Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Tumblr Chief Executive David Karp. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

The platform, founded by David Karp in 2007, is home to more than 108 million blogs and more than 50 billion individual posts. Tumblr pages take seconds to set up, and users range from individuals likeJohn Green to companies like IBM. Even the White House has a Tumblr.

Tumblr makes it easy for users to post quickly, and those posts can be just about anything, like a long text post, a photo with a link or a video. Because of Tumblr’s versatility — and because it lets users interact with one another — many news organizations have joined and made Tumblr blogs to share their coverage or communicate with their audiences. There’s room for blogs with just about any purpose, so here’s a look at how several outlets use the site.

Answering readers’ practical questions

The San Francisco Chronicle uses its Tumblr not as a platform to share content but as a means to address subscriber service concerns. Now that the site has a paywall for SFChron, it helps both paying subscribers, as well as those who follow the Chronicle on its main website, SFGate.

Matt Dickon, who runs the Chronicle’s service Tumblr and Twitter accounts, said he prefers to respond to subscriber and reader concerns on Tumblr rather than through an email service, because of the immediacy of sending and receiving messages on Tumblr.

“Sometimes within a minute of a question coming in, I’m writing an answer,” he said by phone. Anyone with a Tumblr account can send a message or question, under their handle, to the account; those without an account can submit a question anonymously.

Dickow said using Tumblr for troubleshooting is more direct than an email submission and reporting process because the questions come straight to him rather than being sent to a general email address and then sorted by a software program.

He can also answer questions and post them publicly on the Tumblr; as long as the questions are general concerns, the information is be applicable to others with similar problems.

“So long as [subscribers] bookmark the page, they have access to the information,” he said.

Engaging audiences and creating new content

Audience engagement is key to the success of an outlet’s Tumblr. Two Tumblrs in particular exemplify good audience engagement: NPR’s family of Tumblrs, and I Love Charts.

NPR has built a group of Tumblr blogs, from a general NPR Tumblr to Tumblrs for programs like Fresh Air and Wait Wait.. Don’t Tell Me. Each blog is run by different teams, but they follow a similar layout and design style so the group looks unified.

“If you look at each one of the Tumblrs, they’re each run differently,” Wright Bryan, an editor on NPR’s social media desk, said by phone. Bryan was part of the team that made the first, general NPR Tumblr.

I spoke with Bryan and Kate Myers, NPR’s product manager for social media, about NPR’s all-purpose Tumblr and several user submission projects the station has run.

“We are using Tumblr as an editorial engine,” Myers said by phone. She explained that several NPR campaigns run through Tumblr – like the “Dear Mr. President” campaign – were made possible because NPR is used to this sort of user engagement, and because its existing audience is invested in the station.

For example, I explained to Bryan and Myers that I had grown up listening to NPR with my family, but once I went to college, I no longer had a car and didn’t listen to the radio in my spare time. However, I still feel a connection to NPR and follow it on Tumblr and my other social media accounts.

“I’ve heard that story so many times,” said Bryan. “Now the only way that this group of people [younger people] is getting our content is on the Web, on a podcast, through social platforms…It’s critical that we be there, I think, to meet those people where they are.”

Myers agreed, and said that engagement on social media platforms fits with NPR’s overall strategy to engage listeners. Developing a relationship with listeners on the radio is a one-way conversation; interaction between the station and listeners on Tumblr is a “natural outgrowth” of that relationship, she said.

“You feel like it’s a one-on-one conversation,” she said of NPR’s programming.“[It] sends the message that we’re invested in what they bring to the table.”

Evidence of the listener-station relationship is evident in several NPR projects run through Tumblr. Morning Edition’s “Cook Your Cupboard” Tumblr helps listeners figure out what they can rustle up with leftover or odd foodstuffs. She-Works, another NPR Tumblr, is a congruent effort with the “Changing Lives of Women” series that airs on several NPR programs. They also use the general Tumblr to hype NPR apps and special projects.

Another Tumblr, I Love Charts, leverages the same kind of content submission, and also allows for guest curation. The blog is full of niche content: if it’s data, emotion or some other quantifiable information expressed in a chart or graph, it’s relevant to the blog.

“We’re just lucky to have a very identifiable angle,” Jason Oberholtzer, who runs the Tumblr, said by phone.

Oberholtzer finds and reblogs content on his own, but he also uses submissions for a significant portion of the blog’s content. “We have a fairly large community of submitters,” he said.

Oberholtzer also explained that he lets some bloggers curate the blog for a day as a “chartist-in-residence,” which means they’re in charge of all the content published on the blog. They can reblog content or upload original work. Chartists have included Dante Shepherd of Surviving the World, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and The Weekly Weinersmith and artist Wendy MacNaughton.

