Website Design, Social Media & Digital Marketing in Doral by Aday Interactive

Tag Archives: Blogging

Social Media Marketing: To Tumblr or Not to Tumblr!

September 16, 2011 by Brandon Aday | 0 comments

TumblrFacebook, Twitter and LinkedIn may be the holy trinity of social media at the moment, but don't tell that to Tumblr! In fact, in the past year, the service has grown 10x's, from 1 billion posts to over 10 billion! On average, the 29 million+ blogs publish over 15 posts a month, and also "reblog" content from other blogs (which is similar to "retweeting"). This is a great feature in itself, as it lets content spread virally very quickly. So what exactly is Tumblr? It is a platform where you can set up what is known as a "tumble blog", which is optimized for quick, on the fly content sharing. If Twitter and WordPress had a baby, it would look something like Tumblr.

According to the Tumblr about page, "Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme's HTML."  Tumblr as a network is similar to WordPress.com or Google's Blogger platform, in that you can set up a blog quickly for free, and customize it with built in templates and layouts. So what does this tool have that the others do not? In a word, simplicity: it is simple to use and publish content on Tumblr, and for that reason it is growing rapidly!

So let's take a look at this great social tool! First thing you notice when you log into the system, is a feed of the latest posts from other Tumblr blogs. Just like on Twitter, you can follow other users, and explore what other content is available on the site. This is great as it allows you to see what others are publishing, and can give you an idea of what to write on your Tumblr blog. You may also want to just “reblog” someone else’s content, and add a comment, to dip your toe in the content publishing world.

Aday Interactive Tumblr Site

You will also be presented with very large icons that give you the ability to quickly post text, photos, quotes, links, audio and video files. The nice thing is the number of file formats and types of media that are easily uploaded and posted onto your Tumblr blog. Those last two features are of most interest to me, since this can be a quick and inexpensive solution to create your podcast or video blog feed!

Tumblr Nav Bar

If you know how to play with HTML and CSS, you are able to customize the look and feel of the blog. The site comes with many free and premium Themes you can apply to your blog. There is also the ability to edit the HTML and CSS in the page directly, to give a more customized design. Creating additional pages (aside from posts) is also simple in the system, and it gives you the ability to add the new page link automatically to the blogs navigation without programming knowledge. For this reason, you could potentially use Tumblr as a full CMS.

Tumblr Edit CSS and HTML

Tumblr plays nice with other social networking sites, and integrates with both Facebook and Twitter. You can add your Twitter feed into the account so that it displays on the side of your blog. You can also configure it so that your posts show up automatically in your Twitter feed or Facebook wall posts. Similar to other blogs and social tools such as Hootsuite, you can schedule your posts out ahead of time, so that you don't have to post everyday to keep a steady flow of content on your site. You can plan it all ahead of time and it will post for you. You can also post directly from your smart phone, as well as share photos and videos quickly using the Tumblr mobile app, which is great for on the fly posting of text, audio or even video!

Tumblr Social Media Integration

If you don't have a blog yet, or don't want to dive into full blown blogging just yet, Tumblr is a perfectly viable solution to get your feet wet. However, there are a few drawbacks. First, there is a lack of integration with tools like Google Analytics, so it is not easy to track your visitors or post views in the same way you can track other social tools. The best way around that however is by connecting your RSS feed to Feedburner to track analytics; however there still may be some missing information that is valuable to knowing if your blog is a success.

You also can not add additional functionality using Widgets or Plug-in’s, like what are used in the WordPress platform. This makes it a difficult choice for a core blogging solution, since you won't be able to modify or extend your Tumblr blog to meet all of your blogging needs. Finally, unless your customers are already familiar with Tumblr, it may be difficult to start building your online community on the site. Since it is not as popular with the general population (like Google+) it may take some time for your family, friends or customers are even aware of what Tumblr is! Therefore, it is less likely potential customers will just stumble upon your Tumblr blog while leisurely browsing around!

