#I will advise people to curate their own dashboard | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bobbiedebruyn · 3 months

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So you just joined Tumblr?

Tumblr basics + Fandoms/Gifmaking

Congratulations, you just landed at Tumblr! This hellsite (affectionate) can seem intimidating and complicated at first, but once you grasp the basics of it it’ll quickly turn into your own personal little hut in the forest. Tumblr is a website where you and only you curate your dashboard, you’ll see the content that you seek on your own. In this post, I’ll explain the basics of Tumblr and the basics of how fandoms function here with the help of Bob. Okay, let’s get started.

1. Blog customization

The first thing you should do as soon as you land on Tumblr is add a profile picture and header before you interact with people. You want to be distinguishable from bots and therefore avoid getting blocked. You can also add anything to your bio, there's no character limit. Some folks add their name and pronouns, but there are no rules about that. There are also no rules about profile pictures. It can be a picture of you, a picture of your dog, a picture of a rock, or a picture of your favorite character. If you plan on staying on the fandom side, you might notice that a lot of fandom blogs have colorful-looking icons (a cutout of a character on a colorful background), for these icons and also headers I suggest checking out source blogs that make those icons. For starters, @iconheadersource is a goldmine where you definitely going to find something that’d suit you and your blog.

Tumblr on mobile and Tumblr on desktop are two different creatures when it comes to customization. On the desktop, you can customize your blog with coding (HTML + JS). Now Bob will demonstrate to us some examples of blogs on desktop.

If you want to customize your desktop blog, I suggest checking out @phantomcodes and @glenthemes for the codes.

Tutorial on how to install themes

Using javascript on Tumblr pages

2. Search Engine

Nice! You've made your blog look pretty! Now, let's shift our focus to the search engine and ways to discover content. As mentioned earlier, you curate your dashboard by looking for things you enjoy and like. Search using hashtags or the names of your interests (TV shows, movies, birds, music, etc.) to find your piece of cake. For instance, folks who create posts about TV shows you like use tags to ensure their posts reach others interested in the same thing. So, let's go ahead and search for something right now.

Once you search for that specific tag, you are redirected to the corresponding tag page. Here, you can see that posts are sorted by "Latest" or "Top" (indicating posts with the most notes). On the right side, you will find related tags and blogs which are frequently using the searched tag. By following the tag, both the tag itself and the posts tagged with it will automatically appear on your dashboard in the "Your tags" section. You have the option to filter tags according to your preferences. In the settings, you can choose to block specific tags if you prefer not to see content related to some particular topics.

The only method for sharing posts and content on this website is through reblogging. On Tumblr, reposting others' content, including art, gifs, and fics, is not accepted. Reposting means downloading art, gifs, etc., creating your own post, and then sharing it. And that's a big no-no, strongly discouraged. Your likes essentially function as bookmarks, and you have the option to set them to be private. When you save something, it doesn't appear on your friends' dashboards.

We don't censor things here, and I advise you not to do so too. If you need to mention a word that might be potentially triggering or could be flagged on another social media, feel free to say it. Many users have specific topics and tags filtered out, so if you use variations like "K!tKat" instead of "KitKat" in the tags, it can bypass the tag filter, potentially causing more harm as people will see content that triggers them. And remember to always tag posts that have flickering or flashing!!!

If you want to organize your reblogs or make comments on a reblog, use the tags section and not the comments section itself. This is called "#add tags." Feel free to type whatever you want, but keep in mind that the original poster receives notifications when someone reblogs their post and adds tags. Yes, all tags are visible to us.

Okay, so let's quickly recap this information with the help of our dear friend, Bob.

3. Social interactions

So let's move on to one of the crucial topics - how to make friends on Tumblr? Personally, I don't think there's one particular formula for that. Sometimes you just see a funny bloke posting about something as random as desert rain frogs, grab them, and go "You're my friend now" and that's how you become mutuals.

However, there are other, more common ways to become friends with someone. You can start by reblogging someone's post, adding tags to the reblog, and then following the person. Create your own posts, tag them to ensure they reach the folks who are interested in the same things as you, and participate in fandom events and challenges if you're into that. Interact with people you want to befriend, message them, send them asks. You will eventually find your crowd. You'll also find swifties, and fans of supernatural who never moved on from that destiel love confession four years ago, they also can be your friends, at some point, you will become friends and chill with each other. Be open to new interests to make sure your dashboard is not dull and boring.

Tumblr doesn't have the supposed hierarchy, and you don't have to listen to anyone who tells you otherwise, you curate your own experience and blocking is pretty normalized here. Notes and followers (which are private for everyone) don't really matter, stick to your beliefs and your vibe and you'll be fine. We're all equal losers here.

4. Fandom / Gifmaking

Fandoms play a significant role on Tumblr, they're closely tied with gifmaking. As a fellow creature of fandom, I'm adding this part because we don't gatekeep - more gifmakers and fandom enthusiasts mean a better fandom experience. As I mentioned earlier, everything has its tag, making it easy to find your favorite TV show fandom by searching for the tag. This is also how you can connect with people who share an interest in that specific TV show. Upon entering the tag, you'll stumble upon numerous moving pictures – these are GIFs. People create GIFs of everything, from their "blorbo" (the term for favorite character) to beloved ships and favorite moments. There are also plenty of creative GIFs with different coloring and complicated effects. And the best part? You can do it too!

There are a lot of ways to make GIFs. Some people use Photoshop, and some use Photopea which is an excellent accessible option. I'll be linking posts for Photoshop under this text. For Photopea tutorials and guides, please check out @photopeablr.

I've been making GIFs for three years at this point, and those are the tutorials I used when I was just starting out:

how to make a gif:

comprehensive guide 101

basic gif making tutorial + mvp player installation

gifmaking for beginners

how to install MVP player on a PC

film downloading & screen-capping tips

correct photoset dimensions

coloring

how to fix orange-washed characters

how to: coloring east & southeast asian celebs

channel mixer

colored background

color manipulation

vibrant coloring

how to brighten dark scenes

color isolation

effects

glitch effect

blending

crossfade transition

gradient effect in the text

gradient text

red colour accent on the b&w gifs

how to add a gif in a template

blurring gif backgrounds

using templates

text

text tutorial 1

font resources

understanding fonts and typefaces

split text

subtitles

other

icon tutorial

gif headers

For more tutorials, inspirations, and resources - please check out @usergif. It's a good source blog for all gifmakers.

Wait but what's a source blog? These are blogs that center around a specific theme, creating content for a particular topic. They are managed by multiple editors, these blogs track their own tags to reblog content related to the theme. They can be source blogs dedicated to gifmaking (just like @usergif), a TV show, a movie, a character, a celebrity, a sports team, or literally anything else. Typically, these blogs incorporate terms like "network," "source," "central," "creators," "hub," or "daily" in their usernames, making them easily distinguishable from regular personal blogs. Examples of source blogs that come to my mind right now are @dailyanakin, @heartstoppercentral, and @nancywheelercentral.

Let's also talk about tracking tags, which are often included in blogs's bios, whether they're from source blogs or solo gifmakers. You can add these tags to your posts when creating a gifset related to a specific source blog or something you know a particular gifmaker would appreciate. Basically, the gifmaker can search their tracking tag, much like a regular Tumblr tag, and view the most recent sets in which someone used their tag.

The last thing I want to talk about are usernames, and main and side blogs. On Tumblr, we have two types of blogs: the main blog and the side blog. The main blog is the initial blog created when you sign up for your account. This blog has full functionality and all features, allowing you to follow other blogs, like posts, and send asks to other blogs. In addition to the main blog, you can create side blogs on your account. Side blogs lack some of the features of main blogs; you can't like posts, follow other blogs, or send asks from a side blog. They have slightly different functionality – a side blog can be password-protected, have multiple users, and allow you to send direct messages to people. Other users can follow your side blog, and you can receive asks from them.

Many people use side blogs as URL holders. For instance, when a new TV show is announced, someone might be the quickest to save all canonical character names. You can then message that empty side blog to inquire if they're willing to trade that specific URL or if it's available for a giveaway. Canonical URLs are often challenging to obtain, so many people add letters in between or at the end or use symbols like "-", and they also mix names and surnames of different characters.

5. The End

Okay, so we've just covered how Tumblr works, how fandoms operate, and how to get into gifmaking. I hope this guide by me and Bob has been helpful to you. If you have any questions, feel free to send them to my ask box or simply ask Bob. I hope you enjoy your stay here, and that your experience with this website will be a positive one.

#tumblr #welcome to tumblr #tumblr etiquette #how to tumblr #fandom community #fandom culture #photoshop tutorial #gif tutorial #gif resources #kas.txt #mine

485 notes · View notes

sapphixxx · 3 years

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i like you as a person (at least as far as i know you through here) but every day you post anime girls and it feels like someone in your position would be more sensitive about sexualized depictions of young women. most of them seem (on the surface) wholesome wlw, but i feel really uncomfortable seeing any kind of "lesbian" images shared online. men *will* see it, and most of it was probably made for them anyway. as transfem wlw, we should really try to be more careful about that

Anon, I want you to think very hard about what you're saying. You're uncomfortable with seeing lesbian images shared online, because men might see them? How weak is your lesbianism that you think it could be undermined or threatened by men merely viewing depictions of women on a public website? If the act of men seeing illustrations of women were enough to undermine trans women or lesbianism we would have been annihilated decades ago, because I'm not sure if you've noticed my friend but that ship has long sailed. Are you going to send this same message to Dynasty Scans, the largest host of yuri manga on the English speaking internet, too, in hopes that they will cease operations and stem the tide of gay anime women that men might see?

What do you think it would accomplish if I stopped posting cute girls? Moreover, why should lesbians define their behavior by what men might do? Should we avoid wearing short skirts and low cut tops, too, just in case we inflame their desire? This is just another way of defining women by their relationship to men, and I refuse to do that. The problem with the sexualization of young women has to do with men's attitudes towards women, seeing them as objects to be consumed rather than people with agency. The mere presence of suggestive pictures of women is not the problem. It is a problem that would exist even if we scrubbed every erotic picture from the internet because, again, the issue is with men's attitudes and their place of power in the world. There is a lot of art that is made in a misogynist way, yes, but the issue is with misogyny, not the fact that the woman in the picture has her tits out.

I ask you, what precisely are you worried about happening? You ask me to be careful, but of what? Are you worried about people thinking I'm a pervert for liking cute anime girls? If they think that, that's their fault, not mine. Are you worried that they will think I'm a pervert and extrapolate that all trans women are perverts? I did not cause their transmisogyny, and my posting habits would not fix it. Are you worried that men will get horny over what I post? Who cares! What they do in the privacy of their own homes does not concern me. Men finding women attractive is not a bad thing. Are you worried that some of those horny men fetishize lesbians? Their homophobia is not my responsibility. I did not cause it, and nothing I post would fix it.