“I give them the day,” Oberholtzer said. “The general guidelines are, we try to get out 10-12 posts a day… [and] they have access to our entire inbox of submitted charts.”

The success of I Love Charts has helped Oberholtzer in other ventures; he was offered a column by Forbes after running I Love Charts for about a year and a half, and there’s now an “I Love Charts” book, based on the blog.

Sharing content, regardless of source

The nature of Tumblr comes down to sharing content with followers. Most, if not all, news Tumblrs share others’ content in addition to their own coverage.

“We can’t cover everything, and we don’t report on everything… [that] doesn’t mean that another story isn’t worth attention,” Colleen Shalby, social media editor for PBS NewsHour, said in a phone interview. Shalby said the NewsHour Tumblr doesn’t just share its own content; it reblogs (shares a post from another Tumblr) or posts links to other outlets’ coverage.

One of the most popular posts from their Tumblr, a Roger Ebert quote posted after he died, “wasn’t even our piece of content.” Sharing others’ content isn’t just about getting notes, however.

“Using Tumblr is a bit about showing your organization’s personality, and that’s not just feeding the beast to get people back to the website,” she said.

Another outlet, native to Tumblr, uses the website to share media news. The Future Journalism Project, run by Michael Cervieri, shares news from other outlets by virtue of its positioning and angle.

“I had played with Tumblr beforehand, just kind of personal stuff, so I kind of knew what the community was like on there,” said Cervieri in a phone interview. “The decision was, let’s go to where the community is and see if we can build an audience.”

Cervieri writes posts about media news to share on the Tumblr, and will frequently reblog posts and add news to them. The Tumblr also aggregates news from other outlets, much like Poynter’s MediaWire blog on our homepage. News organizations have to be sure to share source information about what they’re posting; as Oberholtzer explained to me about I Love Charts, it’s important to be diligent about giving sources proper credit.

In fact, I’ve also tried to strike a balance between sharing our own content, and sharing others’ content, while running the Poynter Institute Tumblr. While I want to share the content we produce, it’s important that our Tumblr isn’t just a feed of the content we’ve published on our website. If it were, it wouldn’t interest people who already read our website, and if we published all of Poynter’s content on Tumblr, those who follow us on Tumblr would have no reason to visit our homepage. That’s why it’s important to have unique content on both.

Sharing one’s own content

While sharing third party content helps to develop voice, publications would have less of an incentive to create Tumblrs if it didn’t present an opportunity to share their own content. For some publications, Tumblr’s quirky and eclectic tone is a reflection of the publication.

“We do view [Tumblr] as a place where we talk about what we love and are interested in, a little bit separate from what we’re covering on a day to day and month to month basis,” Mark McClusky, editor of Wired.com, said about the magazine’s Tumblr in an email interview. “That tone probably is closer to the magazine and website’s tone than some other brands Tumblrs are. We’re a brand that marries the intellectual and the obscure, and that reflects on the Tumblr.”

However, Tumblr also resonates with the voices of other publications that focus on straight news.

“We generally reflect the tone of the Guardian on Tumblr – so sometimes we can be very tongue-in-cheek,” Hannah Waldram, community coordinator for news at the Guardian, said in an email interview. For the Guardian, Tumblr is also a place to publish content that might not make it onto the front page.

“We sometimes do ‘behind the scenes’ posts or extra bits of reporting or insider knowledge on a news story,” Waldram said. Waldram also said the Guardian has covered specific news in greater depth on Tumblr based on the community’s interests. For example, when opposition to SOPA and PIPA was popular on Tumblr, the Guardian’s Tumblr highlighted the publication’s existing coverage.

The Guardian has also launched a special Tumblr project, called English to English, that points out incongruities in English as it’s spoken in the U.K. versus American English. The project takes advantage of Tumblr’s lighter tone as well as user interactivity; it publishes Guardian-produced posts, as well as reader submissions.

Tumblr-specific content is important to other publications’ social media strategy, too.

“One part of our strategy … is creating custom content specifically for social platforms, instead of just re-purposing content,” Anjali Mullany, digital news director for Fast Company, said of the publication’s social media strategy, in an email interview. “We may cover one story different ways for different platforms, or we may cover news on one of our social platforms that we did not cover on our website,” she said in a follow-up email.

Tumblr-specific content isn’t just about providing additional coverage; it also lets users get a behind-the-scenes look at their favorite publications.

“In some ways, Tumblr feels a bit like ‘MinnPost after dark.’ We approach things with more humor or snark — within reason — and try to show the personality of the organization,” Kaeti Hinck, director of news technology at MinnPost, an online-only Minnesota publication, said by email.

For example, during MinnRoast (a roast of the state), the team publishedphotos of speakers to  MinnPost’s Tumblr that weren’t published on the website. And the Tumblr doesn’t just reflect MinnPost’s Minnesota-centric coverage; it also commiserates with its audience.  Hinck said the tone on the Tumblr reflected how MinnPost can relate to users on the platform.

