For the last two weeks, I’ve been trying out a new(ish) blogging platform: Tumblr. No, this blog’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Rather, I’ve started experimenting to see how a secondary food photography Tumblr blog can help food bloggers spread their content.
Tumblr is all about posting and reblogging visual content between members. There is (not surprisingly) a large percentage of their membership who like looking at good food photography and subscribe to food blogs. By releasing your content on Tumblr, you can draw the attention of people who might not know about your blog.
Getting Started:
The first thing you need to do is create your account. It’s free and easy; just choose your domain(I suggest having it relate to your primary blog like thewannabechef.tumblr.com), pick a theme, and choose how you want your landing page to look. That’s it. From your dashboard, you can start sharing text, photos, videos and more.
How It Works:
When you make a post, your primary goal should be spreading content. The first step is to make sure what you’re posting is visually interesting in some way. A good way to spread your blog content would be to publish a picture on Tumblr with a link in the body to the original recipe post.
The next biggest factor in deciding if what you post will get seen is the tags which help people find your posts. Don’t be too descriptive but rather give words that people might search for like “Chocolate” or “Vegan” as they relate to the content.
In terms of feedback, people can reblog your content meaning sharing it with their followers(and possibly or not adding notes of their own”), replying directly to the author, or simply “liking” your post. Each of these counts as a note.
Whenever somebody does one of these things as well as when you gain a new follower, this appears in your feed.
Of course, you can share whatever you want on Tumblr and it doesn’t have to be related to any other blog. Tumblr is a great way to informally blog and meet people with a different area set. This is just one way that you can use it to expand your blog’s reach. If you have any other questions about Tumblr, I will be happy to answer them as best I can.
It’s also important to participate in the community–commenting on others’ posts, reblogging them, following people you’d want to follow you back.
People don’t search Tumblr all that often, but they do have the new “explore” feature: http://www.tumblr.com/explore. If you have food pics, the food tag will be most important so that your posts are seen in there.
great idea, evan! i already have at tumblr account for my other blog “thick dumpling skin” – maybe i’ll try one for “actor’s diet” and see what happens!
Interesting. I kinda always wondered what tumblr was all about, and have been to blogs on there and noticed how different they were, but didn’t quite get the concept behind it all. Thanks for clearing it up 🙂
Thanks for this. I might have to check it out.
I have never gotten Tumblr
nor do i get stumbleupon
or twitter
I have accounts for stumble and twitter and use them (fairly poorly!) but I dont even fully understand them and clearly dont use them to their fullest
thanks for the tumblr info. More technology, more social media…wow!
I checked a long time ago and someone already took runeatrepeat on tumblr. Boo.
The entire reason I made my account to begin with was to keep my domain. I didn’t even touch it for a month after that.
Cool tips..love the blog btw..hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Hmmm…this is really interesting. Thanks for sharing, I may have to check Tumblr out. 😀
thanks for clearing that up! I was getting a referring url from tumblr and I was wondering what it was! thanks for saving my the time figuring it out myself 😉 lol
Have you seen a increase in traffic since using Tumblr?
It’s hard to tell how much because the incoming links are from all different tumblr URLs instead of lumped into one direct source, but it’s definitely contributing some additional traffic.
Thanks for sharing the info about tumblr. I’ve seen it but never really knew much about it. Might be a good addition to my blog.
interesting…
i just don’t know if i will ever have enough time or energy in my day to deal with the massive amounts of social media available to us bloggers these days.
I’ve wondered if that is a food audience. It is worth exploring.
Good tips, and something I can really use for my blog. Thanks!
Dangit Evan, now I feel guilty that there is another social media site out there that I’m not taking full advantage of!!! I barely even tweet anymore, let alone have the energy to try tumblr… BUT you seem to be much more astute in this area than I will so I’m on my way over to the website now to check it out!
[…] marketing application I’ve been seeing lately is the use of Tumblr to promote blog content. The Wannabe Chef has a very useful post about the why and how of Tumblr and I’ve also been using it with positive effect on my own food blog. As suggested, it […]
Nice of you to share — I’ll have to check it out. Thanks!