Last week I was honored to join Jeff Graham on his popular tech podcast for USA Today.  We had a blast chatting about the new iphone, the future of television remotes, subscription music sites and–my favorite–social media.  We spoke about a recent blog post I wrote about Instagram's new algorithm and was interviewed on camera as well.  (Note to self: smile more on camera.)

Now here's where a strange thing happened: people got their feathers ruffled.  Perhaps I came across as pro-algorithm (even though I stated outright I preferred the chronological feed), but I want to make one thing clear: Instagram has revolutionized my business.  I love the platform.  It's changed the way businesses do business…and I am NOT a fan of the new changes.

However, Facebook (which owns Instagram) had a 51% growth over the prior year and in order to sustain this type of growth must find a way to monetize apps like Instagram (the social media platform users and brands engage with the most) (Source: TechCrunch).  For years businesses (like my own) have cultivated customer acquisition by beautiful photos, but now I need to foster organic engagement or else getting my feed seen will come with a hefty price tag.

I'm actively researching how to make this happen, but first things first:  I need to ask my audience to Turn On Post Notifications.  Ideally, I want my followers to get a notification when I post, but they must opt-in for my feed.  This will be the first step of many, but I'm committed to sharing with you what's working with my feed so we can grow our businesses.  Together.

To read/see/hear from from my chat with USA Today, click HERE for the blog post!