Tumgik
#not gonna use the image viewer in this app often but this was a cool idea i could not pass by
rednorka · 2 years
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help he stuck in twilight menu++
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real6lacktony · 5 years
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How To Grow Your Blog Traffic Using Tumblr
by
Eli Seekins
— Get updates of new posts
here
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That’s the social media dream, right? To set it and forget it, and gain thousands of followers without even trying or thinking about it?
To be honest, getting 8k followers on Tumblr in 5 months without ever logging in was never my intention.
Tumblr was distracting me from my “real work” so I thought I needed to take a break. I actually forgot about my account. Then months later thought I’d check up on it. Imagine my surprise when I saw how much it had grown.
The last time I was on I only had 500 followers. I spent that entire day studying analytics, reblogging cool pictures, and optimizing my Tumblr page to drive traffic back to my website.
Though it seems like my Tumblr blew up on its own, there was actually a very important seed that I planted, and several strategies that I implemented, that made it’s growth possible.
Let me show you how I did it. I’ve broken it down into 7 easy steps.
Oh and here are some pictures so you know I’m not just blowing steam.
This is my account back in early 2016 with only 300 followers.
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And here’s my account in Oct 2016 with just over 8,000 followers.
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And just since rediscovering my Tumblr and writing this article I’ve gained another 500.
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Steps to grow your Tumblr account
Choose your niche
The very first step to growing your Tumblr blog is to narrow your niche. Blogs that have specific topics tend to do better and attract more attention.
Colorful Gradients and Ghost Photographs are both examples of a super narrow niche.
But you also want to make sure to choose a niche that you’re passionate about — I mean that’s kinda the whole point in the first place.
Your niche determines what sort of content you will be posting.
Also, you don’t necessarily have to use the same exact niche as your main blog or website (if you have one). For example, my main blog Launch Your Dream is about following your dreams and it’s mostly focused on how to start a successful blog.
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My Tumblr blog, Eli Seekins, is also about following your dreams but is more focused on travel, adventure and lifestyle.
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The trick is to find something narrow that you enjoy.
For more tips on picking your niche, check out my post: How To Discover Your Perfect Niche (the Blogging Wizard — Adam — drops a mega helpful tip over there as well).
Know your brand
Your Tumblr is an extension of your brand, whether you are just starting one or already have one.
You want your brand to have a clear message. You need an edge — something that other brands don’t have. You need to know your values, what you stand for, and your mission.
That way you will always know what sort of content to post. Your brand will be clear and thorough, and people will get it.
When people get it, they have a better chance of connecting. And when they connect, they have a better chance of engaging and even sharing.
Knowing your brand also means knowing your audience. Who are you trying to reach? What sort of content do they like most?
(My brand is about following your dreams, travel, adventure, and lifestyle. I’m reaching out to young people who want to do something big with their lives. I value things like working hard, taking risks, and making a difference in the world.)
Here are 3 brands that are crushing it on Tumblr:
Adidas
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Sesame Street
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LIFE
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All three of these brands know who they are and who their audience is, and they do a great job of translating that over to their Tumblr.
For more help with branding, check out: 9 Tips for Creating an Awesome Brand
Follow popular accounts in your niche
A great way to find good content to repost, and to find out what people in your niche are responding to, is to check out the popular blogs in your niche.
It’s pretty easy to find them. Just look for the blogs who are posting a lot every day, who get lots of notes, and have a large following.
To get started just search for different keywords.
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And check out the different accounts.
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I’d follow anywhere from 50 – 100 blogs right away.
Reblog quality content 1 – 3 times a day (by using your queue)
One of the greatest tools in Tumblr is your queue.
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You can fill it with up to 300 posts, and set a certain amount of those posts to automatically publish throughout different times of the day.
In my opinion, your queue is perfect for filling up with loads of content to reblog (reblog means to repost someone else’s content on your Tumblr blog). And I just schedule my original stuff. That way I’m always sharing content, and I can schedule my content to post whenever I want and at peak times.
I often experiment with reblogging anywhere from 1 – 50 posts a day.
For those 5 months that I didn’t log into my account, when I gained 8,000 followers, I had about 200 reblogs in my queue set to share 1 photo a day at 9pm. And I wasn’t even sharing any original content.
