That’s the social media dream, right? To set it and forget it, and gain thousands of followers without even trying or thinking about it?
To be honest, getting 8k followers on Tumblr in 5 months without ever logging in was never my intention.
Tumblr was distracting me from my “real work” so I thought I needed to take a break. I actually forgot about my account. Then months later thought I’d check up on it. Imagine my surprise when I saw how much it had grown.
The last time I was on I only had 500 followers. I spent that entire day studying analytics, reblogging cool pictures, and optimizing my Tumblr page to drive traffic back to my website.
Though it seems like my Tumblr blew up on its own, there was actually a very important seed that I planted, and several strategies that I implemented, that made it’s growth possible.
Let me show you how I did it. I’ve broken it down into 7 easy steps.
Oh and here are some pictures so you know I’m not just blowing steam.
This is my account back in early 2016 with only 300 followers.
And here’s my account in Oct 2016 with just over 8,000 followers.
And just since rediscovering my Tumblr and writing this article I’ve gained another 500.
Steps to grow your Tumblr account
Choose your niche
The very first step to growing your Tumblr blog is to narrow your niche. Blogs that have specific topics tend to do better and attract more attention.
Colorful Gradients and Ghost Photographs are both examples of a super narrow niche.
But you also want to make sure to choose a niche that you’re passionate about — I mean that’s kinda the whole point in the first place.
Your niche determines what sort of content you will be posting.
Also, you don’t necessarily have to use the same exact niche as your main blog or website (if you have one). For example, my main blog Launch Your Dream is about following your dreams and it’s mostly focused on how to start a successful blog.
My Tumblr blog, Eli Seekins, is also about following your dreams but is more focused on travel, adventure and lifestyle.
The trick is to find something narrow that you enjoy.
For more tips on picking your niche, check out my post: How To Discover Your Perfect Niche (the Blogging Wizard — Adam — drops a mega helpful tip over there as well).
Know your brand
Your Tumblr is an extension of your brand, whether you are just starting one or already have one.
You want your brand to have a clear message. You need an edge — something that other brands don’t have. You need to know your values, what you stand for, and your mission.
That way you will always know what sort of content to post. Your brand will be clear and thorough, and people will get it.
When people get it, they have a better chance of connecting. And when they connect, they have a better chance of engaging and even sharing.
Knowing your brand also means knowing your audience. Who are you trying to reach? What sort of content do they like most?
(My brand is about following your dreams, travel, adventure, and lifestyle. I’m reaching out to young people who want to do something big with their lives. I value things like working hard, taking risks, and making a difference in the world.)
Here are 3 brands that are crushing it on Tumblr:
All three of these brands know who they are and who their audience is, and they do a great job of translating that over to their Tumblr.
For more help with branding, check out: 9 Tips for Creating an Awesome Brand
Follow popular accounts in your niche
A great way to find good content to repost, and to find out what people in your niche are responding to, is to check out the popular blogs in your niche.
It’s pretty easy to find them. Just look for the blogs who are posting a lot every day, who get lots of notes, and have a large following.
To get started just search for different keywords.
And check out the different accounts.
I’d follow anywhere from 50 – 100 blogs right away.
Reblog quality content 1 – 3 times a day (by using your queue)
One of the greatest tools in Tumblr is your queue.
You can fill it with up to 300 posts, and set a certain amount of those posts to automatically publish throughout different times of the day.
In my opinion, your queue is perfect for filling up with loads of content to reblog (reblog means to repost someone else’s content on your Tumblr blog). And I just schedule my original stuff. That way I’m always sharing content, and I can schedule my content to post whenever I want and at peak times.
I often experiment with reblogging anywhere from 1 – 50 posts a day.
For those 5 months that I didn’t log into my account, when I gained 8,000 followers, I had about 200 reblogs in my queue set to share 1 photo a day at 9pm. And I wasn’t even sharing any original content.
Typically the bigger your audience grows the more content you can post. I don’t recommend sharing more than 3-5 posts a day until you get your first 1,000 followers.