You say most of this content was made for men anyway, to which I answer, how do you know? And more importantly, why do you care? If two girls fall in love, does it really make it not count or worth less if a man wrote them doing so, compared to a woman? Should I only look at pictures and read content of women falling in love if I can verify that the author was a woman who loves women too? What will this accomplish? At the end of the day, regardless of who the intended audience was, I see myself in it and I enjoy it. Everyone is capable of writing stories that are meaningful, even if they don't belong to the group they're writing about. Extrapolate this line of reasoning further. If a writer intended a story to speak to straight people, and for all the characters in it to be straight, does that mean I can't or shouldn't read my own gay and trans interpretation into it? Because newsflash, lgbt people have been appropriating stories written for cishet men for as long as we've existed.

Furthermore, I want you to interrogate how this line of reasoning could be used in transmisogynistic ways. Fifteen years ago I was a "man" who just happened to find lesbian romance compelling. Yuri manga online became my refuge, where I could explore these feelings about women loving women. Why did I find kinship with them, and find depictions of straight romance so alienating? Why did I relate so closely to these girls, while finding that I had nothing in common with any fictional men? I am not exaggerating when I tell you that cute anime girls were pivotal in me coming to terms with my gender and sexuality. Feel free to laugh! I find out funny myself, but it's true. When we try to set up barriers around lesbianism to "keep men out" that language can and will be weaponized against trans women. Those women who don't know they're women yet are barred from finding community and kinship with other wlw because they're perceived as "men". Worse, though, cis people will use that rhetoric to actively exclude trans women from wlw spaces outright even after they have come out, because they see us as male invaders. The portrayal of men's attraction to women as inherently predatory or degrading is used to justify cis people's disgust with trans women's attraction to women. Why would you want to lend legitimacy to that line of thinking?

Finally, I want to ask you, who do you think this blog is for? Because I'm sorry, but I don't do this for you. I do this for myself. I post what I want because I enjoy it, and I share pictures I enjoy with friends who enjoy the same thing. If you are uncomfortable with what I post, I advise you to unfollow me. I will not take it personally, and I hope you will not take it personally either. I hold you no ill will, and if you're someone I've spoken to one on one I would still consider us acquaintances. Nobody needs to follow me to be my friend. I regularly speak with and befriend people whom I don't follow and who don't follow me. This blog is curated to my interests, and your dashboard is, I'm sure, curated to your own interests. If these two things don't match up, there's nothing wrong with that. I encourage you to pursue crafting your online experience in a way that is suitable to you, but I will not change my own content for that purpose, leaving you the option of unfollowing.

I post all of this not to ream you out. I am not angry with you and I hold no malice against you. But because you have chosen to send this on anon I cannot ask you what you mean and engage you in further conversation. With that option gone, I can only type every possible thought I have on the matter, and hope that it illuminates my thinking. If you wish to talk about this further and explain your own thinking, if you think I've misrepresented your thinking or have further thoughts, I would love to hear it. You will, however, have to come off anon for me to do so.

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phoenixfell · 4 years

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Protecting Yourself & Creating a Good Experience

An unfortunate post necessitated by recent events. The unfortunate truth of reality is that we, as non-psychic human beings, are unable to determine with certainty the motives of other humans around us. If someone claims to have good intentions but are hurting you, are they simply presenting themselves poorly or are they lying entirely? This is a question you can never truly answer, but here I will guide you through some ways to protect yourself while being kind to yourself and others.

You may reblog this if you’d like.

Although this post was created specifically in response to the turmoil in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom, it’s not specific to this exact situation and the purpose is not to take a side. The purpose is to encourage everyone to do their part in ending hateful behavior and crafting a good community.

Contents:

0. Don’t send mean asks to people 1. Install an IP Tracker on your blog. 1.a (How to) Install an IP Blocker on your blog. 2. Curating your Experience 3. Making First Contact 4. Analyzing a Message 5. Fiction as Fiction VS Fiction as Reality 6. The Author’s Duty 7. Echo Chambers & Lateral Thinking 8. Accepting Differing Opinions 9. Good Intentions (Pave the Road to Hell) 10. Being Mean is Fun (so do it in non-harmful ways) 11. Morality (Personal, Community, and Legal)

0. Don’t send mean asks to people.

You know, I saw a post some time ago on the internet that basically said: Why do we see so many posts teaching people how to avoid being raped and virtually nothing telling people not to rape others? So, as obvious as this may sound, I’m going to give you a gentle reminder to not send mean asks to people.

Perhaps you are angry. Perhaps something else is bothering you. Perhaps you honestly feel like you are doing the right thing. These feelings are entirely valid and I understand. However, being mean to someone else on the internet is not going to solve anything. At best, it’s going to get you ignored and at worst, it’s going to actively escalate things.

If you feel down, depressed, or upset, consider this service: https://www.crisistextline.org/

US and Canada: text 741741 UK: text 85258 | Ireland: text 50808

It’s a confidential service that will help support you.

On the other hand, if you feel like you genuinely have a bone to pick with someone, take a step back. Get a cup of coffee, or tea; watch a YouTube video, and later on in this post we’ll discuss cooperative problem solving, the importance of word choice, and how to deescalate a situation.

1. Install an IP Tracker on your blog.

This is a very simple and completely legal process. The easiest way to do so is to sign up for Statcounter. This is a website for market and visitor analysis, but it does IP tracking for free, which is what we’re looking for. The site will even guide you through installing it. However--do not post it into the description. In my experiences, this does not work. Instead, click Edit HTML, search for <body>, and paste it directly underneath that.

For this to work most effectively, make sure that you have the Timestamps extension enabled within the inbox in XKit. If you do not have XKit installed, you can find directions on their Tumblr page, here: https://new-xkit-extension.tumblr.com/

1.a. (How to) Install an IP Blocker on your blog.

Although Tumblr claims to give you the ability to IP Block through the inbox by blocking anonymous asks, many people have expressed doubts that it actually works. Therefore, here’s an explanation showing you how to do it yourself. There are three steps to this, all taking place in the Edit HTML section we’ve left off in last section.

Directly below where the web analytics code above ends, paste this:

Directly below the previous command, paste this:

function ipBlock() { var ip = userip; //example: "0.0.0.0", "5.5.5.5", "3.3.3.3", var bannedips=[ "155.555.55.55" ]; var handleips=bannedips.join("|"); handleips=new RegExp(handleips, "i"); if (ip.search(handleips)!=-1){

window.location.replace("http://www.tumblr.com"); }

} </script>

You can customize this script in a few ways. First, bannedips needs to be the ip(s) you wish to block. You can add more by separating them by commas and enclosing them in quotes, as the example shows. Secondly, in the window.location.replace line, you can insert any valid address. Here are some suggestions I give people:

Tumblr homepage. Basic and effective.

A link to a Google search of something, e.g. How to not send mean asks on the internet

Your own tumblr blog, so they get stuck in a refresh loop

A similarly spelled but nonexistent blog, to give the illusion you deleted/moved

Finally, add onload=“ipBlock()” to your body tag:

That should be everything to get it working. If you want to test it, click the link in step two, copy and paste the IP address that is displayed into the bannedips, save, and visit your blog. If it’s working right, you should get thrown off.

If you don’t want your IP Block active, just remove step three and return your tag to <body>.

2. Curating Your Experience

Although Tumblr itself does not allow the functionality, there are ways to ensure that certain words do not appear on your dashboard. XKit has a blacklist feature which will hide posts containing certain words. Also of note is the wildcard feature, which is accessed by adding an asterisk after the word, ex.

nsfw -> Only blocks exactly that word and that tag nsfw* -> Will block any word or tag containing that phrase

However, I would like to gently notify you that there is significant research that actively avoiding content does more harm than good! Only you can know what is best for you, but there is a such thing as excessive avoidance.

3. Making First Contact

If there’s anything you take from this post, please let it be this one thing:

Always be kind. At first. Then tear them a new one if necessary.

The inevitable happens. As far as you can tell, you’re minding your own business on your blog. Your ask box lights up and you perk up, wondering which of your friends is reaching out to you.

Instead, the message is nasty, condemning you for your support of your favorite ship and the theme of your blog.

You’re upset, of course! And you have every right to be! You put a lot of time and effort into this blog and your ship, and to have someone so coldly butt in--you can feel the frustration mounting! Tears are glistening and your body trembles as you type up a strongly worded essay and--

Stop.

It’s okay.

Take a deep breath and step away from your emotions for a minute. Your emotions are valid-- but so are the sender’s.

Instead of starting a fight, be kind. It may hurt. You may not want to be, but I promise you it’s worth it. Here’s a template response:

Hi, anon. I’m really sorry that you feel this way about [thing] and will gladly take it into consideration in the future. Could you please tell me more about why you dislike [thing]? If you’d like to take some time to gather your thoughts, I’d be happy to discuss this issue with you.

Let me confess something. I don’t suggest this out of pure kindness. I suggest this because their response will tell you what you need to know. Remember how the intro talked about how people’s intentions are incredibly hard to figure out? This is a little trick I like to use to get them to play their cards.

There are three possible responses: They respond angrily, they respond kindly and respectfully, or they don’t respond at all.

In the first case, you may get something that resorts to expletives. They may call you names. They may tell you to delete your blog or any other amount of nasty things. It’s very likely that your very attempt at kindness will anger this person! This is a troll/bully whose sole interest is to get you upset and get themselves attention. At this point, you can safely delete and ignore the messages without any guilt.

In the second case, you have a person with a genuine grievance who just happened to address it poorly. Both of you have a duty to humanity to resolve the problem respectfully and politely. You’ve avoided escalating the conflict, you may learn something new and you may even make a new friend!

This also applies to reaching out to someone for the first time. You see someone doing something you don’t like. Oh, it just makes you blind with rage!

Again. I’m going to advise you to stop. Take a deep breath. No one responds well to name-calling and being condemned. There’s a few techniques you can use (see if you can spot them in the template message):

Listen to their opinions

Actively ask to hear their opinion

Ask for clarification

Validate the way they feel

Avoid casting blame

(These techniques work a lot in real life, too!)

Again, there are some genuinely scummy people in life! But, there are many, many more ignorant people. A gentle pointer goes much further than yelling and screaming.