Typically the bigger your audience grows the more content you can post. I don’t recommend sharing more than 3-5 posts a day until you get your first 1,000 followers.
You can find good content to reblog on the popular blogs that you’ve followed, by searching keywords in the search bar, or just by checking out your dashboard feed.
Then all you have to do is hit the queue button.
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You can change your queue settings over in the menu on the right.
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Include relevant hashtags
Hashtags in Tumblr are the keywords that make your posts searchable. They’re very important for getting your content seen.
You can find popular hashtags by doing a search and seeing what people are looking for.
And by typing in different tags in a post to see what people are using.
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Make sure that you use tags that are popular and relevant to your niche AND relevant to the content you are tagging. Just so you know only the first 20 tags that you use are actually searchable (source).
Use a call to action
I was surprised by how few people were using call to actions when I first started implementing these strategies. Since then, it seems like some popular accounts in my niche have caught on though.
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That’s because call to actions are powerful. It’s how this post has gotten almost 15,000,000 notes, by simply saying “pass it on”.
It’s great if your posts get a lot of attention, but if your viewers aren’t doing anything after they see your content what’s the point? Don’t you want them to take action?
All of your posts should include some sort of call to action, whether it’s to bring viewers to your Tumblr blog, to your main site, or somewhere different — or even to just get likes and reblogs.
At first, I felt kinda weird putting call to actions on other people’s content that I was reposting, but it’s ok to do if you do it right. And it can make a big difference. Just make sure to be genuine. For example, don’t repost someone’s original photo and use it to promote your ebook or video course. That’s kinda sleezy. But leaving a call to action on reblogs to like, reblog, or check out more of your posts is totally ok and can increase your engagement and get you more followers.
Warning
Always ensure that the creator of images you share retain credit. It can sometimes be difficult to to figure out who originally shared something on Tumblr – reblog’s usually link to the person who you reblogged it from. But we recommend trying to credit the original author if you can. And whatever you do, never remove a credit link. And try to share original content when you can – you’ll get more traction if you do.
For more tips on how to write good call to actions check out these posts:
Hook, Line, and Sinker: 7 Tips for a Killer Call-to-Action
5 Ways to Write Magnetic Call-to-Actions in Just 5 Minutes
21 Call to Action Examples and 3 Rules for Effective CTAs
31 Call-to-Action Examples You Can’t Help But Click
Use keyboard shortcuts to supercharge the speed of your workflow
I’m gonna be honest, filling up your queue with hundreds of posts is a lot of work — it eats up your time. I even considered quitting Tumblr for good because of how much time it takes.
One of the things that bothers me the most is that you can’t copy paste hashtags. You have to type each one in individually. And if you’re using 5 – 20 tags per post and have 300 posts in your queue…. that’s a lot of typing hashtags.
It took me a little bit of time to figure out, but I have my Tumblr workflow down to a system. I can’t even imagine how much time it saves me.
It’s all based on Mac Mastro (I use a mac, but if you’re a pc guy check out AutoHotkey or Quick Macros). This app allows me to save multiple different presets of titles, tags, and call to actions into keyboard shortcuts. So all I have to do is press a button combination on my keyboard and everything is automatically typed out for me. That way I don’t have to keep typing the same things over and over again hundreds — even thousands of times.
I’ll show you what I mean…
Here’s an example of my workflow, hotkeys, and scripts that I use.
1. Find a post to reblog
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2. Add a call to action with a hotkey
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Mac Mastro allows you to save multiple different actions to one hotkey, that way when you press the hotkey you can just click whichever one you want to use, then it types it for you.
3. Format your CTA and add a link if appropriate (again using a hotkey)
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4. Add tags (using a hotkey)
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5. Add to queue and you’re done
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The whole process takes a matter of seconds and dramatically decreases the amount of time it would normally take.
To create a new hotkey with Mac Mastro:
1. Go to File and then New Macro.
2. Add a new hotkey trigger. And then press whatever keys you want your hotkey to be.
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3. Add a new action
4. Search for and click “ Execute an AppleScript”
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5. Insert your script
Here are examples of the different scripts I use in Mac Mastro.