You can find good content to reblog on the popular blogs that you’ve followed, by searching keywords in the search bar, or just by checking out your dashboard feed.
Then all you have to do is hit the queue button.
You can change your queue settings over in the menu on the right.
Include relevant hashtags
Hashtags in Tumblr are the keywords that make your posts searchable. They’re very important for getting your content seen.
You can find popular hashtags by doing a search and seeing what people are looking for.
And by typing in different tags in a post to see what people are using.
Make sure that you use tags that are popular and relevant to your niche AND relevant to the content you are tagging. Just so you know only the first 20 tags that you use are actually searchable (source).
Use a call to action
I was surprised by how few people were using call to actions when I first started implementing these strategies. Since then, it seems like some popular accounts in my niche have caught on though.
That’s because call to actions are powerful. It’s how this post has gotten almost 15,000,000 notes, by simply saying “pass it on”.
It’s great if your posts get a lot of attention, but if your viewers aren’t doing anything after they see your content what’s the point? Don’t you want them to take action?
All of your posts should include some sort of call to action, whether it’s to bring viewers to your Tumblr blog, to your main site, or somewhere different — or even to just get likes and reblogs.
At first, I felt kinda weird putting call to actions on other people’s content that I was reposting, but it’s ok to do if you do it right. And it can make a big difference. Just make sure to be genuine. For example, don’t repost someone’s original photo and use it to promote your ebook or video course. That’s kinda sleezy. But leaving a call to action on reblogs to like, reblog, or check out more of your posts is totally ok and can increase your engagement and get you more followers.
Editorial Note: always ensure that the creator of images you share retain credit. It can sometimes be difficult to to figure out who originally shared something on Tumblr – reblog’s usually link to the person who you reblogged it from. But we recommend trying to credit the original author if you can. And whatever you do, never remove a credit link. And try to share original content when you can – you’ll get more traction if you do.
For more tips on how to write good call to actions check out these posts:
- Hook, Line, and Sinker: 7 Tips for a Killer Call-to-Action
- 5 Ways to Write Magnetic Call-to-Actions in Just 5 Minutes
- 21 Call to Action Examples and 3 Rules for Effective CTAs
- 31 Call-to-Action Examples You Can’t Help But Click
Use keyboard shortcuts to supercharge the speed of your workflow
I’m gonna be honest, filling up your queue with hundreds of posts is a lot of work — it eats up your time. I even considered quitting Tumblr for good because of how much time it takes.
One of the things that bothers me the most is that you can’t copy paste hashtags. You have to type each one in individually. And if you’re using 5 – 20 tags per post and have 300 posts in your queue…. that’s a lot of typing hashtags.
It took me a little bit of time to figure out, but I have my Tumblr workflow down to a system. I can’t even imagine how much time it saves me.
It’s all based on Mac Mastro (I use a mac, but if you’re a pc guy check out AutoHotkey or Quick Macros). This app allows me to save multiple different presets of titles, tags, and call to actions into keyboard shortcuts. So all I have to do is press a button combination on my keyboard and everything is automatically typed out for me. That way I don’t have to keep typing the same things over and over again hundreds — even thousands of times.
I’ll show you what I mean…
Here’s an example of my workflow, hotkeys, and scripts that I use.
1. Find a post to reblog
2. Add a call to action with a hotkey
Mac Mastro allows you to save multiple different actions to one hotkey, that way when you press the hotkey you can just click whichever one you want to use, then it types it for you.
3. Format your CTA and add a link if appropriate (again using a hotkey)
4. Add tags (using a hotkey)
5. Add to queue and you’re done
The whole process takes a matter of seconds and dramatically decreases the amount of time it would normally take.
To create a new hotkey with Mac Mastro:
1. Go to File and then New Macro.
2. Add a new hotkey trigger. And then press whatever keys you want your hotkey to be.
3. Add a new action
4. Search for and click “ Execute an AppleScript”
5. Insert your script