4. Analyzing a Message

We’ve all been there. We’ve gotten a message and we’ve panicked--do they hate me now?! Is this a troll message or genuine criticism?!

Again. Relax. Push aside your emotions and focus on the logical words as they appear before you. Ask yourself if you are reading a tone that doesn’t exist. For example, not everyone puts active thought into choosing between “ok”, “Ok”, “okay”, “Okay”, “ok.” etc. Sometimes an ok is just that. An ok.

Break the message into parts. Find the logical structures and decipher them piece by piece. Someone who throws some very hurtful words into a message may indeed have a point, despite coming off as very crude. Accept that different parts of a message may mean different things. The world is very complicated and multifaceted. Try to avoid sticking labels to things.

5. Fiction as Fiction VS Fiction as Reality

I’ve seen a lot of arguments floating around recently that seem to think that these two ideas exist in a vacuum. It’s simply not true. The ideas are entwined intrinsically--Fiction is both fiction and reality. Fiction was created to mimic reality yet extend it far beyond what can happen in the confines of reality. What happens in reality impacts fiction and what happens in fiction impacts reality.

This is undeniable.

Both of these ideas exist, and as the author it is your duty to figure out what that means for you.

You cannot hide behind Fiction as Fiction to ignore your responsibilities as an author.

You cannot hide behind Fiction as Reality to promote censorship.

Both of these ideas are far too simple for the complicated world we live in. A complicated concept requires complicated solutions.

Every word you write has an impact on the people that reads it. This is the very definition of writing. We use writing as a tool to share emotions. Extend empathy. We use writing to make people cry, to make people laugh, to make people angry.

To deny that this impact exists is to deny what writing is.

But censorship is not an option. Censorship prevents these stories from being told, and quite frankly, no one should have the right to decide what story should and shouldn’t be told, regardless of what is in that story.

What is the solution then? There is no easy answer.

6. The Author’s Duty

When you put words before another human being, it becomes your responsibility as a moral individual to give your best effort into ensuring that those words have a positive impact on the individual.

This doesn’t mean not making them cry. Or not making them upset. It means ensuring that the morals you impart on them are sound and logical.

How one achieves this is up to you.

In general, tone makes all the difference. Writing murder in a positive light versus writing murder in a negative light can drastically alter how the audience perceives your scene.

Empathy, too, can help sway your audience. If your writing must involve racist police officers stopping a young black man, make sure you delve into how unfair this is, how terrifying it is, how this needs to change. Do not normalize it. Do not let it go by without a somber note indicating your awareness of the topic.

Sometimes, the solution is to simply avoid the issue. There are certain topics that only some individuals should write about, and that’s just how it is. This isn’t to say that you can’t write about it, but keep that writing private.

Most importantly, do your research, and ask for help and keep an open mind. It’s a grave responsibility and you may not do it right and that’s okay! Everyone is capable of learning. Everyone is capable of changing.

7. Echo Chambers & Lateral Thinking

An echo chamber is a phenomenon where an individual’s exposure to certain topics becomes self-enforcing because they don’t see, or actively avoid, differing opinions.

Echo chambers are also exactly what happens when a rift this massive opens in a small community.

When Orange blocks Green and starts posting about it, all of Orange’s friends decide whether they agree or not. The overwhelming majority, due to peer pressure, will agree. Many of them will then block Green and the users directly associated with them. In retaliation, Green will defend themselves. Because Orange’s group had already blocked Green, Green’s friends only seen Green’s point of view and will rise in response to the perceived slight.

What results are two heavily biased groups of users that refuse to communicate with one another and many individuals swept into the mess because they don’t wish to be isolated.

Even worse, it turns a complicated and multi-faceted issue into a binary issue. Either you agree with Orange or you agree with Green. The world is not this simple.

Instead, I would encourage everyone to practice lateral thinking of their own accord. I would encourage you to make your own decisions, rather than blindly supporting or condemning the people around you. Everyone has their own opinions about what is or isn’t okay, and that’s perfectly fine. Even your closest friends will have different opinions than you.

8. Accepting Differing Opinions

Once you’ve accepted these different opinions (good on you!) what do you do now? Simply put, the choice is on you! There’s a few options:

Quietly accept it

Respectfully debate it

Avoid it

Escalate it

The first two are pretty obvious, and the third one is where blocking people and the blacklist comes in.

The fourth one is extreme and only recommended for activities causing active, known, measurable harm to other people.

This involves actively seeking a legal entity to handle the issue.

Being mean to people on Tumblr is not a solution. Tumblr is not a place to pursue a justice agenda. There are bigger issues in the world, and I encourage you to find ways to make a difference that will actually be fruitful. Donate to charities. Extend yourself as support to victims. Contribute to research.

Changing the mind of strangers on the internet is not a good use of your time.

9. Good Intentions (Pave the Road To Hell)

This has been a phrase for a very long time.

What does it mean?

Well, I’ll offer my own interpretation.

It means that people often become absorbed with the idea that they are doing the right thing and forget to be mindful of the true consequences of their actions.

It doesn’t mean to not do good things. It means that good is relative and not everyone will find your actions good. It’s important to keep an open mind and realize that just because you think something is good, doesn’t mean everyone agrees.

10. Being Mean is Fun (so do it in non-harmful ways)

Yeah.

It’s okay. You can admit it.

Being mean is fun!

If it wasn’t fun, people wouldn’t do it! In fact, this very blog was created because I found that writing the character being mean was very enjoyable and cathartic!

So, if you find yourself tempted to be mean to people in your life, maybe find another way to get those emotions out. Hell, people on tumblr just might appreciate you taking up a nasty, villainous character that’ll tear their character up...

People love angst. You can take this bad thing and twist it into something good.

11. Morality (Personal, Community, and Legal)

Bringing this long post to a close, I would like you all to end by thinking about what morality really is. In particular, I’d like you to think about morality on three different scales: Your personal morality, the morality of the community you’re in, and morals as described by laws.

You’ll find that these morals don’t overlap.

Or, at least they shouldn’t. Please revisit section 7.

Being aware of morality in these three ways may help you determine how to proceed when going forward.

Do I personally agree with this? Does the community I’m in agree with this? Do the laws have anything to say about this?

None of these are right. Everything has different morals, and it’s up to you to find the exact opinions that fit you.

Don’t let people blindly tell you how you should and shouldn’t feel about a topic, and don’t let people bully you into changing your morals to fit into their perceived moral high ground.

But at the same time, be open. Extend yourself to new ideas. If enough people tell you that something is wrong, it just may be time to listen.

Be you.

Be unique.

Be safe.

And above all, be kind.

Have a nice night, everyone. I hope we can all work to a brighter future.

#{}.{{ OUT OF CHARACTER }}.{}#{}.{{ IMPORTANT }}.{}#ok to reblog. }}.{}

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themoonmoths · 4 years

Note

Everything is so depressing. TROS was a pile of crap and rendered the entire SW saga bleak and unhopeful (what an achievement). Members of the ST cast and crew are showing their asses constantly. Antis and fanbros are having a field day and being rewarded, while Reylos are being blamed for all the ills in the world. And even fellow Reylos are backtracking over shipping them or making excuses for the crumbs we got. I feel so done. What was the point? There’s no space left for us as female fans.

Look, I know that everything seems dire right now. I think I’ve aged at least ten years in the past month alone. No one, and I mean no one deserves the kind of treatment our fandom is getting just for being the vocal supporters of the canon ship.

I’d advise you to do the following: breathe and take a break from social media. Especially twitter. Give yourself a few days to relax, use them to watch something else or maybe read the book you’ve been putting off for months, then come back and maybe rewatch TLJ to remember why we fell in love with our two space wizards in the first place. That’s what I did, and it helped immensely. When you return, things will be pretty much back to normal.

As to all the hate: let them. Whatever. There’s nothing we can do at this point, and there’s absolutely nothing we can say that will ever change their minds. At this point, they’re inventing reasons to hate us because the canon is on our side now. But the thing is: the sequel trilogy is over. That’s it, there will be no more movies for a while, and I’m almost certain that none of this cast will ever return. And honestly– that’s a blessing in disguise. All of the people who are spewing hatred and accusations will have moved on to hate on the next trendy thing in a week because most of them don’t even care about Star Wars that much. Now that there won’t be any more content coming (apart from some tie-in books and comics that no one will read), and since they are certainly not the ones who are creating their own art/fics/whatever themselves, they’ll get bored and find some other ship to police.

There’s a reason why reylo has stayed strong and has been by far the most active part of the ST fandom. It’s because we took something we liked and made it ours, we built a wonderful community that has already endured the dark age of 2016 and stood strong. We’ll endure this too. In five years, no one from the general public will even remember all this fandom drama, all that will remain in the collective consciousness is that reylo is canon. And we’ll still be here, making beautiful content for years to come because that’s what we do. We create instead of hate.

Curate your dashboard carefully, the block button is your best friend and stay strong. Remember, everyone lost in the Great Ship Wars of 2019. But we, reylos, lost a little bit less. We got this. ❤️

#answered #reylo

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zanytimetravelenthusiast-blog · 4 years

Text

VidSell Review

What Is VidSell?

VidSell Is A New Innovation Cloud Application Produces High-Converting Videos. You Can Offer In 60 Seconds Apartment By Merely Inserting ANY Key Phrase Or Paste In A LINK.

PRO

Immediately Transform ANY Web Page Or Write-up Into A Quality, Fully-Fledged Video!

Repurpose Old Web Content & Articles Into Flashy Videos That Achieve Top Rankings, Viral Traffic and Boost Sales!

Include Photos From Pixabay With Just 1-Click!

Produce Videos With 1-click & Sell Them On Service Platforms Such As Fiverr & Flippa!

Put Any Key Words As Well As Pick From 1000s Of "Ready-to-Go" Video clips!

Perfect For Affiliates, eCom Sellers, Offline & Selling Your Own Products!

Commercial Permit Consisted Of - Offer This As A Service To Clients!

100% Newbie-Friendly Easy-To-Use Software Program!

Just how to Create a High Conversion Sales Video Clip (Component 1)

Absolutely nothing converts like an excellent video.

There are plenty of researches showing how efficient video clips go to turning visitors into customers. Definitely, video has actually been among the most valuable additions to my advertising toolbox and also I have actually been doing video clip for a long period of time.

However exactly what goes into making a high-conversion sales video clip? Exactly how do I tackle creating these video clips by VidSell and also what aspects are consisted of to see to it the video is involving, interesting as well as results in sales?

These are questions I obtain asked a lot as well as below is the most extensive solution I can give in a blog-post layout.

