Mon, 06 Feb 2017 21:57:34 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-06-a-glimpse-at-two-ways-to-think-about-how-much-should-i-post-and-when-should-i-post/ I probably spend more time than I should these days working with in rooms that have TVs on in the background. Which…is why when I noticed this. I figured it was as good a time as any to talk about the two different ways I’ve seen people talk about how frequently they post and how much content they need to create in order to maximize distribution. While much has been written about how decentralization works (Vitalik Buterin’s “The Meaning Of Decentralization”) and what it might mean for content distribution (I’m a fan of Meghan Keaney Anderson’s “Decentralized Content”) I’m starting to suspect that for many teams, the question of what these changes might mean for post volume are just beginning to come up. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-06-why-isnt-anyone-clicking-my-ad/ Mon, 06 Feb 2017 17:50:49 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-02-06-why-isnt-anyone-clicking-my-ad/ The Problem With Performance-Based Pricing Models Over the past few weeks, I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with client deals structured around metrics like cost per click. It’s probably a little out of character, but as these alternative arrangements gain popularity, it feels worth pointing out that we may still have a few things left to work out. Metric based pricing is one of the more promising precursors to performance-based pricing. Structuring a deal around a metric (in theory) makes for better alignment between in-house teams and out-of-house talent. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-30-but-the-answer-is-right-there-a-case-for-project-based-assessments-in-advertising/ Mon, 30 Jan 2017 19:16:51 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-30-but-the-answer-is-right-there-a-case-for-project-based-assessments-in-advertising/ I’m noticing a startling trend. Over the past few years the number of job functions related to marketing online have grown dramatically. Roles haven’t always kept up and some shops always seem to have a slightly different way of doing things. I first noticed this trouble when we began working through rounds of contract and part-time talent. Breaking apart who was responsible for what on a team is a chore. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-24-a-reluctant-reformed-cord-cutter/ Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:56:48 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-24-a-reluctant-reformed-cord-cutter/ “Back to multi-channel TV…for work no less.” I caught myself muttering something to that effect a few days ago as I ended up plugging myself back into the universe of multi-channel TV. It isn’t the first time in the last decade I’ve come back, but for the most part I haven’t been a regular customer of cable since 2007. At first, there weren’t really streaming services to speak of. Enough of the old alternative distribution channels were still around by the time DVD mailer subscription services started to peak, that I don’t remember ever being hungry for content — even then. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-24-what-i-wondered-spending-an-afternoon-building-our-imessage-sticker-app/ Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:13:17 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-24-what-i-wondered-spending-an-afternoon-building-our-imessage-sticker-app/ I got it into my head late last week that we ought to recycle a few of the illustrations we’ve been generating over the last year. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d do with the stack, so I started with all the usual suspects. I fiddled with mugs, priced out pins whole nine yards. Somewhere in the midst of an afternoon spent pricing out merch, I noticed I had a text message. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-17-one-trick-for-evaluating-readership-numbers/ Tue, 17 Jan 2017 05:11:38 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-17-one-trick-for-evaluating-readership-numbers/ When I first realized that advertising would become a focus of my career, I was in part drawn in by the relatively numeric world of digital advertising. I liked that it was easy to base all of your work on an actual number of users, and it seemed reassuring to be able to know what was happening with the content that you produced. Over the years as my scope of practice has grown, I’ve had to learn the nuances of the way this same information is communicated differently in different mediums. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-17-why-you-should-pay-attention-to-disneys-take-on-this-generations-imessage-sticker/ Tue, 17 Jan 2017 01:44:46 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-17-why-you-should-pay-attention-to-disneys-take-on-this-generations-imessage-sticker/ Early reactions to iMessage stickers weren’t significant, but folks like Yono were quick to check it out. I’ll admit I’ve found myself unable to resist the temptation, and have also rolled my sleeves up to get into the fray. It’s one of those things you get, or you don’t — but when it comes to assembling the assets for an iMessage sticker pack? It’s pretty simple! There’s a reasonably well-defined style guide, and the truth is most teams will have many of the necessary assets hanging out in a folder on the shared drive. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-07-help-keep-your-account-secure/ Sat, 07 Jan 2017 06:11:34 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2017-01-07-help-keep-your-account-secure/ Why Every Day Transactional Email Might Be Your Biggest Missed Opportunity of 2017 There’s already been more than enough said about the importance of fleshing out a robust transactional email program. The truth is that it doesn’t really matter which platform you end up on so long as when it makes sense for your app to notify a user about something you’re doing it happens seamlessly. There’s been a lot written about the impact regular notifications can have on the experience of using your app or service. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-30-but-how-long-will-this-take/ Fri, 30 Dec 2016 20:41:35 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-30-but-how-long-will-this-take/ The Time It Takes For Your “Marketing To Work.” I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Imagine you have a mobile app that gets 100 downloads a day and you’re trying to decide if you should invest in marketing. For every 100 people who download your app, 5 become a paying customer. You’re averaging 5 new customers a day. For the sake of easy to follow numbers, let’s assume that each new customer is worth 10$ to your business — after costs and the App Store’s cut are taken out. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-28-the-difference-between-love-and-obsession/ Wed, 28 Dec 2016 06:45:42 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-28-the-difference-between-love-and-obsession/ What I Think “Five Years’ Experience” Really Means And Why You Should Ignore It Before I get too far ahead of myself here, I want to take a moment to say that if you’ve stumbled into this post because you’re encountering one of life’s most mysterious of frustrations you may find better answers on the resume game in Dr. John Sullivan’s delightful “Why You Can’t Get A Job … Recruiting Explained By The Numbers,” it’s one of the best explanations I’ve seen of how applicant tracking systems have changed the way we recruit talent. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-25-the-one-where-i-quoth-something-someone-once-told-me-about-quotations/ Sun, 25 Dec 2016 21:19:40 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-25-the-one-where-i-quoth-something-someone-once-told-me-about-quotations/ One of my more peculiar habits is that once I start paying attention to something like a new album or company or news, I have a really hard time adjusting once that topic is out of the limelight of coverage. As a result, I spend a lot of time staying up to date on things I probably would be better off ignoring. It was on one such fact-finding mission, that I noticed an old associate recycling one of my old tags in an interview with a journalist. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-22-what-big-brands-taught-me-this-week-about-social-media-backlash-filter-bubbles-and-what-it-means/ Thu, 22 Dec 2016 04:25:01 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-22-what-big-brands-taught-me-this-week-about-social-media-backlash-filter-bubbles-and-what-it-means/ You Can Learn A Lot From Rage, Really. So there it was. I had woken up because one of our clients had a social media property that had offended someone. It wasn’t anything dramatic, a misspelling had suggested an offensive interpretation of a post we hadn’t intended. A few kind words, an offer or two and just like that, things were back to normal. Ever since, I’ve gotten into the habit of paying attention to the ways that brands respond to negative feedback. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-18-yelling-about-facebook-ctr/ Sun, 18 Dec 2016 20:25:25 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-18-yelling-about-facebook-ctr/ We end up writing a lot more about the established social platforms than I’d like, but the truth is that as an organization, we come to it honestly. We spend as much time as we do on the more mature social networks because, over the past year, they’ve managed to grow somehow increasingly predictable. That stability has become something I value in a platform. Over the last few years, one of the most consistent elements of working with the next generation of publishing platforms has been change. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-13-how-do-we-know-what-to-test/ Tue, 13 Dec 2016 04:53:19 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-13-how-do-we-know-what-to-test/ Some of the more curious questions we get from marketers involve testing. I’ve found this strange, in part, because I’m not sure I’ve ever once wondered why anyone would need help figuring out what experiment to run next. A quick glance through Google shows me that there are quite a few resources like Gabriel Weinberg’s “32 Fast And Cheap Marketing Tests You Should Consider Running.” There are even collections of results like the delightful “I Spent $30,000” (Justin Brooke) and this great classic on meaningful tests. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-13-i-wish-other-people-could-find-your-articles-too/ Tue, 13 Dec 2016 02:32:43 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-13-i-wish-other-people-could-find-your-articles-too/ Something I Learned Today. One of the rather enjoyable parts of my job (and I should know, I’ve written about it before) is that I get to spend a lot of time thinking about why people consume the media that they consume. Part of doing that in a way you can actually manage means building up systems that make it easier to sort through massive amounts of information. One of the first tricks I learned when I started out working with smaller teams was that while every founder wants to run a brand with national reach, the truth is getting to that threshold is expensive. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-07-a-quick-word-of-advice-about-digital-marketing-courses/ Wed, 07 Dec 2016 00:47:33 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-07-a-quick-word-of-advice-about-digital-marketing-courses/ Over the past few years, I’ve noticed an increasing number of people asking me for an opinion on digital marketing courses. One of the first things I always do when I get asked a question for the second or third time is to take a look at how the number of other people who are asking the same question. Sometimes, this can be a great way of spotting a trend. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-06-what-i-learned-the-first-time-i-was-managing-more-than-ten-ad-accounts/ Tue, 06 Dec 2016 03:46:27 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-06-what-i-learned-the-first-time-i-was-managing-more-than-ten-ad-accounts/ We don’t always talk about the things that don’t go well. I think that’s because things that don’t go well can fall into a few broad categories. At some level, it’s easy to obsess about the things that haven’t gotten better yet. When you do that, it’s entirely too easy to ignore the things that are going right. When you do that, you can’t be sure that you’re spending your time on the right activities. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-01-how-long-does-it-take-to-make-an-email-template-anyway/ Thu, 01 Dec 2016 00:59:45 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-12-01-how-long-does-it-take-to-make-an-email-template-anyway/ I’ve been spending a lot of time the last few weeks trying to feel “caught up.” In part, it’s the consequent of a holiday weekend that ended with a cold. In part, it’s the result of a shifting workload. In part, well hey, it is winter. With that being said, I’ve had a few minutes to think about the way some tasks seem to quickly balloon to take up much more time than they ought to, and the way others seem to fly by. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-11-17-what-i-think-content-shock-really-means-for-advertisers-and-marketers-alike/ Thu, 17 Nov 2016 02:04:44 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-11-17-what-i-think-content-shock-really-means-for-advertisers-and-marketers-alike/ I’ve written a lot of articles over the course of the past year. Only of a fraction of them have made it here, and I’m not sure that I even know where I’d start trying to make an accurate accounting. It’s easy to forget just how often the answer to the growing troubles of content shock is “better” which really isn’t that far off from “more.” That work doesn’t come out of thin air. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-11-11-this-veterans-day/ Fri, 11 Nov 2016 18:47:49 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-11-11-this-veterans-day/ I’m tempted to remind that 22 million veterans depend on the VA for care, and that 25.7 million dependents do as well. Those fine folks are serviced by some 360,000 VA employees (source.) It’d be easy to sneak in a line or two from that poem we only ever hear around this time in November. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKoJvHcMLfc But what hasn’t been easy, is finding anything to say. I can tell we’ve collectively spent a lot of time talking about ‘the issues’ these past few weeks, because everywhere I look, I see people who are exhausted. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-11-01-when-the-time-is-far-spent/ Tue, 01 Nov 2016 18:49:49 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-11-01-when-the-time-is-far-spent/ I’ve given myself a constraint for this post. I want to make sure that I finish it as quickly as possible, because the truth is that I’m a little bit behind on a laundry list of tasks, and I just found out I may need to squeeze one more thing into a week’end,’ that was already operating on a ticktock. It’s given me the occasion to think a little more about all of the different ways of managing time. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-25-the-problem-with-widget-5/ Tue, 25 Oct 2016 16:48:52 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-25-the-problem-with-widget-5/ A few years back, the advertising world was caught up in a debate over the relative values of “Rational” and “Emotional” messaging. Emergent digital targeting data and performance analytics made quick work of the conversation… …or you’d think so, but that would make too much sense. There’s a misconception that’s still all too common amongst teams that aren’t up to spec on performance data. This idea is so toxic in part because it means many believe that if they don’t berate the customer, the customer won’t know you’re selling a widget and they won’t know what to do with the information you’re sharing with them. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-18-the-three-skills-id-suggest-those-looking-to-start-a-career-in-digital-media-hone/ Tue, 18 Oct 2016 18:54:45 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-18-the-three-skills-id-suggest-those-looking-to-start-a-career-in-digital-media-hone/ One of the easiest ways to get overwhelmed by new genres of production is to assume that each new platform completely reinvents the wheel. This is almost always not the case, and because of this, I think there are actually a number of skills that are helpful to have in your back pocket as you’re looking to begin working in the new media landscape — but there are three I think everyone should have some degree of a working understanding of. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-15-the-accursed-thing/ Sat, 15 Oct 2016 07:14:22 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-15-the-accursed-thing/ I probably owe bhorowitz most of a sandwich, and if you give me a few minutes, I’ll explain why. See, I got into tech on a lark. I had nearly sworn the stuff off when back in the 90s, I remember it was early, but my dad brought a DCMA letter into my room. “Son,” he said, dropping his tone. “When they come for you,” he paused “and they will come for you,” I’m not going to say a word. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-13-iterative-writing/ Thu, 13 Oct 2016 17:29:07 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-13-iterative-writing/ I’ve been meaning to spend a little more time talking about all of the different ways that you can leverage digital tech to lower the barriers of entry to getting into print. I think that’s the kind of topic I might think would be easier to cover one bit at a time. The trouble I’ve been having is that picking which of those bits really is a bit of a sport. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-11-blank-screen-problems/ Tue, 11 Oct 2016 17:20:33 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-11-blank-screen-problems/ I should really get into a more regular flow of blogging. I have the same trouble with writing for myself these days though; it’s felt a lot like just one more thing. One of my favorite parts of my job is that I get to have the tremendous responsibility of having a very pragmatic view of how long it takes to have a good idea. I also get to estimate the amount of time it actually takes to put something together, which means I’ve got to be really disciplined when it comes to metering out production. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-06-how-we-sped-up-our-digital-rapid-response-capacity/ Thu, 06 Oct 2016 16:21:10 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-06-how-we-sped-up-our-digital-rapid-response-capacity/ If I had a dollar for every business that proclaimed “agile” marketers were running the show while simultaneously using “waterfall” process, I probably wouldn’t be working. It’s not really the fault of any one business. The fine folks at AIPMM even shared some staggering insights into transformation failure rate here. (Sanjay Zalavadia has highlighted a few more explanations of agile failures here.) One of the key failings both highlight: https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-04-one-thing-i-wish-id-have-known-a-few-years-ago/ Tue, 04 Oct 2016 19:13:51 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-10-04-one-thing-i-wish-id-have-known-a-few-years-ago/ Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working to establish processes around the way we run our own marketing program. It’s been a curious challenge, because while we’ve run and developed a number of programs, addressing the parameters of our own always seemed like something of an afterthought. On some degree of reflection, we decided that we probably couldn’t sell a thing we didn’t do for ourselves in good conscious. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-09-16-quick-suggestion-for-a-poor-team-needing-an-early-analytics-stack/ Fri, 16 Sep 2016 18:42:33 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-09-16-quick-suggestion-for-a-poor-team-needing-an-early-analytics-stack/ I think all too often, startups put off putting in basic tracking capabilities until they feel like they can afford a solution on the level of Adobe Marketing Cloud — or in the medium term HubSpot. I think if I were just getting started on a project this is the flow I’d use. (It’s actually the flow we’re using on our team’s branded properties right now.) Install Segment. I really shouldn’t be so shameless, but if I were going to deploy a tag on an early stage team (say an early website) I wouldn’t want to have to revisit updating my site each time I discovered a new capability I wanted to play with. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-09-14-thoughts-from-somewhere-near-half-way-through-denver-start-up-week/ Wed, 14 Sep 2016 22:49:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-09-14-thoughts-from-somewhere-near-half-way-through-denver-start-up-week/ There’s about fifteen other things I need to be doing right now, but I wanted to take a few minutes to share some thoughts on three themes I’ve noticed thus far in my time bouncing around this year’s sessions of Denver Start Up Week. One of the great features of the program offering, is that the hosting team is able to run a number of concurrent tracks focusing on different topics. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-08-19-what-your-business-can-learn-from-the-kollywood-cafe/ Fri, 19 Aug 2016 22:34:38 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-08-19-what-your-business-can-learn-from-the-kollywood-cafe/ I’m going to show you something most marketers would keep to themselves. S&T Traffic Map Post Redesign For the last few weeks, I’ve been looking at this map a lot. Some parts are easy to explain: Domestic Traffic Others are surprising: Australia! There’s one part in particular I’ve been trying to figure out and so I’ve been spending a lot of time consuming content from the different regions where people consume my content. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-08-16-honest-conversation-about-collecting-student-data/ Tue, 16 Aug 2016 16:31:06 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-08-16-honest-conversation-about-collecting-student-data/ I remember when I made my first Yahoo Mail account at 12. I ran into the COPA filter that asked how old I was, and I noticed that if I changed the year, I’d be through and wouldn’t have any trouble signing up. So I did. We’ve spent a lot more time than I’d like to admit working on, near and around EdTech. One thing that has always bothered me has been the public conversation about student data. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-08-11-how-i-learned-to-stop-hating-and-fell-in-love-with-tv/ Thu, 11 Aug 2016 19:31:19 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-08-11-how-i-learned-to-stop-hating-and-fell-in-love-with-tv/ It was the fall of 2007, and I had finished my coursework early. I took the opportunity to walk along the University of Iowa’s campus exacting my vengeance on arrant leaves that had yet to be properly piled. As I walked I inhaled the crisp air. I felt the the change around me. But I felt something more than the renewal of fall. I felt a gnawing pain in my stomach. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-08-05-what-to-do-when-the-digital-audience-information-doesnt-make-any-sense/ Fri, 05 Aug 2016 21:08:58 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-08-05-what-to-do-when-the-digital-audience-information-doesnt-make-any-sense/ Even This Looks Better Than My Versioning Flow. I really need a better versioning best practice. The system we use now can be best characterized as an artistic interpretation of Google Drive. It’s a mess of columns, files and rows. It’s held together with bailing wire. It’s held together with willpower. In short, it’s a mess. But it’s my mess, and I daresay I’ve even grown fond of the time I’ve spent revisiting old work and cleaning up headers. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-07-28-why-weight-loss-products-are-stalking-your-timeline-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/ Thu, 28 Jul 2016 20:29:14 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-07-28-why-weight-loss-products-are-stalking-your-timeline-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/ How You Can Tip The Balance Back In Favor Of Your Sanity A few weeks ago, I noticed a post on Facebook that broke my heart. A friend had commented that she had seen a large number of posts from her friends advertising scammy weight loss products and quick-fix solutions. She said that these posts make it harder for people who are trying to lose weight to do so, because often times the advice isn’t very good, and the products don’t work. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-07-27-what-we-mean-when-we-talk-about-adding-value/ Wed, 27 Jul 2016 21:08:35 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-07-27-what-we-mean-when-we-talk-about-adding-value/ Jargon cuts like a two-edged sword. Amongst experienced career professionals, a solid working vocabulary can help to build cohesion and speed up velocity. The trouble is, not everyone has enough experience to identify the context within which a phrase is being used. To make matters worse, people don’t usually raise their hand up to ask a question about something they think they understand. If there’s one phrase start-up types are guilty of running right into the ground, it’s “value added. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-07-12-we-need-your-help-to-measure-the-return-on-pokemon/ Sun, 12 Jul 2015 17:25:43 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-07-12-we-need-your-help-to-measure-the-return-on-pokemon/ Those of you who follow us closely, know that for the past week, we’ve working on a study of the return on investment associated with the use of Pokemon Lures. We’ve logged more than 35 hours of playtime — and we’ve spent most of it tracking other players. Over the next few days, we’ll share some of the best practices we’ve collected as well as some of the raw foot traffic data for the collection of PokeStops we had access to. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-07-04-a-jog-through-the-only-story-of-the-origin-of-that-black-flag-youll-see-a-lot-on-the-fourth-of/ Sat, 04 Jul 2015 21:33:22 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-07-04-a-jog-through-the-only-story-of-the-origin-of-that-black-flag-youll-see-a-lot-on-the-fourth-of/ If you’ll forgive my click-baity headline, I promise it really will be worth the time. See, I am horrible about not working on holidays. A few years ago, I came up with a technique to try and be a little bit better about it. From time to time I put together an email highlighting a detail from history I found worth remembering, and a few links to read further. I figured this Fourth of July, I’d share. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-06-30-noodles-and-company-figures-youll-take-care-of-yourself-anyway/ Tue, 30 Jun 2015 00:52:31 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-06-30-noodles-and-company-figures-youll-take-care-of-yourself-anyway/ Earlier today, I read that I and many other Noodles customers, were involved in a data breach. (You likely were as well if you’ve visited in the last six months.) It sounds like someone managed to exploit the point of sale system. Noodles issued this statement this morning. Here’s what I suspect these things mean: We weren’t sure we could figure it out on our own, and we wanted to make sure we had someone to throw under the bus if it failed. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-06-20-exporting-a-facebook-lead-list-the-old-fashioned-way/ Sat, 20 Jun 2015 19:58:27 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2016-06-20-exporting-a-facebook-lead-list-the-old-fashioned-way/ A few weeks ago, we were working with a client that had been relying on an integration between Zapier and Facebook to take data out of the lead card product and integrate it with a CRM. This is pretty common practice, and nowadays there are better ways to do this. One common problem when cleaning this data, however, is removing the non-numerical characters from a column of phone numbers. Here’s an easy way to fix this in Google sheets. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2015-06-09-i-am-told-it-works-even-if-you-dont-believe-in-it/ Tue, 09 Jun 2015 11:36:46 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2015-06-09-i-am-told-it-works-even-if-you-dont-believe-in-it/ I’ve just found a unicorn. I took the opportunity to walk through my neighborhood last evening. I couldn’t help but notice this wonderful bit of old-world advertising while I was out and about. Here’s a closer shot: Do you believe in magic? It must have been rough trying to sell ads back when there was no real way to guarantee who saw them. In deference to my lack of experience with this rather…dated…medium, here’s a quick primer to get you up to speed. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2015-06-08-good-growth-hackers-are-hard-to-find/ Mon, 08 Jun 2015 19:56:09 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/blog/2015-06-08-good-growth-hackers-are-hard-to-find/ I consume more media than I should. I do it myself, I’ve got a Google Alert built out for everything I find or have found interesting, and like many of you, I’m relying on IFTT and Feedly to render that content in a slightly more useful form. If you can niche your alert keywords well enough, it’s not that bad. Until I can find something better though, I find myself checking the SearchEngingeResultsPage movement of big hitter keyword categories like “Marketing” once a week. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/category/hugo/_hugo/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/category/hugo/_hugo/ https://blog.karljtaylor.com/category/jekyll/_jekyll/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/category/jekyll/_jekyll/ https://blog.karljtaylor.com/pages/contact_2/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/pages/contact_2/ Need to get in touch? Send a message using the form below, or connect with me on social media using one of the links on the left! Send Now https://blog.karljtaylor.com/pages/hello/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/pages/hello/ This is not a page. but it does have a small change. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/pages/contact/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/pages/contact/ https://blog.karljtaylor.com/pages/privacy-policy/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/pages/privacy-policy/ Privacy Policy Your privacy is important to us. It is Karl Taylor’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect from you across our website, http://karljtaylor.com, and other sites we own and operate. Information we collect Log data When you visit our website, our servers may automatically log the standard data provided by your web browser. This data is considered “non-identifying information”, as it does not personally identify you on its own. https://blog.karljtaylor.com/pages/the-end-is-not-yet/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://blog.karljtaylor.com/pages/the-end-is-not-yet/