Tik Tok

There is no better way to learn a skill than to do it yourself! While looking for work in my field, my newest endeavor has been learning how to grow a TikTok audience and understand the ins and outs of this short-form platform. Initially, I began posting videos for fun, just to see how it worked. Because this is a personal experiment, the account is called JensenandKelsey and revolves around my partner and my travels and lifestyle as a couple in our early 20s. We struggled to establish a niche since traveling is such an inconsistent hobby and requires an influx of income. Ultimately, we landed on three big "niches" that coincide with one another: traveling, "lifestyle" (as many influencers today claim), and fitness. I have been posting consistently for nearly twenty days.

Studying what the algorithm chooses to share over what it doesn't has been equal parts intriguing and frustrating. I've found that TikTok favors some engagement metrics over others (saves over likes, reposts over saves, comments over reposts, etc.). Posts that are less than thirty seconds tend to do better than those over thirty seconds, even despite video quality. I am excited to continue this experiment and learn more about this specific platform.

Figma Meets Social Media

Over the past several months, I have been taking courses on Figma to further my knowledge of the software. Although marketed for UI and UX designers, I wondered how the tool would perform for social media marketing. I found that constructing layouts through Figma was much more efficient than using Canva, or the Adobe Creative Suite. Figma is great for Instagram carousels and specialized layouts. One of my experiments with this was a carousel I made for my main Instagram profile, highlighting a previous road trip I went on in October of 2023. I am excited to continue to experiment and share my findings!