The bottom line is this: Tumblr is growing in popularity, and should be a social network to consider when fleshing out your social strategy. However, it should only be considered after staking a claim on the major 3 social sites  (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) and building your core company blog on a more capable platform like WordPress. My suggestion is to use Tumblr to compliment what you are already publishing on your other networks, but not have it as your core social media offering. It is quick and simple to post content, and the posts are not expected to be that long (unlike my postings), so it may be a great fit for daily blogging activities to react quickly to news and events. This is what Aday Interactive will use Tumblr for moving forward at this location: Aday Interactive: Tumbling Along Blog. I would also recommend using Tumblr for publishing your podcast, due to the ease of uploading and publishing of audio or video content. This is no doubt in the near future for Aday Interactive as well...That ability alone makes Tumblr a worthwhile online destination to help grow your online community!

 

Social Media Marketing: Blogging for Online Community Development

August 2, 2011 by Brandon Aday | 0 comments

In this fifth posting in a series on building community using social media, we are going to talk about blogging. Sure this may not be the sexiest topic, since businesses have been using blogs for many years now, however, a blog is a necessary tool for driving traffic to your site, as well as building your online reputation and expertise in a particular topic or area of expertise.  Of course, if you haven't incorporated a blog into your marketing mix, this should be a least third on your list (after getting yourself on Twitter and a creating your Facebook Fan Page). Blogging not only supports developing your company’s brand, but also helps increase your site traffic and rank in Google, which hopefully converts to qualified leads and actual customers!

So where do you start? First decide who you are writing for (i.e. your customers), and position yourself in a manner that shows how your expertise can help them achieve their goals and improve their business. Once you define who your target is, and how you will position yourself, you can then define the kind of content you will write about. For example, this blog focuses mainly on social media, and how to use digital marketing to promote your company or organization. Ideally, assuming your blog is for your business (not personal) you will have someone working on content to share with your customers and potential customers, in your particular industry.

Now that you have your audience defined, and know generally the theme of your blog, you will need to start drafting your blog posts. I would suggest you generate between 5 and 10 posts ahead of your official blog launch. This will give you a buffer of content to post, since you never know what can come up during your busy work week! Ideally, you will be able to publish at least one blog post a week, so you can keep customers coming back to you r site, and can encourage viral sharing of your content. Of course you are probably thinking, “How am I going to write all of these posts, when I don't even know what to write about for my first post?". Well I am sure there are many subjects you can choose from, but here are 7 ideas to get you started on your first 7 blog posts:

  1. Introductory/Press Release blog post (See "How to Create a Compelling Social Media Press Release")
  2. Explain your service methodology, philosophy on customer service and what separates you from competitors
  3. Highlight a recent client case (with clients permission) and describe how you solved their business problems
  4. Create a tutorial post that that could help a reader perform a common but useful task
  5. Interview a customer (via e-mail) and publish on the blog with link back to customers website (if applicable)
  6. Write a wrap up of your industry's news and current events
  7. Create a post asking for feedback on your blog content, and crowd-source new topics

Now that you have that entire back log of content ready to go, you need your blogging platform to publish it to the world. Luckily there are many options for creating a blog. This particular blog was created using WordPress, which is the most popular blogging engine around today. You can set up a free account on WordPress.com, and join their blogger community. To help you get started, you can check other blogs, or you can buy a books on blogging, such as Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business or  The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly. Of course, if you want to have a custom built WordPress site built, you can contact Aday Interactive for a free consultation!

So by this point, you should have created your content, you are building a following on your social media channels and have started to engage with key influencers in your community or business space. You can take the first blog post, which is in a Press Release style, and submit it to a service such as Pitch Engine, which helps you to easily share your "Pitch"/Press Release post with your friends and followers through your social networks, email and other methods. The service also shares your post with all of the major search engines, in order to maximize publicity, while helping your blog get indexed by search engines. It is also recommended you use a tool like Feedburner, so that you can track subscribers and other statistics, to compliment your web analytics. From this point, it is just a matter of continuing to create and publish engaging content that your target audience wants to read! See it is that simple :)

 
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