This is what I use for all my CTAs and links.
on run tell application "System Events" delay 0.25 keystroke "What You Want Typed Here" end tell end run
And this is what I use for all my tags.
on run tell application "System Events" delay 0.25 keystroke "tag 1" keystroke return delay 0.1 keystroke "tag 2" keystroke return delay 0.1 keystroke "tag 3" keystroke return delay 0.1 keystroke "tag 4" keystroke return delay 0.1 keystroke "tag 5" keystroke return end tell end run
Just put whatever you want your hotkey to type between the quotes after “keystroke”.
Tags are a little more tricky because you need the script to press enter after each one. That’s why there are delays and extra keystrokes.
And that’s it. Whenever you hit your hotkey it will type out whatever the script is set to type.
Extra Tumblr tips
Don’t try to sell
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At Least not at first when you are trying to grow. You can’t focus both on selling and getting followers at the same time. And honestly it’s pointless to sell when you don’t have an audience yet.
Plus people get on Tumblr to be entertained. People choose Tumblr over places like Facebook and Linkedin because it’s hip — it’s cool and artistic — it’s where the trend setters and young people go.
And they’re very good at detecting and filtering the content that they want to see. If they see your post, and get any sort of sleazy vibe, they’ll scroll past it without thinking twice.
Use Tumblr as a creative place to experiment and try new things — and especially as a place to post original content.
If your goal is still to sell, think of Tumblr as the top of your funnel, where you create awareness and grow relationships, not where you make your pitch.
Get a custom theme and domain name
Tumblr has a big creative vibe. Creativity and good design is important to a lot of its users. On top of that, Derek Halpern, Hubspot rated the design as the:
#1 thing that influences a viewer in those few seconds when they decide to stay on a website or not…
A study done by Elizabeth Sillence that found 94% of the participants who distrusted a website distrusted it because of its design.
That’s why getting a good looking and practical theme is important.
Just do a quick Google search, or click here to check out some different themes.
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Using a custom domain name isn’t necessary. It’s more of a personal and brand choice. And it’s definitely not going to make a big difference when you first get started. But if you want to stand out a little more, go for it. I didn’t start using my personal domain name until my blog caught on and started gaining momentum.
Check out this easy guide by NameCheap for using a custom domain name.
Create original content
Tumblr is a great place for content curators. But anyone can reblog other people’s posts. If you really want to stand out, post original content specifically for your audience on Tumblr that aligns with your brand. It’s also a good place to share your content from other platforms.
For example, I take photos of all my hiking and travel adventures. I pick out individual photos, write small 100 – 500 word micro blogs to go with them, and post one daily on Tumblr.
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And I don’t post them anywhere else. I also post daily original quotes that align with my brand.
And I also share all my YouTube videos on my Tumblr blog, as well as all the articles that I write.
Oh and make sure to add a source url of your blog or website whenever you post original stuff, that way you’ll get credit for it. And it will help drive a little bit of traffic for you. Plus getting your links shared on social media will help build your SEO.
So Tumblr is great for 3 things: reblogging quality content, posting original content, and sharing your content from other platforms.
Like I said though, creating original content specifically for Tumblr, is what makes certain bloggers stand out from the rest.
And posting content that’s visual — like photos, videos and GIFs — is a must.
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If you’re afraid to post original content because you don’t think it’s good enough, don’t be. Everybody has to start somewhere. You’ll get better the more you create and the more you post. If you look at the original content I first posted on Tumblr, it looks horrible compared to what I’m posting now. Every great blogger and content creator started out bad — seriously. They just practiced and increased their skill as they went along.
So get to work.
Drive traffic
I’m still learning the ropes when it comes to using Tumblr to bring traffic to your main blog or website. But since revamping my Tumblr, linking back to my site, and writing this article, Tumblr has brought 56 visitors to Launch Your Dream, which is more than Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest brought for me during that same time.
One thing to note is that I’m focused on growing my Tumblr following right now, rather than driving traffic to my website. So only something like 1 out of every 50 of my Tumblr posts link to Launch Your Dream. Almost all the rest link back to my Tumblr blog. How much traffic do you think I’d get if I linked to my main site more?
