Why Tumblr is Useful for Bloggers

Photo credit: Julia Roy on Flickr

Way back, I wrote a post about tumblr for writers, so if you don’t know what a tumblr is or why it maybe useful for writers, that’s where you want to go. This is related, but more blogger-centric.

When I first created a tumblr blog several years ago, I signed up thinking it might be good for inspiration and a little social media fun. I definitely didn’t think it’d one day become the fifth largest traffic source for Writability. But after many years and more than a couple posts becoming way more popular on tumblr than I ever expected, I’ve come to realize tumblr can be a fantastic way for bloggers to share their posts.

As a rule, I generally share every post I publish on blogger in full on tumblr. When I first started experimenting with this, I initially just shared a couple paragraphs then included a “read more” link, but I found that people usually didn’t click to read more and they often didn’t share because the post was incomplete. So I tried sharing the posts in their entirety instead, including a link to the original post on the blogger blog, by sharing it as a link post rather than a text post.

Much to my surprise, that worked about a thousand times better. Sometimes literally.

Because of this happy success, I thought I’d share with you a couple steps to maximizing your tumblr reach:

1. As mentioned above, share your posts as a LINK post. See the screenie up there? That’s the button you want to press. The reason this works better is it allows you to share the URL of the original post, so if people are interested they can click back to your blog and check it out. As proven by my traffic, people do click.


2. Make sure you title your link post. I’ve often seen posts shared that were just a URL. Those tend to get less shares, because they look messy and aren’t as clear as those that are titled. Titling your post is easy—just type in whatever the title of your blog post is in the box that says “Title.” Pretty self-explanatory.


3. Use tags. I read somewhere that tumblr only pays attention to the first five tags that you include, so make sure you choose your tags carefully. These are important, because oftentimes people will search certain keywords for a post they’re looking for, and if you tagged your post with that keyword, they’ll come across your post even if they’re not following you. It’s an easy way to get a little extra exposure.


4. Follow blogs that are similar to yours. As I run a writing blog, I follow other blogs that often share posts about writing, like The Writers Helpers, It’s a Writer Thing, The Writing Cafe and How to Fight Write, all of which are excellent blogs that you should definitely be following if you’re a writer on tumblr.
   
   The reason this helps you with exposure is because oftentimes, bloggers will notice when a certain follower often shares their posts, which can lead to said bloggers checking out your blog, which can lead to them following your blog, which can lead to them eventually sharing some of your posts. The tumblr community is pretty awesome like that. :)

The great thing about tumblr is your posts have a shelf life of basically forever. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a post suddenly get tons of reblogs (or shares) months after I originally posted. It happens, and it happens pretty frequently.

So if you’re a blogger whose been considering starting a tumblr blog, I definitely recommend it. It’s been a wonderful experience thus far, and one I intend to continue for a long time.

Do you use tumblr? Why or why not?

Twitter-sized bites:

Blogger @Ava_Jae shares how tumblr unexpectedly became her 5th largest traffic source. #bloggingtips (Click to tweet)  

Bloggers, do you share your posts on tumblr? Writer @Ava_Jae talks how and why you may want to consider it. (Click to tweet) 

Why tumblr is useful for bloggers and how to maximize your shares there. (Click to tweet)