What you find below is a really detailed breakdown of my most recent sales video (one I made for a pre-release of a Thrive Themes product). The video clip was exceptionally effective, based on the conversion prices that were attained on this deal.

This is some extremely in-depth, nearly unfiltered behind-the-scenes insight right into just how I compose advertising and marketing messages. This is not fancy, not made for rapid usage and not dumbed down for blogging and very easy social shares. Just for the major. [/thrive_text_block] You can watch the full video by clicking on the web link listed below. Nonetheless, the individual components I'll be speaking about are all playable separately (simply click on the video clip strip heading photos), so I advise you watch each part, read the breakdown of it and after that maybe re-watch it.

Wish to see how they all meshed? View the whole video clip right here.

Component 1: I' ts Everything about the A

Focus, Interest, Desire, Action. AIDA is an advertising and marketing formula mentioned so usually, it is becoming a platitude. That does not make it less useful, though.

The first part of the video clip is a caution message and also it's everything about getting the visitors focus as well as stimulating their interest.

Harmonizing Act

Creating this component was a harmonizing act, due to the fact that I do not want to make the caution message as well severe or too tacky. In the sloppy waters of the "generate income online" niche, cautioning messages are usually utilized at the beginning of videos. The warning is normally extremely significant as well as totally severe on VidSell. Not to mention that it typically additionally includes some over-blown promises thrown in for good step.

Unlike this, I maintained my warning message short and the tone playful. My objective is to stimulate a "what is he yet?" response.

Favorable Organization & & Knowledge

For the layout, I attempted to make the slide look comparable to the "FBI Caution" titles that you in some cases see in motion pictures. This is a calculated choice. The association I'm going for is that what comes after that is something the visitor is enthusiastically eagerly anticipating seeing (like a new film).

Component 2: Preparing

The objective of the 2nd part is to establish the foundation. By the end of this component, the visitor ought to get on the very same web page as me and we ought to both recognize and also recognize what we are and also aren't talking about.

Rhetorical Questions

I open this area with a question: "Do you love WordPress?"

When you encounter a concern, your mind immediately engages and also you can't help however address the concern in your head. Rhetorical questions such as this can be made use of as a sly means to virtually require the audience's brain to react.

Dividing the Chaff from the Wheat

One more vital work this component has is to remove one of the most interested audiences in the audience: I make it clear that what I'm about to present is for individuals who use WordPress and also particularly people that use it regularly.

Whenever possible, do the filtering at an early stage in your message. This does two essential points:

For people who aren't in your target group, VidSell avoids losing their time. Think of if you enjoyed a tasty, 10-minute video about a brand-new item of software application, just to discover at the actual end that it's constructed for WordPress ... and you do not use WordPress. I 'd have wasted you time and also you would lose several of your rely on me. In every future message, you would certainly be supporting on your own for one more frustration.

For individuals who remain in your target group, it grows their engagement. When you involve a point that clearly claims "this is for you, however except those other individuals", you come to be extra committed to the message.

VidSell Summary

Vendor: Mike Mckay et alia

Item: VidSell

Launch Date: 2020-Mar-19

Launch Time: 11:00 EDT

Front-End Cost: $20

Sales Web Page: https://www.socialleadfreak.com/vidsell-review/

Particular niche: Video clip

VidSell Features & Advantages

You Obtain Every one of This Inside Your Automated 1-Click VidSell Dashboard ...

Function 1: Cloud-Based Software Works On Any Kind Of Platform Consisting Of Smartphones And Also Tablets:

With VidSell all you need to do is open your browser and also you're simply a click away from constructing eye-popping video clips!

Feature 2: The Most Powerful Video Clip Creation System At Your Fingertips:

VidSell is the future in terms of video clip advertising modern technology by creating sensational videos easily!

Attribute 3: Transform Any Kind Of URL Into a Fully-Fledged Video:

Transform your web site's web pages and also old posts into traffic-generating, profitable video clips!

Function 4: Place a Keyword Phrase as well as Obtain a Complete Video Produced For You In Secs:

VidSell will curate an article from our 10,000+ database and also turn it right into a video right prior to your eyes!

Feature 5: Developing Targeted Videos In Any Type Of Particular Niche Has Never Ever Been Easier:

VidSell will curate a write-up from our 10,000+ data source as well as transform it into a video right prior to your eyes!

Attribute 6: Remarkable, High-grade Videos In one minute Or Much less:

Not only is VidSell the fastest means to produce video clips, it's also 100% newbie friendly and the end outcome is truly jaw dropping also!

Attribute 7: Immediately Add Images & Video To Your Videos:

With PixaBay API combination consisted of, all you have to do is insert a keyword as well as obtain relevant images added to your videos!

Feature 8: Get Total & Full Flexibility:

You Get Overall & Full Versatility!

Function 9: Include Any Type Of Audio Documents:

Add whatever you desire, be it background music or voiceover

Attribute 10: Dozens of Expert Prefabricated Layouts To Choose From!

Preview Your Video Clip Masterpiece In-Browser & Export As Soon As Happy With The Results!

Just How Does VidSell Job?

Action 1: You start by either inserting a keyword or paste a link to an article

Step 2: The software program then gets hold of the content and divides it right into slides.

Step 3: You can conveniently add appropriate pictures from Pixabay with just a few clicks

Step 4: You add your sound file if you desire, after that select a layout

Step 5: DONE: Your video clip is created and all set to be published online

Verdict

"It's A Lot. Should I Spend Today?"

Not only are you getting accessibility to VidSell for the best rate ever before provided, however additionally You're investing totally without risk. VidSell consists of a 30-day Money Back Assurance Plan. When you select Vidsell, your satisfaction is ensured. If you are not totally satisfied with it for any reason within the very first 30 days, you're entitled to a full reimbursement-- no question asked. You have actually got nothing to lose! What Are You Awaiting? Try It today and get The Complying with Bonus offer Currently!

#VidSell #VidSell Review

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jackft135 · 6 years

Text

10 Tips to Building a Better Social Media Presence

In case you're a brand today, there's a non-zero shot you're via web-based networking media somehow, shape or frame.

Be that as it may, numerous brands have a functioning, flourishing internet based life nearness?

Furthermore, what amount of them are simply kind of there?

Rude awakening: you can't expect much from social when you post arbitrary connections, @mention a couple of people and consider it daily.

You require some structure. You require a system.

All things considered, you don't achieve the level of Wendy's on Twitter absolutely unintentionally.

Wendy's

✔

@Wendys

Keep in mind when you resembled 7 and figured changing your name to Thunder BearSword would be super cool?

Like that, however our cheeseburgers are still better.

9:24 PM - Jun 11, 2018

118K

25.6K individuals are discussing this

Twitter Ads information and security

What's more, in like manner, there's a motivation behind why GoPro's Instagram posts get "likes" by the several thousands.

What's more, albeit a portion of these brands may have blockbuster spending plans, the standards they use to make a marvelous social nearness can be repeated by organizations everything being equal.

Battling for adherents? Adhered on what to do with your social records? We've all been there.

That is the reason we've broken the nibble estimated tips any brand can take after to get their online life nearness off the ground.

Presently, we should make a plunge!

1. Set SMART Goals

Pop test: for what reason would you say you are via web-based networking media in any case?

In the event that your answer is resonating "Uhh… " or "Every other person is on it," you may have an issue.

The idea of SMART objectives has been around for quite a long time, however they are so vital to your internet based life nearness today.

So, brands should set objectives that are particular, quantifiable, achievable, pertinent and time-bound.

A case of a decent SMART objective for web based life showcasing would be something like "Well increment our Twitter reaction rate by 25% before the finish of the main quarter."

Particular: "We've particularly recognized the social channel (Twitter) and a metric (reaction rate)."

Quantifiable: "The reaction rate can be estimated from the Sprout Social dashboard."

Achievable: "We didn't make a stunning objective of say, a 100% expansion in 10 days."

Significant: "Our objective will affect our general online networking nearness, making it exceptionally important."

Time-bound: "The objective must be met before the finish of the primary quarter."

Allocating your online networking endeavors a solid reason encourages you keep away from the trap of posting heedlessly.

2. Distinguish Your Audience

After you've sketched out your objectives, you have to diagram your intended interest group.

Professional tip: "everybody" isn't a crowd of people.

Perhaps it's planned clients. Maybe it's industry players and influencers. In any case, separating your crowd will enable you to make sense of the accompanying:

Which online networking destinations you're dynamic on

Your posting plan

The sort of substance you distribute

Your image's voice

The data in your profiles

Numerous brands waste their time since they don't present substance that talks on a characterized crowd. Invest some energy taking a gander at your group of onlookers personas, understanding what their difficulties are and what brands they as of now love by means of social. This kind of focused investigation can enable you to see how your own internet based life nearness can emerge from the group.

3. Be Human

This is a major one.

One of the most exceedingly bad missteps to make via web-based networking media is putting on a show of being the faceless company with zero identity. In the cutting edge time of straightforwardness, individuals need to become more acquainted with your organization on a more individual level.

Numerous brands today split jokes and aren't reluctant to converse with their adherents like they would their companions. Though marks were once attacked for falling off like robots, a human web based life nearness has turned into a desire among numerous devotees.

See Warby Parker's different Tweets

Twitter Ads data and protection

Additionally, flaunting the human side of your image implies flaunting the countenances behind your social feeds. Regardless of whether it's office photographs or previews of your group "in the wild," getting individual with your devotees can enable you to frame a genuinely necessary association.

Also, hello, that leads us straightforwardly to our next point!

4. Look for Relationships, Not Just Followers

We can discuss throughout the day regardless of whether your adherent check is a vanity metric.

All things considered, having 100 adherents who consistently draw in with you and your substance are vastly more significant than 10,000 that disregard you.

It may be buzzword to state, however don't leave the "social" out of your internet based life nearness. The excellence of social is that you can shape connections in a moment with adherents from pretty much anyplace.

For instance, Sprout Social's own #SproutChat gives us the chance to routinely associate with our exquisite devotees who are in like manner fed to connect with us.

Shannonigans

@mausi_nana

Got my jams running for #sproutchat with grow stagram well known @sproutdarryl!! My work area move isn't in the same class as his information move yet whatevs...

12:52 AM - Jun 14, 2018

See Shannonigans' different Tweets

Twitter Ads information and protection

In case you're not precisely beyond any doubt where to begin with regards to relationship-working, here are some fast thoughts:

Continuously @mention individuals you reference in your web based life posts

Answer questions individuals inquire

Answer when individuals @mention you or offer your substance

Don't simply Retweet and Like other individuals' substance; answer with a remark to begin a discussion

5. Make an Editorial Calendar

Spoiler alarm: adhering to a substance plan isn't simply something "additional" that brands do.

