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Tumblr And You

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Tumblr hosts more than 130 million blogs. In May 2013, the website received more than 5 billion page views. Bloggers can post text, pictures, videos, music, and links. Tumblr’s popularity is rapidly growing. If you’re not yet taking advantage of Tumblr, it offers professionals and small business owners a fresh opportunity to introduce your products or services to new customers. Tumblr is easy to use, and signing up is straightforward; simply enter a username, a password, and an e-mail address.

Your next step is choosing an appropriate and eye-catching design for your page. Scores of themes are available for Tumblr; some themes are free and others may be inexpensively purchased. Most themes for Tumblr allow for extensive customization, and all the themes can be installed quickly and easily.

Now you’re ready to start posting. Post content that will establish your audience’s trust in you and keep them returning to your page. Along with your own posts, you’ll want to choose which other blogs on Tumblr you’d like to follow. When you find another blog post that you want to share with your audience, you can do that with Tumblr’s reblogging feature. You’ll quickly see that pictures are predominant on Tumblr – half of Tumblr’s posts are photos or other graphics, so you’ll want to start taking and looking for interesting, relevant pictures to share with your audience.

Tumblr is popular internationally too, and using the right pictures can help you reach across the language barriers. Post pictures of your product being produced and used, or your team and your services in action. Work for consistency. Whether you post once a week or several times a day, your Tumblr audience should know when to expect your next post.

Some observers expect that Tumblr will soon rival Facebook and Twitter, so if you’re not already taking advantage of Tumblr, this is the time to start.

Blogs Are Big News

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Increasingly, Americans are abandoning television and newspapers to get their news from the internet. Surprisingly, however, many of those abandoning traditional media aren’t transitioning to news sites like the Drudge Report, Huffington Post, or CNN.com. Instead, large percentages are now “getting their news” from social media sites, according to a new study from the Pew Research Journalism Project.

Americans are seeking news from sources they trust: social media networks. Facebook is the largest social networking site; users include 64 percent of the adults in the United States. The Pew study shows that half of these adults are using Facebook as a primary news source. That would mean that 32% of the adults in the U.S. are relying on Facebook as a news source.

In terms of usage, YouTube is the second-largest site, used by 51 percent of adults in the U.S., although only 20 percent of the users (about 10 percent of America’s adults) consider YouTube a news source.

Twitter, Reddit, and LinkedIn are also used as news sources, but by much smaller numbers of users. Of particular note for law firms and “high-end” retailers is the demographic group receiving its news via social media. It trends towards the highly-educated, high-income, 30-to-64-year olds, precisely the demographic that interests law firms, accounting firms, healthcare businesses, and high tech electronics retailers.

The recent Pew study, then, is good news for bloggers and others who make social media a marketing priority. Blogs move, to a great extent, through social networks. Blogs posts are shared by the readers who have the strongest interest in the post’s topic. Articles and newsletters do not get the traction that blog posts when it comes to sharing; blog posts are precise, timely, and topical, unlike “permanent” website content.

The takeaway: You need to be blogging. Blogs grow influence. A blogger sharing insights, commentary, and opinion establishes a name as a trusted, reliable voice. That influence grows as your content is shared over Facebook and other networks. If you don’t feel confident as a writer, or if you’re as busy as most professionals and business owners, consider hiring a free-lance blog writer or a social media marketing company to provide the timely, interesting blog posts you need.

Tip Jars And Social Proof

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You probably know that bartenders and musicians put a few of their own dollars into their tip jars when they begin work. It’s a simple trick for getting more and better tips. Sociologists call the concept “social proof”; little kids call it “monkey see, monkey do.” It’s the fact that our behavior is often based on watching the choices others make and following them. By putting a few dollars in the tip jar, bartenders and musicians create the social proof they need to produce more tips.

Uppsala University in Sweden found that audience members at a symphony are more or less apt to applaud depending on whether others are applauding. When 50 percent of an audience claps, individuals are ten times more likely to applaud than if only 5 percent of the audience is applauding. Often unconsciously, we make daily choices based on what we see others doing.

Social proof isn’t just about tips and applause. It can help you measure and improve the effectiveness of your social media marketing. Is 50 percent of your audience applauding, or only 5 percent? Avinash Kaushik, a digital marketing expert for Google and an instructor at the University of British Columbia, suggests that your “applause rate” can be measured quite easily.

On Twitter, for example, your applause rate equals the number of favorite clicks per post; on Facebook, your applause rate equals the number of likes per post; and on Google+, your applause rate equals the number of +1s per post. More applause actually generates even more applause and creates the viral impact that makes social media marketing so potent. Increased social media sharing leads to increased social media sharing. You get the drift.

Get the juggernaut rolling by creating exceptional content. Entertain, inspire, and inform. If you don’t feel confident as a writer or content creator, hire a freelancer or a social media marketing firm to create fabulous content for you. Then directly encourage your employees, partners, friends, best customers, and other contacts to share your content. It’s comforting to know that the content you’re about to post to Facebook will automatically have fifteen or fifty likes – the equivalent of a few dollars in the tip jar – by the end of the day. As you keep in mind the concept of social proof, you’ll find more opportunities to create it and to benefit from it.

