The Case For Tumblr ...

https://medium.com/@davykesey/the-case-for-tumblr-e53a986b2373#.kaydmwhzk

Hopefully this link will work, otherwise copy and paste the whole thing to a new browser window.

I'm on Tumblr, can't really make a case for it except that it's a simple to use yet powerful blogging platform. Most of the accounts I've looked at though just reblog other tumblr accounts or post other's people content, I haven't seen a whole lot of originality there, and the NSFW stuff there is rampant. I haven't been there long though, just three months or so, and like the article says followers are hard to come by, I think I'm at 20 something and have had very few "notes".

I have not posted anything on Tumblr yet...

Good article. I use Tumblr but not sure how it's helped me get my work out there. I look at it this way...it's fairly easy to navigate and post to, so I may as well use it. It can't hurt.

Yes, I share to Tumblr from Flickr ( As they are both owned by Yahoo ) and view it as an extended audience ( other known as channeling ). I see noticeable jump in my Flickr stats when I do this.

http://bridburg.tumblr.com/

Frank,

MY WP.com blog automatically shares to my Tumblr blog. No fuss at all.
So I have two easy to maintain and add to blogs.

Dave

http://allhailrachael.tumblr.com/post/133621096865

Interesting how this works. A young woman added my image to her blog on Tumblr. From my blog on Tumblr.

If you click on my image you go straight through to my WP blog. And from there a link to my AW.

That image now is available for reblogging for years to come.

Dave

Yes, Dave, I used to share to Tumblr from my WordPress but found that I got more engagement on Tumblr when I posted directly .... however, now that I share from Flickr It's like posting directly ( something how the post looks compared to WP ). ... and when the viewer clicks the image, like you say, they come back to Flickr ... full attribution!!

Frank,

Flickr full attribution....but no link to the AW?

Dave

The link to the AW is in my Flickr profile, Dave. You should know by now, I don't use Social Media to sell but to bring awareness to my work and motivate ( not manipulate ) subscribers to my email list. ....

Stats on Flickr and view count are awesome compared to AW anyways.

I was hoping for links to each image on the image.

I know, I know. A guy can hope.

Frank, I use SM to reach people who have no clue I exist. That is not even the beginning of selling to them.
That is just showing up with the goods at the right time.

And if not the right time then being in a position to wait for them to buy when the time is right.

Dave

Right! SM changes every day ..... hope is good.

It says "Tumblr is incredibly valuable (and confusing to many brands) because it’s so intrinsically bent towards quality over quantity." ... "If you’re willing to invest time and energy into it; the ROI is there."

That says it all to me ... when you provide value it comes back more than when you jab*.

* https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/social-media-sales-tips-1006842687.html

That concept always baffles me when it comes to selling art. I allow people to view my art on the internet for free, beyond that I can't imagine what "value" I can give "up front".

DK,

People have walls, Eventually they put a picture up. If you are there in front of them six months earlier and three months earlier and then the week prior.
odds are much higher that they will fill their wall space with your art. If you do not show your work, you will not show your work.

If you show your work to more people the odds of a steady stream of sales rise.

Dave

DB, what does that have to do with providing value up front? I am sharing my art all the time, but the marketing "gurus" keep saying to not sell on social media, but rather provide "value" up front. I can't figure out how this applies to selling visual art.

It means you share your best stuff and show your personal brand, your personality and all that.

Did you see the article at the link I posted? Here is it again https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/social-media-sales-tips-1006842687.html

At the end of the shhort video he names content ... write those down.

I read the article but haven't watched the video, I'll have to wait until I get home. I have watched a Vaynerchuk video about his jab, jab, punch, thing before though and was still puzzled.

"It means you share your best stuff and show your personal brand, your personality and all that."

I think I'm probably already doing that much.

I finally watched the video. I guess you can call me dense because I still don't get it. I post my art, (not just stuff for sale, but I share sketches that aren't available as well), and I talk about my art, (mainly the why, I talk very little about the how). I have no idea what else I can do that provides value upfront.

No, David K, you're not dense. Providing value is simply making the other person ( followers and customers ) more important than self. Providing content that benefits them not us. The result is it shows how much you care and makes your personality shine .... the by product is sales .... people buy from whom they know, like, and trust. The jab mentioned in the video is trying to sell before you have that trust. Make sense?

I think I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. Whether what I'm doing is what the gurus say to do or not I don't know, and I really just don't care anymore. If I haven't understood it by now I never will.

These sentences from the article too, David, I find intriguing:

"If you’re selling something, you should be wary of overlooking Tumblr. It’s the dark horse candidate of social media. Whether you’re a freelance photographer or a multinational corporation, it can provide your brand a lot of value."


“Depth, not width. Do things and take actions that have more depth than width, and I’ll give you an example of what I mean: a small, meaningful, intentional act will mean MUCH more than a HUGE one that lacks substance.”