In the event that there's an ongoing theme between the greatest brands on social, it's that they post on a predictable premise.

Odds would you're say you're are juggling various social channels and are endeavoring to ensure you tick a great deal of boxes as far as depictions and when to post, isn't that so? Think about how as a substance schedule can make the procedure considerably less demanding by…

Enabling you to tweak every one of your posts for every stage without jumping between destinations.

Timing your presents on expand commitment, shielding you from having to continually post progressively.

Abstain from rehashing a similar substance again and again, guaranteeing every one of your articles or pictures gets the most love conceivable.

To put it plainly, setting aside the opportunity to make a timetable does twofold obligation of keeping your web based life nearness composed while additionally boosting your substance's scope.

Social booking encourages you spare time and legwork with regards to your internet based life nearness

6. Computerize the Right Way

Computerization is extremely popular in advertising at the present time, and in light of current circumstances.

Nonetheless, you can't hope to effectively put your social nearness on autopilot and leave.

For instance, mass auto-answering has gone the method for the dinosaur as it commonly appears to be crafty. This now-great tweet from Bank of America is a decent case of how to kill your social devotees by means of ill-advised robotization.

Poor robotization can influence your organization to seem cool or coldhearted

Quick forward to introduce day and plainly client mind is a bit of web based life that ought to be customized, not autmoated.

Giving customized help is an immense part of any given brand's web-based social networking nearness

So, robotization through booking or curating content is absolutely reasonable amusement. Simply stay away from it when you're managing real clients or devotees' inquiries.

This is the reason brands depend on social instruments to help minister bits of substance officially endorsed by promoting pioneers. Bambu by Sprout Social, is truth be told, only that bit of programming expected to transform your workers into mark advocates. Take advantage of your workforce to help construct your quality!

bambu current stories include

7. Spotlight on Helping Over Selling

Albeit social offering is for sure on the ascent, once in a while should your online life nearness be about the "hard offer."

Without a doubt, in case you're in internet business it bodes well to push offers and arrangements to your devotees. What's more critical, however, is noting the inquiries of devotees whether through answers or substance promoting.

♉Miss Tee Butts♉

@missbutts85

· Jun 15, 2018

@WholeFoods when are the prime rebates coming to Maryland? I saw th publication at the enroll, joined and was exceedingly disillusioned that they weren't accessible in my general vicinity yet 😢

Entire Foods Market

✔

@WholeFoods

A debt of gratitude is in order for connecting! For data on where funds for Prime individuals are accessible, see http://bit.ly/2ybN1po

5:49 AM - Jun 15, 2018

Prime Savings

We've been concocting awesome things with Amazon, and now you can spare significantly more as a Prime part at Whole Foods Market with extraordinary arrangements on top choices all through the store. Furthermore, get an additional 10% off...

wholefoodsmarket.com

See Whole Foods Market's different Tweets

Twitter Ads information and protection

In the event that your adherents make an inquiry, you ought to react in an auspicious way.

Also, if your adherents appear to buzz about a specific issue, you should make content that talks straightforwardly to it.

By offering answers for issues rather than simply pitching your items constantly, you're demonstrating your organization is a specialist and conceivably winning a deep rooted client.

8. Streamline Your Accounts for Engagement

First of all: don't give "advancement" a chance to crack you out.

Not at all like SEO, web-based social networking improvement isn't especially specialized. So, profiles can be upgraded through symbolism, watchwords and completely rounding out your record data.

For instance, brands can utilize their Instagram bio to connection to advancements, promote their hashtag and let their image's voice be heard.

0 notes

amazingviralinfo · 7 years

Link

On Oct. 19, as the third and final presidential debate gets going in Las Vegas, Donald Trumps Facebook and Twitter feeds are being manned by Brad Parscale, a San Antonio marketing entrepreneur, whose buzz cut and long narrow beard make him look like a mixed martial arts fighter. His Trump tie has been paired with a dark Zegna suit. A lapel pin issued by the Secret Service signals his status. Hes equipped with a dashboard of 400 prewritten Trump tweets. Command center, he says, nodding at his laptop.

Parscale

Photographer: Alex Welsh for Bloomberg Businessweek

Parscale is one of the few within Trumps crew entrusted to tweet on his behalf. Hes sitting at a long table in a double-wide trailer behind the debate arena, cheek to jowl with his fellow Trump staffers and Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee. The charged atmosphere and rows of technicians staring raptly at giant TVs and computer screens call to mind NASA on launch day. On the wall, a poster of Julian Assange reads: Dear Hillary, I miss reading your classified emails.

10:02 p.m.: Trump, onstage, criticizes Hillary Clinton for accepting foreign money. Fire it off! Parscale barks. Instantly, a new Trump tweet appears: Crooked @HillaryClintons foundation is a CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE. Time to #DrainTheSwamp!

10:04 p.m.: Trump blames Clinton for $6 billion that went missing during her tenure at the State Department (actually a bookkeeping error). Hit that hard, shouts Jason Miller, Trumps senior communications adviser. Parscale already has: Crookeds top aides were MIRED in massive conflicts of interest at the State Dept. WE MUST #DrainTheSwamp.

10:09 p.m.: Trump deploys a carefully rehearsed WikiLeaks attack: Podesta said some horrible things about youand he was right. The trailer erupts. There it is! someone shouts. Push that, Parscale commands. Within seconds, Trumps roiling social mediasphere is bestowed with a curated Clinton burn from their leader: Bernie Sanders on HRC: Bad Judgement [sic]. John Podesta on HRC: Bad Instincts #BigLeagueTruth.

When the debate wraps, Parscale leaps up, open laptop still in hand, and bolts from the trailer with Priebus and the rest of the senior staff to congratulate Trump as he comes off the stage. In the wings, Parscale joins Steve Bannon, Trumps Machiavelli and campaign chairman, on leave from Breitbart News Network; Dan Scavino Jr., his social media director; and a clutch of Trump children and their spouses, including Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whom Parscale considers nearly a brother. Up on stage, Trump had been visibly upset, snapping at Clinton (nasty woman) and tearing a page from his notebook. But a moment later, when he emerges from a dark corridor with a phalanx of Secret Service agents, hes thronged by his worshipful band of advisers, quasi-celebrities, and hangers-on. Parscale, tweeting as he walks, nearly misses him. Trump leans over to whisper into Bannons ear, and a Secret Service officer ushers Trump, Bannon, and Parscale toward a row of black SUVs. A moment later, theyre gone. Trump reclaims possession of his virtual self.

Parscale, now tweeting from his own account, celebrates the nights haul: HUGE 24hrs of online donations for @realDonaldTrump. 125,000+ unique donors grossing over $9,000,000! Thank you America! #MAGA.

Featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Oct. 31-Nov. 6, 2016. Subscribe now.

Photographer: Caroline Tompkins for Bloomberg Businessweek

Almost every public and private metric suggests Trump is headed for a loss, possibly an epic one. His frustrated demeanor on the campaign trail suggests he knows it. Yet even as he nears the end of his presidential run, his team is sowing the seeds of a new enterprise with a direct marketing effort that they insist could still shock the world on Election Day.

Beginning last November, then ramping up in earnest when Trump became the Republican nominee, Kushner quietly built a sprawling digital fundraising database and social media campaign thats become the locus of his father-in-laws presidential bid. Trumps top advisers wont concede the possibility of defeat, but theyre candid about the value of what theyve built even after the returns come inand about Trumps desire for influence regardless of outcome. Trump is a builder, says Bannon, in a rare interview. And what hes built is the underlying apparatus for a political movement thats going to propel us to victory on Nov. 8 and dominate Republican politics after that.

If Trump wants to strengthen his hold on his base, then his apocalyptic rhetoric on the stump begins to make more sense. Lately hes sounded less like a candidate seeking to persuade moderates and swing voters and more like the far-right populist leaders whove risen throughout Europe. Most Republican Party officials ardently hope hell go away quietly if he loses. But given all that his campaignand Kushners group especiallyhas been doing behind the scenes, it looks likelier that Trump and his lieutenants will stick around. They may emerge as a new media enterprise, an outsider political movement, or perhaps some combination of the two: an American UK Independence Party (UKIP) that will wage war on the Republican Partyor, rather, intensify the war that Trump and Bannon have already begun.

To outsiders, the Trump campaign often appears to be powered by little more than the candidates impulses and Twitter feed. But after Trump locked down the GOP nomination by winning Indianas primary, Kushner tapped Parscale, a political novice who built web pages for the Trump familys business and charities, to begin an ambitious digital operation fashioned around a database they named Project Alamo. With Trump atop the GOP ticket, Kushner was eager to grow fast. When we won the nomination, we decided we were going to do digital fundraising and really ramp this thing up to the next level, says a senior official. Kushner, this official continued, reached out to some Silicon Valley people who are kind of covert Trump fans and experts in digital marketing. They taught us about scaling. Theres really not that much of a difference between politics and regular marketing.

When Bannon joined the campaign in August, Project Alamos data began shaping even more of Trumps political and travel strategyand especially his fundraising. Trump himself was an avid pupil. Parscale would sit with him on the plane to share the latest data on his mushrooming audience and the $230 million theyve funneled into his campaign coffers. Today, housed across from a La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery along Interstate 410 in San Antonio, the digital nerve center of Trumps operation encompasses more than 100 people, from European data scientists to gun-toting elderly call-center volunteers. They labor in offices lined with Trump iconography and Trump-focused inspirational quotes from Sheriff Joe Arpaio and evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. Until now, Trump has kept this operation hidden from public view. But he granted Bloomberg Businessweek exclusive access to the people, the strategy, the ads, and a large part of the data that brought him to this point and will determine how the final two weeks of the campaign unfold.

We have three major voter suppression operations under way

Several things jump out. Despite Trumps claim that he doesnt believe the polls, his San Antonio research team spends $100,000 a week on surveys (apart from polls commissioned out of Trump Tower) and has sophisticated models that run daily simulations of the election. The results mirror those of the more reliable public forecastersin other words, Trumps staff knows hes losing. Badly. Nate Silvers results have been similar to ours, says Parscale, referring to the polling analyst and his predictions at FiveThirtyEight, except they lag by a week or two because hes relying on public polls. The campaign knows who it must reach and is still executing its strategy despite the public turmoil: Its identified 13.5 million voters in 16 battleground states whom it considers persuadable, although the number of voters shrinks daily as they make up their minds.