Maybe we’ll find out later.
Only time will tell how effective my new Tumblr will be at driving traffic to my website. But I’m excited to grow this new following, and to see how it impacts my main blog in the future.
Over to you
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instacaptain · 4 years
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Get Your First 1000 Followers With These Basic Tips
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If you sit with your Instagram account and hope to get followed by people automatically, that's not gonna happen. Looking at the statistics, 30% of Internet users are on Instagram. This platform has the highest level of engagement with brands now. It may seem like you just need to jump in and post beautiful pictures, but in fact, it takes more than just the things mentioned above. There are plenty of tips on the Internet on how to grow an Instagram account organically. However, many of them work with massive accounts and won’t work well with a micro ones. The first thousand followers on any social media are usually the hardest to get because people barely pay attention to small accounts. People who follow and interact with you on Instagram, are most usually your friends. That’s almost cool if it’s your personal account, but for growing your business or personal brand-not enough. You can get followers by just visiting a social media panel, but those are just numbers, and they are useless with the new Instagram algorithm. Now engagement with pictures is way more important than a number of followers. In this article, we’ll explain step-by-step how you can get your first 1000 engaged followers on Instagram.
1. Keep your bio full and interesting
There are two parts that you can take advantage of when you create your profile: Your Username. Your Name. Both can appear in the Instagram search result. In this case, if you create a brand around your name, then your Username should be your name. For your business pages – it’s the name of your business or if you create a thematic account, include the keyword there so it will be searchable. For the Name field, include your keyword there too: something, which briefly describes your business or your target audience. There is no need to double-write your name in the Name field, but you can do it if you like and still add 1-2 keywords for your business. The rest of your BIO isn’t searchable. However, give a brief introduction of yourself and what you do, so people will get to know more about you by seeing it.
2. Make Connections
Follow people who you know. Search through your Facebook and Contact list. They will get the notification about your follow and may follow you back. They are your first followers. use InstaCaptain to make it all even easier. With the help of its auto follow feature, you can search for Instagram users in your niche and Insta Captain will help you follow them automatically to get their attention. Search for hashtags related to your niche and put the status to “Active” You can also stop activity every day for the time you select.  
3. Identify your Audience
From the beginning, describe your potential audience for yourself (create an avatar). Then, look for other accounts, which serve your audience. If you are a designer of kid’s clothes, then accounts for moms, kid’s training centers, kid’s events, or other kid’s fashion accounts may fit your audience criteria. If you are a fitness trainer, then fitness centers, sports stores, healthy lifestyle account in your area may have the audience you need. Find the accounts, which post on a regular basis and have a good engagement with their content. Create a list of such accounts for your brand and then start engaging. Go to their profile. Comment on their posts. Follow their followers and interact with those new people. You need to get their attention and get connected before they will be willing to buy from you. Use InstaCaptain and its auto comment to get the best results. It comments automatically on an Instagram post without you having to do it manually. You can write up a comment you want to post and then target the places you want your comment to be. You can target accounts by using hashtags, places or you can directly target the audience of Influencers in your niche with the help of our filtering features.
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Setting up the Auto Comment feature in Insta Captain
4. Communicate Well
Do you know that you see only 30% of the content of people who you follow? So don’t follow more people than you are following. The same for your followers, they also see only some content of people who they follow. The key point here is to start communicating with people, so they will check your feed, follow you and keep engaging. The more people engage with your post, the higher it appears in their feed. Your posts are also competing with each other. This way, the post, which gets more engagement, shows first than the one with less engagement.
5. Create quality content
Testing the variety of posts on different small business accounts, I found that besides just posting the product picture, there are several other types of posts that work well: Before/after posts in service or work cases. Sharing your client’s stories about using your service or product works wonders. Whenever you have a chance, tell the story about them. Testimonials. Don’t be shy to ask about them or if they post something on social media, ask if you can share it on your Instagram too. Every time you want to share someone’s experience, ask for permission. Most of the time people won’t mind, but if they don’t want it, refrain from doing so. Educational posts about your product or service. Sometimes people don’t know what else they can get or how to use stuff better. Including questions or call-to-action to the post can also increase the engagement. If your company focuses on the service or product, then a lot of quotes look like spam and will get a low number of likes and comments, but posting them from time to time give some further engagement works well. Implement branded hashtags and encourage the followers to use them to have the chance to get featured on your account. Sharing behind the scene photos or videos showing the process of your work also garners viewers. Treat your social media as the high-standard online edition. Every time before you tap the ‘Post’ button ask yourself if it fits your social media ‘magazine’ and would you engage with this post? Is this worth sharing? If the answer is ‘No’ or you doubt if you would engage with the post, then the post is weak.