I'm not overlooking Tumblr, I post there nearly every day now. I'm not sure what width vs depth means, but that's okay. I try to be authentic and I talk about my art and I share things that aren't for sale, that's as deep or as wide as I'm gonna go. Maybe it's starting to work, I had my second print sale today.

I say it every time the subject comes up, I love tumblr! It's my favorite of the social networks. I actually enjoy my time and tumblr, while the rest of my social networking activity is done out of a sense of necessity.

Can't wait to read the article. Thanks for sharing, Frank.

How do you use Tumblr Andrew?

That's the approach I've started taking too. I focus only on tumblr and facebook (My personal page, I can't seem to get any traction with my fan page.). I push the links out to twitter, but don't put any real energy into maintaining my profile there.

I focus my efforts, not because I don't want to overload where my art can be found but more so I can build a higher quality presence on fewer social platforms. It's the whole "depth not width" thing that was touched on earlier in this thread.

Here is a forum thread from Flickr about sharing to Tumblr ... FWIW. It starts out with adjusting image size and expands from there.

https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157660534398877/

Frank now over a year ago we discussed G+ for images v Flickr.

G+ has been completely overhauled. You might want to explore it.

I am very glad I came back to this thread. My understanding of SMs has been growing very fast during this period.

Tumblr is attractive, but Yahoo search is not so much.

The depth thing is mixed. The images do the real talking. And images are worth more than words. As artists we each should have
an edge.

Dave

Interesting concept

To make a change remember it could be the simplest of things that become most effective.

Thttp://manualiris.tumblr.com/post/135504005111/to-make-a-change-remember-it-could-be-the-simplest

Frank,

I am not sure who or what you are referring to.

Dave

Thanks for the nudge, David. I posted the link this time above and now bleow

http://manualiris.tumblr.com/post/135504005111/to-make-a-change-remember-it-could-be-the-simplest

"WANT TO DO SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT IN THE NEW YEAR THEN WHY NOT CREATE A NEW HASHTAG. I MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY HOW #ITALIAN PHOTOGRAPHERS HAS BEEN USED TO GREAT EFFECT SO WHY NOT GET A GROUP OF YOU TOGETHER WHO SHARE A COMMON CONNECTION AND START YOUR OWN COLLECTIVE.

KEEP IT SIMPLE, KEEP IT RELATIVE, MAYBE TRY SOMETHING PLAYFUL BUT USE IT AS A WAY OF FORMING YOUR OWN MICRO COMMUNITY AND I WOULD BE MORE THAN HAPPY TO GIVE YOU A SHOUT OUT ON HERE AND I’M SURE MANY OTHER PHOTOGRAPHY PAGES WOULD DO THE SAME TO.

ALL THE DUTCH PHOTOGRAPHERS MIGHT COME TOGETHER AND CALL THEMSELVES #THE DUTCH MASTERS OR #TDM FOR SHORT IN A PLAYFUL HOMAGE TO REMBRANDT ET AL.

ALL THE SWEDISH PHOTOGRAPHERS COULD USE #SWEDISH FOTO MAFIA OR #SFM.

THOSE WHO SHOOT LIGHT TRAILS COULD COME TOGETHER AS #THE LIGHT TRAILERS.

YOU COULD COME TOGETHER AS COUNTRYMEN AND WOMEN; UNITE UNDER A PARTICULAR CITY; ANY STYLE OF PHOTOS; THE TYPE OF INSTRUMENT USED TO TAKE THE SHOT FROM FILM, PHONE OR DIGITAL; FROM BOKEH TO BLACK AND WHITE.

PUT YOUR HEADS TOGETHER, TALK TO EACH OTHER AND SEE WHAT YOU CAN COME UP WITH AND AS I SAY I WILL BE HAPPY TO GIVE IT A SHOUT OUT.

MAYBE YOU ARE NEW TO PHOTOGRAPHY AND HAVE COME ACROSS A FEW OTHERS IN THE SAME BOAT. YOU COULD START YOUR OWN ABBREVIATED CODE AND SHARE IT AMONGST A FEW LIKE MINDED AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHERS RATHER THAN SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS AND JUST FORM A TIGHT LITTLE SUPPORT NETWORK AND SHARE THINGS YOU LEARN AS YOU GO ALONG. IF YOU ARE NEW TO PHOTOGRAPHY PLEASE REMEMBER WE DON’T BITE AND DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK QUESTIONS IF YOU WANT TO GIVE A CERTAIN STYLE OF SHOOTING A GO; FROM HOW TO CREATE BOKEH, OR SHOOT LIGHT TRAILS. JUST DON’T ASK THE ONE QUESTION SO MANY ASK - WHAT CAMERA DO YOU USE. THE DEFAULT ANSWER FOR TWENTY SIXTEEN SHOULD BE FOR EVERY LEVEL OF PHOTOGRAPHER - MY EYES."

http://manualiris.tumblr.com/post/135659572682/start-a-new-hashtag-in-2016

As usual I am lost on a computer.