Trumps team also knows where its fate will be decided. Its built a model, the Battleground Optimizer Path to Victory, to weight and rank the states that the data team believes are most critical to amassing the 270 electoral votes Trump needs to win the White House. On Oct. 18 they rank as follows: Florida (If we dont win, were cooked, says an official), Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Trump believes he possesses hidden strength that may only materialize at the ballot box. At rallies, hes begun speculating that the election will be like Brexit times five, implying that hell upend expectations much as the Brexit vote shocked experts who didnt believe a majority of Britons would vote to leave the European Union. Trumps data scientists, including some from the London firm Cambridge Analytica who worked on the Leave side of the Brexit initiative, think theyve identified a small, fluctuating group of people who are reluctant to admit their support for Trump and may be throwing off public polls.

Still, Trumps reality is plain: He needs a miracle. Back in May, newly anointed, he told Bloomberg Businessweek he would harness the movement to challenge Clinton in states Republicans havent carried in years: New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Connecticut, California. Im going to do phenomenally, he predicted. Yet neither Trumps campaign nor the RNC has prioritized registering and mobilizing the 47 million eligible white voters without college degrees who are Trumps most obvious source of new votes, as FiveThirtyEight analyst David Wasserman noted.

To compensate for this, Trumps campaign has devised another strategy, which, not surprisingly, is negative. Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. We have three major voter suppression operations under way, says a senior official. Theyre aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trumps invocation at the debate of Clintons WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are super predators is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the pollsparticularly in Florida.

Campaign staff in Trump Tower.

Photographer: Alex Welsh for Bloomberg Businessweek

On Oct. 24, Trumps team began placing spots on select African American radio stations. In San Antonio, a young staffer showed off a South Park-style animation hed created of Clinton delivering the super predator line (using audio from her original 1996 sound bite), as cartoon text popped up around her: Hillary Thinks African Americans are Super Predators. The animation will be delivered to certain African American voters through Facebook dark postsnonpublic posts whose viewership the campaign controls so that, as Parscale puts it, only the people we want to see it, see it. The aim is to depress Clintons vote total. We know because weve modeled this, says the official. It will dramatically affect her ability to turn these people out.

The Trump teams effort to discourage young women by rolling out Clinton accusers and drive down black turnout in Miamis Little Haiti neighborhood with targeted messages about the Clinton Foundations controversial operations in Haiti is an odd gambit. Campaigns spend millions on data science to understand their own potential supportersto whom theyre likely already credible messengersbut here Trump is speaking to his opponents. Furthermore, theres no scientific basis for thinking this ploy will convince these voters to stay home. It could just as easily end up motivating them.

Regardless of whether this works or backfires, setting back GOP efforts to attract women and minorities even further, Trump wont come away from the presidential election empty-handed. Although his operation lags previous campaigns in many areas (its ground game, television ad buys, money raised from large donors), its excelled at one thing: building an audience. Powered by Project Alamo and data supplied by the RNC and Cambridge Analytica, his team is spending $70 million a month, much of it to cultivate a universe of millions of fervent Trump supporters, many of them reached through Facebook. By Election Day, the campaign expects to have captured 12 million to 14 million e-mail addresses and contact information (including credit card numbers) for 2.5 million small-dollar donors, who together will have ponied up almost $275 million. I wouldnt have come aboard, even for Trump, if I hadnt known they were building this massive Facebook and data engine, says Bannon. Facebook is what propelled Breitbart to a massive audience. We know its power.

Since Trump paid to build this audience with his own campaign funds, he alone will own it after Nov. 8 and can deploy it to whatever purpose he chooses. He can sell access to other campaigns or use it as the basis for a 2020 presidential run. It could become the audience for a Trump TV network. As Bannon puts it: Trump is an entrepreneur.

Whatever Trump decides, this group will influence Republican politics going forward. These voters, whom Cambridge Analytica has categorized as disenfranchised new Republicans, are younger, more populist and ruraland also angry, active, and fiercely loyal to Trump. Capturing their loyalty was the campaigns goal all along. Its why, even if Trump loses, his team thinks its smarter than political professionals. We knew how valuable this would be from the outset, says Parscale. We own the future of the Republican Party. Like so many Trump die-hards, Parscale, 40, is an up-from-nothing striver who won a place in the Trump firmament by dint of his willingness to serve the familys needsand then, when those needs turned to presidential campaigning, wound up inhabiting a position of remarkable authority. He oversees the campaigns media budget and supervises a large staff of employees and contractors, a greater number than report for duty each day at Trump Tower headquarters. My loyalty is to the family, he says. Donald Trump says Jump; I say, How high? Then I give him my opinion of where I should jump to, and he says, Go do it.

Parscale was born in a small town outside Topeka, Kan., a self-described rural jock whose size6-foot-8, 240 poundswon him a basketball scholarship to the University of Texas at San Antonio. When injuries derailed his playing career, his interest turned to business. The day I graduated, I skipped the ceremony to go straight to California for the dot-com boom, he says. It was 1999. He became a sales manager for a video streaming company, taught himself programming, and eventually bought some of the companys intellectual property, in digital video and 3D animation, and struck out on his own. But after the dot-com crash, his company failed, he got divorced, and by 2002 he was back in San Antonio, broke and unemployed.

Parscale and his colleagues in his Trump Tower office.

Photographer: Alex Welsh for Bloomberg Businessweek

He hustled consulting gigs, going door to door and cold-calling local businesses. My first year, I tapped on shoulders in a bookstore to get my first customers, people who were buying web books, and asked if they needed help, he says. One day in 2010, the phone rang. It was Kathy Kaye, the new head of Trump International Realty. She said, Would you like to bid on building the Trump website? Parscale recalls. I said yeah. I bid $10,000 on the first website. I think they were shocked how cheap it was. Next thing I know, Im talking to Ivanka. So they signed a contract with me, and I wrote the website by myself. I told em Id give all the money back if they didnt like it.

The Trumps liked it. He eventually built sites for Trump Winery and the Eric Trump Foundation. When Trump launched a presidential exploratory committee, he knew who could build a website for him on the cheap: Parscale charged $1,500.

By then hed partnered with a local designer and expanded into a design and marketing agency, Giles-Parscale. Trumps own approach to self-promotion, reinforced by Kushners advice, was at odds with the highly targeted logic of the web. If youre running a burger shop, you have to let people know that your burgers are good and get them into your shop to buy them, says a source close to the candidate. Its pretty similar with voting: You have to find out what people want and then convince them why your product is the right one.

A poll map.

Photographer: Alex Welsh for Bloomberg Businessweek

Trumps digital operation was focused primarily on tracking down the people who already liked his burgers and getting them to buy more. Parscale began toying with a list of registered voters acquired from a nonpartisan database vendor to learn more about who Trumps backers were. Because the campaign hadnt cultivated his supporters as donors or volunteers, most of what it knew about them came from requests for tickets to his rallies. After a March event in Chicago devolved into a melee, Parscale decided to stop relying on the ticketing service Eventbrite and build his own tool to accept RSVPs. He says he coded the program himself in two days so eventgoers would have to confirm via mobile phone. The added layer would weed out fraudulent requests placing tickets in protesters handsand also collect supporters phone numbers.

Parscale was given a small budget to expand Trumps base and decided to spend it all on Facebook. He developed rudimentary models, matching voters to their Facebook profiles and relying on that networks Lookalike Audiences to expand his pool of targets. He ultimately placed $2 million in ads across several states, all from his laptop at home, then used the social networks built-in brand-lift survey tool to gauge the effectiveness of his videos, which featured infographic-style explainers about his policy proposals or Trump speaking to the camera. I always wonder why people in politics act like this stuff is so mystical, Parscale says. Its the same shit we use in commercial, just has fancier names.

As Kushner, who shares his father-in-laws disdain for political professionals, became more active in the campaigns operations, Parscale emerged from among dozens of vendors into a unique role. Once Jared found Brad, says a campaign official, we were able to avoid building a big team and ran a lot of our back end through his office in San Antonio.

After Trump won the Indiana primary, vanquishing his remaining rivals, Parscale had to integrate his do-it-yourself operation with two established players who would jostle for primacy as supplier of Trumps data. The first was Cambridge Analytica, on whose board Bannon sits. Among its investors is the hedge fund titan Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, who were about to become some of the largest donors to the Trump cause. Locations for the candidates rallies, long the centerpiece of his media-centric candidacy, are guided by a Cambridge Analytica ranking of the places in a state with the largest clusters of persuadable voters. The other was the Republican National Committee, to which Trump relinquished control over many of its tactical decisions. I told him hes going to want to use the RNC once hes the nominee, says Newt Gingrich. Reince has built a real system, and it can be very valuable to him.

That willingness to embrace what the RNC built allowed them to harness that movement

Soon after Trump secured the nomination, a team from the RNC flew to San Antonio to meet Parscale at his favorite Mexican restaurant and discuss what party officials began describing as the merger. Priebus boasted then of having put more than $100 million into data and infrastructure since Mitt Romneys 2012 loss. More than 10 percent of that cash went solely to beefing up the RNCs e-mail list, which now has a dedicated department of a dozen people managing a list of more than 6 million supporters. To win access to them, Trump negotiated a partnership. The partys online fundraising specialists would use his name and keep 80 percent of the revenue, while Trumps campaign would get the remainder. This is exactly what the party needed the RNC to dobuilding assets and infrastructure and the nominee gets to benefit from it, says Chief Digital Officer Gerrit Lansing.

Trumps team, which hadnt actively raised money during the primaries, was unprepared. I was put in the position of We need to start fundraising tomorrow, says Parscale. That turn was so hasty that when, in late June, Trump sent out his first e-mail solicitation, it ended up in recipients spam folders 60 percent of the time. Typically marketers in that situation would have begun quietly blasting less important messages from a new server to familiarize spam filters with the senders address. Parscale shrugs off the ensuing criticism from technologists. Should I have set up an e-mail server a month earlier? Possibly, he says. We also raised $40 million in two weeks. Woo-hoo, spam rating.

Parscale was building his own list of Trump supporters, beyond the RNCs reach. Cambridge Analyticas statistical models isolated likely supporters whom Parscale bombarded with ads on Facebook, while the campaign bought up e-mail lists from the likes of Gingrich and Tea Party groups to prospect for others. Some of the ads linked directly to a payment page, otherswith buttons marked Stand with Trump or Support Trumpto a sign-up page that asked for a name, address, and online contact information. While his team at Giles-Parscale designed the ads, Parscale invited a variety of companies to set up shop in San Antonio to help determine which social media ads were most effective. Those companies test ad variations against one anotherthe campaign has ultimately generated 100,000 distinct pieces of creative contentand then roll out the strongest performers to broader audiences. At the same time, Parscale made the vendors, tech companies with names such as Sprinklr and Kenshoo, compete Apprentice-style; those whose algorithms fared worst in drumming up donors lost their contracts. Each time Parscale returned to San Antonio from Trump Tower, he would find that some vendors had been booted from their offices.

