Please welcome Elle (Michelle) Carmon, owner of Elle’s Beads on Zibbet. Elle is an avid supporter of handmade. She creates unique upcycled magnets and jewelry items. Today Elle shares her tips on how to use Tumblr to market our Zibbet shops…

For those of you unfamiliar with Tumblr, it is a social media microblogging website designed for posting short paragraphs of text, videos, links, and photos. Think of it as a cross between Twitter and a regular blog. Tumblr is perfect for those who are looking for a simpler alternative to a traditional blog or those who want an easy way to supplement the social networking they already do. Tumblr can be an excellent tool for marketing your Zibbet shop and increasing exposure for the community as a whole. Here are my tips for using Tumblr to promote your business:

Set up your blog in a way that reinforces your branding and will appeal visually to your readers. Tumblr blogs are completely customizable with both paid and free templates. Try some out until you find what fits you best. I decided to go with a simple free theme and use my logo as my avatar. You can add widgets, code, links, and pages to your blog, so get creative. Link to your shop, add a Twitter widget to show your latest tweets, put up a Facebook badge, and/or add a paragraph or two about you and your work. Think of the first page of your blog as your marketing hub and include things that will entice people to follow you and check out your shop.

Follow other people. The Tumblr dashboard consists of your activity and the activity of those you follow. Tumblr makes it easy to follow the people that follow you with the click of a button. There is also a search feature where you can track different tags or keywords. For example, I have both handmade and Zibbet as tracked tags in my dashboard. Anytime someone tags their posts with either of those two words, Tumblr notifies me on the side of my dashboard. I recommend following other people who post about Zibbet, handmade, vintage, and anything else you might be interested in. Interact with them by reblogging (explained below), liking (also explained below), and answering posted questions and you’ll find that your network will start to grow. Since Tumblr is a social media site, the Golden Rule of Social Networking applies - you’ve got to listen to others and interact with them if you want them to listen to you.

Post interesting content. Tumblr allows for the following types of posts: text, photos, quotes, links, chats, audio, and video. Be as varied as you can and post as much visual content as possible. Make use of the tag feature so that people searching for a specific topic can find you. Similar to the retweet feature on Twitter, Tumblr has a “reblog” feature. People that like your posts can reblog them, posting them on their own Tumblr blog. Credit is automatically given to you for the post and you can track how many people do this by looking at the notes Tumblr adds to each post. Interesting quotes and beautiful pictures seem to be reblogged often, so make sure that your content is brief and visually stimulating if you want it to go viral.

Reblog and favorite other people’s posts. (Remember the Golden Rule of Social Networking?) Reblogging is a great way to show other Zibbeters and handmade artists that you appreciate their content. If you find something exceptional, reblog it on your own blog. There is also a feature for you to “heart” or “like” others’ posts. Liking can be another way to help promote fellow Zibbeters and put interesting content on your blog. One of the features of the template I use is to have my five most recent likes show up in a column on the side of my blog page. It’s a great way to show love to a post that I don’t necessarily feel the need to reblog.

Don’t only advertise yourself. If you’re reblogging and favoriting other’s posts you’re probably not making this error, but it’s still worth mentioning. Just like on a regular blog or on Twitter, people tend to listen to people who post more than a constant stream of shop advertisements. Post work of other people that you find exciting, throw in some inspirational quotes, cool recipes, or YouTube tutorials - make the actual posting of your own work less frequent and it will have a greater impact. You’ll pull followers from more interest areas (and not be dismissed as a spammer) if you do more than just post links to items from your shop.

Keep it fresh. Tumblr has a scheduling feature that allows you to set items to post in the future. Take advantage of this and spread out some of your posting to achieve maximum exposure without flooding your followers’ dashboard feeds with post after post from you. I try to have a few posts in my queue ready to go at all times. My Tumblr automatically posts something from my queue every five hours, keeping my blog updated even when I’m not around. You can set up the scheduler to post however frequently or infrequently you like and you can even define the hours within which you want your content to be posted.

Consider utilizing the directories. You can either get yourself in the inspiration directory by asking your followers to support you or you can pay for inclusion in one of the other directories starting at $9. Don’t feel like paying? (Yeah, me neither. I love free things.) Then simply follow some of the people in directories that interest you. It’s a great way to target who you follow so that you make friends with similar interests and always find cool things to reblog.

Currently, Zibbet has a rather small presence on Tumblr. However, using these tips and ensuring that each post is appropriately tagged will increase our visibility on the site, which is great for everyone. Handmade and vintage seem to be popular topics, so I definitely encourage every Zibbeter to take advantage of that niche!

Best wishes for much success on Zibbet!

My Dog Blogs Necklace by Kristy Lynn Jewelry on Zibbet

Vicki is committed to assisting her fellow Zibbeters improve their shops for successful online selling. She is the owner of three Zibbet shops: LOC Design Studio, Denim and Pearls and A Stitch and a Prayer. You can follow Vicki on Twitter and through her LOC Design Studio blog.

Tags: Blog, Branding, Microblog, social networking, Success on Zibbet, Tumblr, Twitter