Do you have blog for your brand? I know, you’ve got a lot to do. But blogging is really important for reasons ranging from SEO to customers relationships. When it comes to choosing a a platform for your blog, you may want to go with WordPress, which definitely has it’s advantages. Or you may be considering tumblr.
A lot of brands ask about the benefits and “is tumblr a good blogging platform for a MY brand?” Here’s one way to look at it.
- Do you want a blog that people are excited to engage with?
- Do you want a community that is hungry for your visual content?
- Do you want a blog that people “re-blog” today, tomorrow, and even 6 months from now?
- Do you want a blog that allows fun features like polls?
- Do you want a blog that you can post to on the go?
If you said yes to even a couple of the above questions, then tumblr may be the blogging platform for your brand.
tumblr is not just a blog, but an online community of people who are creating, curating, consuming, and sharing content every minute of every day. Consumers are there for one reason – to find and consume content they are interested in. So why not be where your consumers already are?
tumblr is extremely effective for visual friendly brands such as those in the fashion industry. Brands like Nordstrom, Club Monaco and others have taken full advantage – including letting it be another path to purchase for their brand lovers. Furthermore, influencers in the fashion industry realize it’s another place that an audience will love to check out brand collaborations.
To read more on the benefits of tumblr and why the advantages could be right for your brand, check out my full post on Startup Fashion!
Image via Omarukai
When you decide to jump into the sea of blogging, planning is important.
Many brands choose tumblr and there are many great reasons to do so – including the built in community, which already lives on tumblr (not found anywhere else), the ability to discover content easily, and the paid options only available within tumblr.
When choosing tumblr to be your platform of choice there are a few things to check off as you set it up.
The tumblr checklist
- Choose a domain: Find one for your brand name of the theme for your tumblr. If you see your brand name is available and no one is actively blogging on it, I would grab that too.
- Choose a theme: Depending upon your marketing goals, it’s usually helpful to choose a specific theme to focus your blog around so your consumers understand the focus and know what to come back for.
- Set up multiple tumblrs: However, if your brand has a few different themes to pursue, perhaps it’s easier to set up a few different tumblr blogs on different themes. Companies like IBM have done that and it has worked well for them and their origination and curation of content.
- Customize your tumblr: There are a multitude of themes on tumblr to choose from for easy set up (free and paid versions). Then you’ll need your dedicated development team to make it your own. The great part about tumblr is you can make the look and feel anything your brand wants.
- Include disqus: Disqus (or another commenting tool) will have to be added to your tumblr to allow comments and moderation of those comments.
- Listen: Listen through the search bar to discover the conversation already occurring around the topic(s) you are exploring to tumble about. Additionally see who is writing about it or curating content to find the influencers in your category. With time your brand can organically build relationships with them, so with time they will hopefully reblog your content and share with their audiences (more eyeballs for your awesome content!)
- Schedule posts: When launching a blog it’s good to be armed with 10 – 20 posts ready to go. Schedule when your team would like to launch them in the first few weeks (perhaps 3 to 4 in the first week).
- Be a part of the community: As you launch your posts, don’t just push them out and wait for others to come. Find other content it – like it, comment on it, and consider re-blogging some for curating content.
- Activate paid (including analytics): When your brand has the initial budget to do so, consider using some paid media within tumblr to increase eyeballs on your new tumblr. There are a few different options depending upon your needs – for example mobile vs. web in stream ads.
- Test and learn posting times, days, tags: Experiment with the best days and times to post your content (as there are no specific best practices and depends upon your content, your brand, and your audience). See which tags work best for getting people to discover your content, consume, and share it.
Do you need inspiration?
Here are 6 tumblr blogs to visit:
Note: This post was originally written for Social Media Club and my full post can also be found here.
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Image via janefriedman.com
Publishing is no longer just in the hands of magazines and newspapers; brands have the opportunity (as many have realized) to provide the value of content to consumers through video, blogs, infographics, and much more.
Today the brand is the publisher. When brands start creating and curating content it is normally through a blog or landing page that consumers are directed through to other channels.
Does your brand have a blog? Is it ready to make the investment in writers and quality content to keep loyal fans and accrue new ones?
3 things to consider for your blog content strategy…
Content Buckets
Your blog strategy is dependent on your marketing/business goals so it is important to ensure your content strategy for your blog is in line with those goals. Then, whether you have a 3 person team or a 500 person team you need to do a few things to put out valuable content:
- Evaluate what your competition is putting out for content and what content buckets they are focused on (is it lifestyle content, industry content, sales content, and what mix?)
- Evaluate what your audience is clicking on; spending most of their time consuming, and what keywords drive them to your website.
- Where are the gaps…fill them in.
- Determine the 2 to 4 buckets your brand can focus on and test and learn and optimize the content accordingly.
- Note: your strategy will change with time and so will your content buckets. Be ready and willing to adapt.
To read my other 2 imperative tips for a blog content strategy, please check out my full post on Startup Fashion! Thanks!
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The importance of starting a blog as an independent fashion designer is based around a solid way to tell your story, drive traffic to your website, and allow your brand to grow a loyal fan base while allowing for a deeper look into the brand.
Lets take a closer look on why your brand should have a blog…
Create Awareness
Creating regular and consistent content and publishing out to your social channels can create awareness for your brand. The key is to have content that is valuable to your audience whether it be “how-to”, tips, expert advice, highlighting your products through lifestyle content, or a blend of content types.
That awareness will then lead to sharing of content on your fans’ channels for greater awareness, and in turn can drive traffic to your site for your products.
Drive Traffic
Your content, which will be engaging through multi-media such as photos and videos of your lines, can drive traffic through SEO (taking advantage of keywords and tags) as well as from referrals, influencers, and your loyal audience. Your blog can easily become the vehicle that leads traffic right to your products – whether it be your current or future fashion line.
To read the other 3 reasons why your brand should consider a blog, please read my full post on Startup Fashion. Thanks!
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Image: SmartFatBogger.in
Starting a fashion blog is not always as simple as one, two, three – but platforms like Tumblr and WordPress do help in making it a little easier.
Luckily they are both fairly easy to use and provide many options for templates as well as customization. The tough part is choosing which platform fits your needs and wants for the perfect place to host your vivid content.
Cost
In short, Tumblr is free and WordPress is not.
However, if you care less about having your own domain used then you could use the free wordpress.com site instead of wordpress.org. This is definitely not advised as there are less options for customization and limited features.
With WordPress.org the cost is not for the site, but for the hosting, design and development of customizing it.
Note: Tumblr cannot be hosted elsewhere. The blog would be hosted on Tumblr itself.
Customization
WordPress is scalable and can be customized with widgets and custom CSS to a full blown out website if desired.
WordPress easily supports widgets and plugins which can be added simply without worrying about hard coding, while Tumblr must be custom coded for similar functionality and plugins.
SEO Optimization
To read the rest of the differences (and you definitely want to know about SEO) between WordPress and Tumblr (including my bonus tip), check out my original post for Startup Fashion here.