Parscales department not only paid for itself but also was the largest source of campaign revenue. That endeared it to a candidate stingy with other parts of the budget. When Trump fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, Parscales responsibilities grew, then further still when Lewandowskis replacement, Paul Manafort, flamed out. In June, Parscale, whose prior political experience was a Bexar County tax assessors race (his client lost), became Trumps digital director and, in many ways, the linchpin of his unusual run.

By the time Bannon became chief executive officer, Parscale had balanced the competition between the RNC and Cambridge Analytica, with different sources of data being tapped for the campaigns fundraising appeals, persuasive communication, and get-out-the-vote contacts. Im the only one that hasnt gained from any of this, he says pointedly about the data rivalry.

In June, Parscale granted his first national interview, to Wired, to preemptively explain why the Federal Election Commission was about to report that an unknown agency in San Antonio was the Trump campaigns largest vendor. In August, Giles-Parscale handled $9 million in business from Trumps campaign; two months later, the companys total haul had cleared $50 million, most of it money passing through to online ad networks at little markup. Parscale was delivering his services at such a discount that Kushner even worried that the agencys efforts might have to be classified as an in-kind contribution. Jareds a big part of what gave me my power and ability to do what Ive been doing, says Parscale, who sees himself as more than just a staffer. Because you know what I was willing to do? I was willing to do it like family.

There are signs that Trumps presidential run has dealt a serious blow to his brand. His inflammatory comments about Mexican rapists and demeaning comments about women triggered a flood of busted deals and lost partnerships. Macys stopped making Trump-branded menswear, Serta halted its line of mattresses emblazoned with his logo, and celebrity chefs fled his new luxury hotel in Washington. Booking websites show that visits to Trump-branded hotels are down. Win or lose, Trumps future may well lie in capitalizing on the intense, if limited, political support he has cultivated over the past year.

According to a source close to Trump, the idea of a Trump TV network originated during the Republican primaries as a threat Kushner issued to Roger Ailes when Trumps inner circle was unhappy with the tenor of Fox Newss coverage. The warring factions eventually reconciled. But Trump became enamored by the power of his draw after five media companies expressed interest. One thing Jared always tells Donald is that if the New York Times and cable news mattered, he would be at 1 percent in the polls, says the source. Trump supporters really dont have a media outlet where they feel theyre representedCNN has gone fully against Trump, MSNBC is assumed to be against Trump, and Fox is somewhere in the middle. What we found is that our people have organized incredibly well on the web. Reddit literally had to change their rules because it was becoming all Trump. Growing the digital footprint has really allowed us to take his message directly to the people.

Its not clear how much of this digital audience will remain in Trumps thrall if he loses. But the number should be substantial. Trump will get 40 percent of the vote, and half that number at least will buy into his claim that the election was rigged and stolen from him, says Steve Schmidt, John McCains 2008 presidential campaign chief and an outspoken Trump critic. That is more than enough people to support a multibillion-dollar media business and a powerful presence in American politics.

Kushner and Bannon at a Trump rally in Canton, Ohio, on Sept.14.

Photographer: Alex Welsh for Bloomberg Businessweek

Digital strategists typically value contact lists at $3 to $8 per e-mail, which would price Trumps list of supporters anywhere from $36 million to $112 million. The Trump enterprise could benefit from it in any number of ways. The easiest move would be for Trump to partner with Bannons global Breitbart News Network, which already has a grip on the rising generation of populist Republicans. Along with a new venture, Trump would gain a platform from which to carry on his movement, built upon the millions of names housed in Project Alamo. This is the pipe that makes the connection between Trump and the people, says Bannon. He has an apparatus that connects him to an ever-expanding audience of followers.

As it happens, this cross-pollination of right-wing populist media and politics is already occurring overseasand Trumps influence on it is unmistakable. In early October, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart London, Raheem Kassam, a former adviser to Nigel Farage, announced he would run for leader of UKIP. His slogan: Make UKIP Great Again.

The final ignominy for a Republican Party brought low by Trump is that its own digital efforts may undermine its future. The data operation in which Priebus and the RNC invested so heavily has fed into Project Alamo, helping Parscale build Trumps base. They brought to the table this movement and people who were willing to donate and activate, and we brought to the table a four-year investment and said we can process that for you, says Sean Spicer, the RNCs chief strategist. That willingness to embrace what the RNC built allowed them to harness that movement.

If the election results cause the party to fracture, Trump will be better positioned than the RNC to reach this mass of voters because hell own the list himselfand Priebus, after all hes endured, will become just the latest to invest with Trump and wind up poorer for the experience.

SoundCloud: Bloomberg Businessweek Cover Story by Bloomberg

0 notes

bizmediaweb · 7 years

Text

The Definitive Guide to Content Curation: Strategies, Tips, and Tools

Many of us are curating content without even thinking about it.

We’re sharing that quirky New York Times article on Facebook. We’re quoting celebrity tweets and making funny (well, funny to us) quips on Twitter.

What is content curation?

Content curation is all about mining the internet for material that can be shared on your social networks. It’s about finding great content and presenting it to your social media followers in a way that’s organized and meaningful.

The thing is, you’re probably not thinking strategically when you’re scrolling through your phone and posting from bed in the morning.

Content curation strategy is what makes the difference between mediocre and exceptional content curation in business.

Strategy is a must when it comes to content marketing, which includes content curation.

Content marketing vs. content curation

Content marketing is all about getting material out into the world that helps strengthen your brand in one way or another. That could mean writing blog posts, making YouTube videos, or Snapchatting Stories.

But it takes a lot of creative juice to constantly make new things while still keeping up with the demands of a business.

And that’s where content curation comes in.

It’s all about finding something that stands out online instead of creating something new.

Why should brands curate content?

1. It alleviates the pressure to create

You might not have the time to make enough fresh content to keep the conversation going on social. Content curation helps fill that need.

2. You lessen the ‘me, me, me’ factor

When someone’s talking about themselves all the time, it gets old real quick. Curated content helps with that.

3. Online networking opportunities

UpContent’s Marissa Burdett says that sharing curated content can help you make connections with leaders in your industry. She also explains that it could spark conversation with your social media audience in general.

4. You become seen as thought leader

If you’re sharing posts about the latest trends in your field, it shows that you’re engaged on a deeper level.

5. Grow your business

Braveen Kumar writes all about this in a Shopify blog post on using content curation to grow your ecommerce business. This can happen through things like strengthening your email list and defining your brand online.

How to curate content

If you’re worried about this whole mining-the-web thing, there’s no need to be. You’re not in the dark with one headlamp. You have a whole mining crew, thanks to a variety of content curation tools, which we will get to later.

The steps in this article will help you master content curation like a ninja.

First you’ll need to figure out what topics you want to search through using these tools. Once you find material, you’ll have to decide what to share.

Here’s a list of questions to help you with that:

Is this content on brand? Is there a reason why my company would share this? You’ll need to know your target audience to decide on this.

Can I trust the source?

Is it offering something unique to my readers?

Is it entertaining or useful in some way?

You also need to schedule these posts in an appropriate way so that you’re offering variety to your readers.

When you’re doing this, you should think about the so-called Social Media Rule of Thirds:

One third of what you share should be about personal brand promotion.

One third should be curated content.

One third should be about the conversations that are happening on social.

Content curation best practices

Read, watch, listen

There are so many services that help you find material, but you need to check it all out before you share it.

Ensure it’s relevant

If it’s not relevant to your business in some way, quash it. An article from Search Engine Journal says you should ask yourself the intent behind each of your posts.

Make sure it’s trustworthy

Find things that are come from reputable sources that you can trust.

Personalize

You need to bring a piece of you to what you’re sharing. You could tell readers why they might be interested, or add some sort of value to the piece.

Provide value

What you share must be interesting or entertaining to your audience.

Mix up what you post

Share different perspectives from your niche.

Schedule your content

Use a content calendar to map out what you’re going to post. You can also use a program such as Hootsuite to schedule your posts so you don’t have to remember to post throughout the day.

Cathy Habas, the managing editor for Coquí Content Marketing, advises: don’t schedule too far in advance because you want curated material that’s topical.

Give credit

You need to credit the creator of the content you are sharing wherever possible. That could mean using an @mention in a tweet, or tagging them in a Facebook post, for example.

Engage in social listening

You should be looking to see what’s working and not working when it comes to your content curation. Christina Newberry wrote a Hootsuite blog post about social listening that could help you figure this out.

For more on content curation best practices, check out this video from Hootsuite Academy.

Learn how to get even more out of Hootsuite with free social media training from Hootsuite Academy.

Content curation tools

Here are some of the tools that are out there to help businesses with social media content curation.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo lets you search the most shared content on a specific topic in the last few hours, or months. You can see the top 10 influencers for a topic and what they’re sharing. Buzzsumo ranges in price from $79 monthly to $559 monthly, with cheaper rates if you purchase by the year.

Right Relevance

This service finds relevant content and influencers in a field, and gives them a score and a rank… So if you’re into numbers, it could help you decide what to share—and who to share it from.

Right Relevance starts at $500 per month.

RSS readers (like Feedly)

With programs like Feedly, you can follow your favorite feeds and organize articles in one spot. You can also keep track of internal information, and when your business is mentioned online.

The cost ranges from free to $18 monthly.

If you use Hootsuite to manage your social media presence, you can add an RSS feed to save yourself time curating content.

Hootsuite

Beyond RSS integrations, Hootsuite is a great tool for content curation as it allows you to keep track of and organize your social media feeds by network, topic, keywords, hashtags, Twitter lists, and more.

Reddit is an online community where posts get upvoted or downvoted. You can follow specific interests, called subreddits. People also comment on these posts, which could help you understand your niche—and what posts resonate with that audience—better.

UpContent

UpContent uses an algorithm that pulls news articles and blog posts for you based on things like social influence and recency. Then you can curate that content on your site by using the UpContent Gallery tool.

UpContent ranges from free to $10 per month.

Pocket

Pocket is a place to put things you find on social. So you can stop texting and emailing stuff to yourself to keep track of it (and losing it anyway).

Plans range from $4.99 a month to $49.99 a year.

Scoop.it

Scoop.it lets you find things and put them together in a topic hub page that can be shared. You could also publish this curated content elsewhere, such as your blog. For individuals, this service ranges from free to $67 yearly.