I copy/paste my Wordpress blogs on to Blogger and FAA. On Blogger I just have to work on a few links and here I have to modify it a great bit since we can't have links on blogs here. Right?

Anyway, how do I copy/paste my Wordpress blogs to Tumblr with the images and links. Do I have to select text and leave out the rest?

Help would be greatly appreciated!

I can't really answer question your Kendall but my understanding is that duplicating content is not a good idea, Google will penalize you for it. So many hoops to jump through just to get seen....sigh.

Thanks David. I appreciate the heads up.

I don't think duplicating content from platform to platform is the best approach, and as David said google will penalize you for it.

I think the idea is to build a following on social media sites, then direct them to where you sell. In my case, that's my artist website. I'm not sure how much value maintaining blogs at both wordpress and blogger are, unless each blog caters to it's own niche. The FAA blog might be a good place to blog about your posts on either your wordpress or blogger blogs, but I wouldn't duplicate the content.

Kendall -- if you're on WP.com there is a widget to share your posts to Tumblr. However, it's not a true share post .. it looks like a reblog ... and I found much more engagement on Tumblr once I posted directly on the platform. FWIW.

Thanks Andrew and Frank! These discussions are a big help!

I think I'm going to drop Tumblr. I probably don't spend as nearly as much time as many of you do on social media but I feel like I'm spending much more than I want to, I'm scaling way back on all of it. If that means I won't sell anything that's just the way it is. There are other things I'd rather do, I already have a job.

Yeah, I understand David. I let my Tumblr sit for several months before wrapping my brain around it only a few weeks ago. That is the reason I started this thread.

Okay, I stepped back from the edge of the cliff, I'll still use Tumblr but will moderate the time I spend on it somewhat.

I sometimes struggle with time spent on social media. I find that I spend a lot less time than I used to, and my reach still seems pretty good. 2015 was a very busy year for me, and I didn't have a lot of time for photography or marketing. It was good in a way, because it helped me get a better perspective on how little time I can spend on social media and still maintain a presence.

The first many images were auto posted from WP to Tumblr.

http://bridburg.tumblr.com/


Dave

Why Marketers Need to Rethink Tumblr

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-marketers-need-rethink-tumblr-laura-divergilio

I don't believe millenials are my market, in fact tumblr is probably not my market since it appears to be mostly millenials using it, not sure I'm going to continue there, or anywhere for that matter.

Something told me that would by your response DK. I don't look at the article so much about millennials, but about how much they can provide my images SEO ranking. Both on Tumblr and off .... looked at another way, post cards used to be a really good advertising response, until email marketing came along. Now the people doing post card marketing are getting a really good response because the market saturation is all at email. Make sense?

Actually, very little if any of it makes much sense to me. I even attended an SM seminar by a famous guru the other day and my take away from it was that it requires far more time and energy to get any real results from SM than I'm willing to put into it. I'll post on my blog weekly and tweet my new art but that's probably as much as I'm going to do. I'm not sure there's a real advantage to being on a lot of different platforms anyway, that is unless you really work each one hard, a "post it and forget it" plan doesn't really work. Ya, you might show up in Google searches more, (and yes, my tumblr posts show up in searches quite a bit) but I'm not convinced that counting on showing up in search engines is a good marketing plan anymore. If you are not getting good engagement with your SM I don't believe you are accomplishing much of anything. There are thousands of artists that are "posting it and forgetting it" you just get lumped in with them. While there's a lot that Floyd says that I don't agree with I do now think he is right about marketing directly (engagement) and depth is more effective than width. Thing is, it takes a certain personality to do that stuff, I just don't have it, never will.

Okay, this is a really long article but when you have the time it's worth your read.

https://newrepublic.com/article/129002/secret-lives-tumblr-teens

Some great insights on using Tumblr and marketing on Tumblr.

Frank,

Very good read. But....always a butt......Twitter is heavily into the joke business as well.

Jokes are not art sales.

FB is into the video business for special comments.

WP is also a site to have for the finding where you get to be yourself, but in a presentable manner.

The best of Flickr...generally? Is polished, not self absorbed hopefully, but professional....in the town square.......

Dave

Yahoo might admit $1.1 billion Tumblr mistake

http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-could-write-off-11-billion-tumblr-acquisition-2016-3

I just opened a Tumblr...
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/joynicholsartnphoto

"Okay, this is a really long article but when you have the time it's worth your read"

I skimmed through several rambling pages searching for a point and gave up. Sorry, that is one very poorly written blog post.

Anyway, if you want a reason to use tumblr I've got a good one....SEO. My images posted on tumblr are already showing up in searches big time, more than even my BlogSpot posts now and I've been on Blogger for three years.. I always write at least a paragraph or two in every tumblr post, I'm betting that helps.