6. Patience is the key.
Be consistent in your posting even if it is just a few times per week. Pick the comfortable schedule for yourself. Don’t try to run a marathon from the first day or you will get burned out fast. Use Insta Captain to make it easier by going for its auto post feature. As the name suggests, this feature allows the users to schedule their post In Calendar option users can choose the date of posting and add as many posts they like. The time of posting can also be chosen once a date has been chosen. Once you get used to your optimal schedule, you can post more. When you post regularly, you consistently get to your follower’s radar, so they always remember about you. When you don’t post for a while, you stop showing up on the people’s feed and even if you will start posting again you may lose connection with some followers.
7. Connect with your fans
To engage with your followers, start writing a simple open-ended question in the post. Ask them about something. The important part is if you want people to start the communication on your feed, go to them first and comment on their feed for a period of time with proper comments. Yes, it’s time-consuming. But when you do that, you will see that people start replying to your questions too and the interaction with your other posts will grow.  
8. Engaging Hashtags for the win
Hashtags help you to be discovered by other people. On Instagram, you can add up to 30 hashtags. Use many or all of them. Search for relevant hashtags for the topic(s) you post. Then, create the lists of them for each subject you post about. Pick those, which have less than 500k pictures associated with them. You can also add 1-3 top hashtags to get ‘quick’ engagement for the post for the first few minutes. Save them in the phone app. When you publish the picture, just copy and paste them in the caption or the first comment.
9. Get among top search results
You can get more exposure and followers when you get to the Instagram top posts for certain hashtags. This is the area at the top of the Instagram search result with only 9 specially selected pictures. While Instagram doesn’t tell you the algorithm of choosing pictures for the top, there is something you can do. The point is to get more engagement with your post within 1-2 hours of it getting published and better from the accounts with big followings. Here are more tips: – Post at the time when most of your followers are online. If you have a business account, then check your statistics. – Prepare high-quality image, which will fit your niche. Well, that’s actually what you should always do on your account. – Pick hashtags relevant to your niche. They shouldn’t be too popular. The more popular they are, the harder it is to get to the top if your account isn’t big yet. – If your picture has other people or brands on it, tag them. They get the notification about your post, and there is a possibility that they will engage with it too. – It’s good to have a relationship with bigger accounts. If you don’t have any, start interacting with them. The perfect result is when they follow you and begin liking and commenting on your posts. When the accounts with a large number of followers engage with your picture, then you get more chances to get to the top. – Post your image and track the results. Check the search feed of the hashtags you use. The post usually disappears from the top within 24 hours. Also, it’s possible that two of your posts get to the top, but then they will compete with each other. It seems complicated, and you won’t get to the top every time, but if you do it right, there is a big chance to get there quite often.
10. Make stories and videos
There are two ways of using videos on Instagram: on the main feed or Instagram Stories. Video content can get 34% more interactions than regular photo pictures. Depending on the complexity of your product or services, tutorials can go a long way in making sure people know exactly how to use it. The main feed lets you host longer videos, and they stay there till you want. With the 10 seconds Instagram Stories, you can show a quick tutorial or step-by-step process with each video. If you aren’t selling a physical product, host a tutorial covering why your service is essential. Incorporate testimonials and success stories from previous clients. Show how your product or service is different from the rest. Set yourself apart from others with a little creativity.
Summarizing
Getting your first thousand engaged followers may be a slow process. You may use one tip from above, decide that it almost doesn’t work and leave it. To make it really bring you the results, use all of them at the same time. Simply go step by step. If you do it right, it will probably take you a month to get from 0 to 1000. Read the full article
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