Sniply

Sniply is all about what’s called a call to action (CTA). When you use Sniply to reshare something that directs followers to another site, a little box pops up on that webpage with a message from you. That message could include your web address.

Sniply ranges from $29 to $299 a month.

Curata

Curata listens to what you’re interested in and provides you with sources based on that. You can also crowdsource material from across your business.

Then you can use Curata to publish on your website.

You can call Curata to get a quote on the service: 617-229-5529.

PublishThis

This content curation tool “indexes, tags [and] centralizes content from the web’s best sources,” according to its website.

There’s no price listed, but there’s a forum on the website to get in touch.

Trapit

Companies can put their own social marketing content on Trapit, and pull in other content to curate. This can be sent to employees to share with customers. There’s also an analytics system that measures how well it does.

You will need to contact the company to get a cost quote.

Hootsuite can help with your content curation for social media. Find content to share, schedule it to publish on your social channels, and track your success—all from one dashboard.

Learn More

The post The Definitive Guide to Content Curation: Strategies, Tips, and Tools appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.

The Definitive Guide to Content Curation: Strategies, Tips, and Tools published first on http://ift.tt/2u73Z29

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makeitwithmike · 7 years

Text

The Definitive Guide to Content Curation: Strategies, Tips, and Tools

By Natalie Dobbin

Many of us are curating content without even thinking about it.

We’re sharing that quirky New York Times article on Facebook. We’re quoting celebrity tweets and making funny (well, funny to us) quips on Twitter.

What is content curation?

The thing is, you’re probably not thinking strategically when you’re scrolling through your phone and posting from bed in the morning.

Content curation strategy is what makes the difference between mediocre and exceptional content curation in business.

Strategy is a must when it comes to content marketing, which includes content curation.

Content marketing vs. content curation

But it takes a lot of creative juice to constantly make new things while still keeping up with the demands of a business.

And that’s where content curation comes in.

It’s all about finding something that stands out online instead of creating something new.

Why should brands curate content?

1. It alleviates the pressure to create

You might not have the time to make enough fresh content to keep the conversation going on social. Content curation helps fill that need.

2. You lessen the ‘me, me, me’ factor

When someone’s talking about themselves all the time, it gets old real quick. Curated content helps with that.

3. Online networking opportunities

4. You become seen as thought leader

If you’re sharing posts about the latest trends in your field, it shows that you’re engaged on a deeper level.

5. Grow your business

How to curate content

The steps in this article will help you master content curation like a ninja.

First you’ll need to figure out what topics you want to search through using these tools. Once you find material, you’ll have to decide what to share.

Here’s a list of questions to help you with that:

Is this content on brand? Is there a reason why my company would share this? You’ll need to know your target audience to decide on this.

Can I trust the source?

Is it offering something unique to my readers?

Is it entertaining or useful in some way?

You also need to schedule these posts in an appropriate way so that you’re offering variety to your readers.

When you’re doing this, you should think about the so-called Social Media Rule of Thirds:

One third of what you share should be about personal brand promotion.

One third should be curated content.

One third should be about the conversations that are happening on social.

Content curation best practices

Read, watch, listen

There are so many services that help you find material, but you need to check it all out before you share it.

Ensure it’s relevant

If it’s not relevant to your business in some way, quash it. An article from Search Engine Journal says you should ask yourself the intent behind each of your posts.

Make sure it’s trustworthy

Find things that are come from reputable sources that you can trust.

Personalize

You need to bring a piece of you to what you’re sharing. You could tell readers why they might be interested, or add some sort of value to the piece.

Provide value

What you share must be interesting or entertaining to your audience.

Mix up what you post

Share different perspectives from your niche.

Schedule your content

Use a content calendar to map out what you’re going to post. You can also use a program such as Hootsuite to schedule your posts so you don’t have to remember to post throughout the day.

Cathy Habas, the managing editor for Coquí Content Marketing, advises: don’t schedule too far in advance because you want curated material that’s topical.

Give credit

You need to credit the creator of the content you are sharing wherever possible. That could mean using an @mention in a tweet, or tagging them in a Facebook post, for example.

Engage in social listening

For more on content curation best practices, check out this video from Hootsuite Academy.

Learn how to get even more out of Hootsuite with free social media training from Hootsuite Academy.

Content curation tools

Here are some of the tools that are out there to help businesses with social media content curation.

BuzzSumo

Right Relevance

This service finds relevant content and influencers in a field, and gives them a score and a rank… So if you’re into numbers, it could help you decide what to share—and who to share it from.

Right Relevance starts at $500 per month.

RSS readers (like Feedly)

With programs like Feedly, you can follow your favorite feeds and organize articles in one spot. You can also keep track of internal information, and when your business is mentioned online.

The cost ranges from free to $18 monthly.

If you use Hootsuite to manage your social media presence, you can add an RSS feed to save yourself time curating content.

Hootsuite

UpContent

UpContent ranges from free to $10 per month.

Pocket

Pocket is a place to put things you find on social. So you can stop texting and emailing stuff to yourself to keep track of it (and losing it anyway).

Plans range from $4.99 a month to $49.99 a year.

Scoop.it

Sniply

Sniply ranges from $29 to $299 a month.

Curata

Curata listens to what you’re interested in and provides you with sources based on that. You can also crowdsource material from across your business.

Then you can use Curata to publish on your website.

You can call Curata to get a quote on the service: 617-229-5529.

PublishThis

This content curation tool “indexes, tags [and] centralizes content from the web’s best sources,” according to its website.

There’s no price listed, but there’s a forum on the website to get in touch.

Trapit

You will need to contact the company to get a cost quote.

Hootsuite can help with your content curation for social media. Find content to share, schedule it to publish on your social channels, and track your success—all from one dashboard.

Learn More

The post The Definitive Guide to Content Curation: Strategies, Tips, and Tools appeared first on Hootsuite Social Media Management.

The post The Definitive Guide to Content Curation: Strategies, Tips, and Tools appeared first on Make It With Michael.

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#The Definitive Guide to Content Curation: Strategies #Tips #and Tools

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unifiedsocialblog · 7 years

Text

The Definitive Guide to Content Curation: Strategies, Tips, and Tools

Many of us are curating content without even thinking about it.

We’re sharing that quirky New York Times article on Facebook. We’re quoting celebrity tweets and making funny (well, funny to us) quips on Twitter.

What is content curation?

The thing is, you’re probably not thinking strategically when you’re scrolling through your phone and posting from bed in the morning.

Content curation strategy is what makes the difference between mediocre and exceptional content curation in business.

Strategy is a must when it comes to content marketing, which includes content curation.

Content marketing vs. content curation

But it takes a lot of creative juice to constantly make new things while still keeping up with the demands of a business.

And that’s where content curation comes in.

It’s all about finding something that stands out online instead of creating something new.

Why should brands curate content?

1. It alleviates the pressure to create

You might not have the time to make enough fresh content to keep the conversation going on social. Content curation helps fill that need.

2. You lessen the ‘me, me, me’ factor

When someone’s talking about themselves all the time, it gets old real quick. Curated content helps with that.

3. Online networking opportunities

4. You become seen as thought leader

If you’re sharing posts about the latest trends in your field, it shows that you’re engaged on a deeper level.

5. Grow your business

How to curate content

The steps in this article will help you master content curation like a ninja.

First you’ll need to figure out what topics you want to search through using these tools. Once you find material, you’ll have to decide what to share.

Here’s a list of questions to help you with that:

Is this content on brand? Is there a reason why my company would share this? You’ll need to know your target audience to decide on this.

Can I trust the source?

Is it offering something unique to my readers?

Is it entertaining or useful in some way?

You also need to schedule these posts in an appropriate way so that you’re offering variety to your readers.

When you’re doing this, you should think about the so-called Social Media Rule of Thirds:

One third of what you share should be about personal brand promotion.

One third should be curated content.

One third should be about the conversations that are happening on social.

Content curation best practices

Read, watch, listen

There are so many services that help you find material, but you need to check it all out before you share it.

Ensure it’s relevant

If it’s not relevant to your business in some way, quash it. An article from Search Engine Journal says you should ask yourself the intent behind each of your posts.

Make sure it’s trustworthy

Find things that are come from reputable sources that you can trust.

Personalize

You need to bring a piece of you to what you’re sharing. You could tell readers why they might be interested, or add some sort of value to the piece.

Provide value

What you share must be interesting or entertaining to your audience.

Mix up what you post

Share different perspectives from your niche.

Schedule your content

Use a content calendar to map out what you’re going to post. You can also use a program such as Hootsuite to schedule your posts so you don’t have to remember to post throughout the day.

Cathy Habas, the managing editor for Coquí Content Marketing, advises: don’t schedule too far in advance because you want curated material that’s topical.

Give credit

You need to credit the creator of the content you are sharing wherever possible. That could mean using an @mention in a tweet, or tagging them in a Facebook post, for example.

Engage in social listening

For more on content curation best practices, check out this video from Hootsuite Academy.

Learn how to get even more out of Hootsuite with free social media training from Hootsuite Academy.

Content curation tools

Here are some of the tools that are out there to help businesses with social media content curation.

BuzzSumo

Right Relevance

This service finds relevant content and influencers in a field, and gives them a score and a rank… So if you’re into numbers, it could help you decide what to share—and who to share it from.

Right Relevance starts at $500 per month.

RSS readers (like Feedly)

With programs like Feedly, you can follow your favorite feeds and organize articles in one spot. You can also keep track of internal information, and when your business is mentioned online.

The cost ranges from free to $18 monthly.

If you use Hootsuite to manage your social media presence, you can add an RSS feed to save yourself time curating content.

Hootsuite

UpContent

UpContent ranges from free to $10 per month.

Pocket

Pocket is a place to put things you find on social. So you can stop texting and emailing stuff to yourself to keep track of it (and losing it anyway).

Plans range from $4.99 a month to $49.99 a year.

Scoop.it

Sniply

Sniply ranges from $29 to $299 a month.

Curata

Curata listens to what you’re interested in and provides you with sources based on that. You can also crowdsource material from across your business.

Then you can use Curata to publish on your website.

You can call Curata to get a quote on the service: 617-229-5529.

PublishThis

This content curation tool “indexes, tags [and] centralizes content from the web’s best sources,” according to its website.

There’s no price listed, but there’s a forum on the website to get in touch.

Trapit

You will need to contact the company to get a cost quote.

Hootsuite can help with your content curation for social media. Find content to share, schedule it to publish on your social channels, and track your success—all from one dashboard.

Learn More

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