Three Dot Dash

Email us and we’ll help you out!

Rosie: rosiesiman@gmail.com

Stacy: stacykfuller@yahoo.com

Faris: farisyakob@gmail.com

WHY BLOG?

The most popular blogging platforms are Blogger, TypePad and Wordpress. But Tumblr is getting a lot of attention in the past year due to ease of use and social component.

It’s a great option for first time bloggers due to simple posting functions:

           Photo (almost half of all posts), text, link, quote, music, or video

Similarly to twitter, Tumblr encourages users to update brief amounts of content frequently. Mobile functions aid in users posting on the go.

Tumblr is a marriage between blogging and social networking.

The social component is built in several ways:

1. Followers- anytime you visit a tumblr blog you can add the blogger to your dashboard to see entries as they’re posted

2. Reblog- a tool that allows you to incorporate another blogger’s content into your blog post

3. Radar- Tumblr currates the most reblogged posts from the week to highlight the most popular content

4. Meet Ups- Gatherings for “Tumblrs” to meet in real life

5. Aggregation- Ability to import content to other social networking sites similar to an RSS feed. Tumblr also imports content from twitter, so the users Dashboard can become a hub of digital news feeds

Tumblr also allows users to add an analytics tool, such as google Analytics to track users. Analytics is an important tool for any blogger as it helps you optimize your content to see what’s popular, when people visit the most and where traffic is coming from.

- Create your own Tumblog by visiting Tumblr.com

- Share something: Find a link, picture, quote or write your own text to post to your Tumblog

- Join this group, by clicking the following link: http://www.tumblr.com/join/hetnJho7W5

- Once you’ve posted something and joined the group, add a post to the Three Dot Dash tumblr group providing the link to your tumblog with a brief description.

- Follow your friends

Follow the instructions here to set up google analystics on your tumblr blog:

http://www.tumblr.com/docs/en/google_analytics

Sign Up: http://twitter.com

• Pick a username that’s short and easy to remember and unique to you.
• We are @rosiesiman @faris & @stacykfuller

Search: http://search.twitter.com

• Use the search feature to see what Twitter’s Trending Topics are
• Search for keywords related to your interests and follow people who are having those conversations

Listorious: http://listorious.com

• Search Twitter lists’ to find already-curated lists like activists, social media for social good, etc.

TweetDeck: http://tweetdeck.com

• Use TweetDeck to aggregate news and followers
• Create internal lists like “IRL” or “Local” 

Twitalyzer: http://twitalyzer.com

• Use Twitalyzer to track your progress and view other stats about your Twitter account

Bit.ly: http://bit.ly

• Sign up for Bit.ly to be able to shorten links and track how many clicks you’ve had
• Add the Bit.ly sidebar to your browser to be able to shorten the address of any page you’re viewing

Twit Pic: http://twitpic.com

• Upload and share pictures using TwitPic
• Use your same twitter username and log-in to gain access to this service

- Write 3 tweets for today. Remember to showcase your personality, but balance it with useful information.

- Follow 10 new people and begin conversations with at least 3 of them.

- Find a link that someone has shared using bit.ly. Add a + sign to the end of the link to track the stats of the link and think about why the link shared had the amount of clicks it did. (Does the user who tweeted have a lot of followers? Was it a link that was particularly timely/relevant?)

Pages: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/#!/pages/create.php

• Create a page for your cause
• Add content. Because this is about your cause, be careful to upload a picture that represents your mission (ie a logo) instead of a personal picture.
• Make it social: Be sure to enable fan posting on your wall

Paypal: http://apps.facebook.com/paypalapps/

• Consider creating a donation widget to add to your page so that people can support your cause

Events: http://www.facebook.com/#!/?sk=events

• Use the ‘Events’ feature on Facebook to create events and invite your friends

- Create a page for your cause

- Add a donation widget so that friends and fans can support your cause

- Find a non-profit on Facebook that you like and see how they’re gaining support; Take one element that you learned from their Facebook page and add that to yours