Legal Blogs Gaining Prestige

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Only a few years ago, blogs were pretty much the monopoly of those offering their personal (and sometimes extreme) opinions on politics, religion, sports, and pop culture. Today, however, blogging is seen as a nearly indispensable element in online marketing, and nearly three-quarters of social media marketers have established online blogs.

Why has blogging emerged as such an important internet marketing tool? Compared to, say, preparing an email blast, a blog post is quick and easy. In fact, the large law firms that first posted blogs with the LexBlog Network did so to save the time it took to prepare conventional email newsletters. Legal blogs are now perceived as credible sources for news, information, and legal insights. They’re cited by other attorneys and by the news media, and they’re easy to read from mobile devices. Walter Olsen, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, believes that legal blogs will soon replace law journals. Of the current Am Law 200 law firms, 78 percent publish blogs.

Blogs provide other advantages to marketers and especially to law firms. Well-written blogs are apt to be shared. They help lawyers and firms attract clients, and they help boost an attorney’s search engine ranking. Unlike a law journal, a blog post is instantly available everywhere. And you can incorporate your blog into your own website, establish it as a separate site, or contribute it to a “blogging community” site like Open Salon.

Of course, you’ll want to post links to your blog on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Coordinated social media marketing is critical to overall marketing success. Finally, if you don’t have a great deal of time for writing, or if you just don’t feel competent as a prose writer, you may want to consider hiring a ghost-writer or a social media marketing company that provides content-creating services.

Follow Prospective Clients With Feedly

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Everywhere, you hear talk about how marketers need to “use” social media “strategically.” Don’t just blog to be blogging; blog strategically. Don’t just have a Twitter account because everyone else has one; line up your social media marketing with your business development goals. Obviously, those goals include deeper relationships with current clients and establishing and building relationships with new and prospective clients. How can social media help you accomplish this? Here are some tips to get you started:

    • Familiarize yourself with Feedly, a news aggregator application for Web browsers and mobile devices running iOS and Android. (Feedly is also available as a cloud-based service.) Feedly compiles news feeds from various online sources for you to customize and share with others.
    • Create a list of clients, prospective clients, and referral sources.
    • Set up Feedly to receive Google News feeds of articles and posts that mention the persons and companies on your list. You may want to set up feeds that mention a company’s executives by name. Move the feeds into Feedly folders marked “clients” and “prospective clients” respectively (or whatever works best for you).
    • Find out if any of the companies or individuals on your list have blogs. Use Feedly to subscribe to them.
    • Make a Twitter list of these people and companies. Most will have Twitter accounts, and many some will have more than one account to cover various products, divisions, or locations. Also include the executives in these organizations.
    • When you have a reason, blog about the companies you follow, and say good things. Your blog should report and comment on news that’s relevant to your audience. You’ll get noticed as the companies you follow monitor themselves. Share your blog post on Twitter and use the company’s Twitter handle in your Tweet. You may also choose to retweet posts the company shared on Twitter. Everyone loves a little Twitter attention.

Focus on those you’ve recently engaged and those with whom you already have a relationship. Like anything else, your social media marketing will become more effective as you gain experience. Don’t hesitate to hire a social media marketing to help you create content and to help you coordinate your overall internet marketing strategy.

Great Thumbnails And Titles For A Bigger Youtube Audience

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It’s no secret that bringing new visitors to your YouTube channel can help grow your business online. Yet the overwhelming majority of videos on YouTube get only mediocre results at best. One of the proven ways to draw more visitors to your YouTube videos is to design captivating, intriguing thumbnails and powerful, compelling titles for your videos.

For great YouTube thumbnails, use a good headshot or close-up for a personal touch. Make sure the lighting and colors are right, and look your best. YouTube accurately describes thumbnails as “miniature marketing posters” that should attract viewers and compel them to watch your videos. YouTube thumbnails appear in different sizes (and in surprising places) all across the internet, so have a strong, lively image and a well-framed composition. The foreground should stand out boldly from the background. Use appropriate backgrounds; a rock concert promoter, for example, shouldn’t use the same background that a criminal defense attorney might use.

Your text should immediately tell a viewer what your video is about and why he or she should view it. Make your text brief, powerful, easy-to-read, and to-the-point. Be sure you keep the image on the left and text on the right. Thumbnails, text, and title should all reinforce each other and convey the same theme. If you don’t feel like you can do this well, consider hiring a social media marketing company with experience in creating successful web content.

YouTube now draws over a billion unique visitors every month; its viewing hours (six billion a month) have increased more than 50 percent just since 2012. Uploads to YouTube now total more than 100 hours of video every minute, 24 hours a day. Don’t ignore the possibilities of YouTube. Great thumbnails and titles can help you take full advantage of this website’s almost limitless potential to expand your audience and your profits.