“Minnesota has a strong local Tumblr contingent, so when I took over the MinnPost account a few years back I tried to connect with that community as much as possible. You can’t jump into an ecosystem completely blind to what’s going on around you and expect to be effective,” she said.

Overall, MinnPost’s attitude toward Tumblr reflects what the other publications know, too. Using the platform to promote the exact same content that’s published in print or on their own websites won’t work; instead, the platform is most successful as a tool for audience engagement. In fact, when I asked several of the people in this article what kind of traffic they get from their Tumblrs, they all said that that wasn’t the point of their publication’s Tumblr. Instead, it’s about developing a relationship with the Tumblr audience and sharing new content with their existing audiences.

“It’s so important to pay attention to what your peers and readers are doing on Tumblr, and to support that work,” Hinck said. “It’s a pay-it-forward sort of mentality: The more generous you are with sharing the work and content that other people create, the more your own presence will grow.”

How some news orgs use Tumblr | Poynter..

Certainly this begs the question: how much of our time, effort and money is spent targeting those that aren’t influential with our branding messages hoping to spread the word about our product our service? Is this an effective way to spend our time?

There are key platforms that are known for measuring online influence, the most popular being Klout. It’s primary goal is to build a deeper understanding of personal influence and gauge online the influence of others on the web.

Klout has recently taken their platform and kicked it up notch with a new service being rolled out called Klout for Business. Business will receive complimentary analytics that reflect how and where influencers are engaging with your brand.

Business can access a dashboard that lets you know if you’re engaging key fluencers on social networks where they are most active. Of particular interest, Klout tells you which topics your audience influences others on. This feature helps target your marketing efforts about your brand.

Okay, very illuminating, excellent!

One nagging question remains. Are all influencers that have the same amount of online influence built the same? Do we reach out to these inflencers in the same way? Traackr believes that have an answer and a service that addresses these questions and offer a solution.

Traackr identifies influencer types and suggests engagement strategies targeted to each type of influencer. Check out their infographic the Many Faces of Influence to discover 10 key influencer archetypes and how to get them sharing stories about your brand.

vía How to Find Key Online Influencers | Social Media Today.

When investigating the home, police discovered that Tagle had security cameras installed on the outside and inside of the residence. These video cameras captured the entire incident. According to the video evidence, Rodriguez was tracking the 14-year-old around the room with the gun before pulling the trigger. Rodriguez was immediately arrested and charged with one count of felony injury to a child. He’s currently in jail on a $151,500 bond.

In addition, Tagle was arrested at the hospital and charged with one count of injury to a child with intent to commit bodily injury. This third degree felony charge came with a $40,000 bond, but Tagle was able to come up with enough money to get released from jail last Friday. Police did not mention if the teenager would be returned to the home after the incident.

Texas woman turns to WebMD instead of 911 after son is shot | Digital Trends.

Two years later in November 2008, another $15 million was raised to maintain the momentum as the blog added more journalism resources and local reporting was ramped up across the USA.

The power of celebrity was embraced with politicians, academics and famous power brokers in all areas of business and industry contributing articles to the blog.

It was in June 2011 that the blog’s website traffic passed the doyen of traditional media, the “New York Times” for the first time.

“In just six years new media had disrupted 100 years of traditional media”

Seven years after the first post was published, it was sold to AOL for $315 million to add to its other online blog assets including Engadget, TechCrunch and MovieFone.

Today it’s website traffic is measured at over 77 million visitors per month.

That  blog is Huffington Post.

Tipping point

In the blogging world this was a watershed moment. Never before had so much money been paid for a blog.

New media is replacing and disrupting old media.

The old business model that made many media moguls billionaires and king makers was based upon the rivers of gold which were generated from classified ads. Today it is the website traffic that is creating the cash and the influence is moving online.

Huffington Post was purchased by AOL because of three key elements.

1. Its online and global influence
2. Advertising revenue
3.  Traffic

In one sense this new media is just a variation of old media except that it is online. It is still traffic, eyeballs and advertising.

It just happens to be digital.

The new media models

The new models are not so simple but multifaceted and convoluted. Making money from new media is not a singular approach but often a matrix of multiple opportunities and tactics.

Blogging has evolved rapidly because of the social web and in the past was driven by building email lists which took a lot of time. With the advent of social media their marketing and growth have been supercharged.

Global reach and influence at the speed of a tweet, a Facebook share or a viral video.

To make money from a blog in 2013 you do not have to be a Huffington Post. There are many ways to make a living out of blogging that can enhance your current business and lifestyle that are within everyone’s reach.

Let’s have a look at some of them.

1. Advertising

Just to show that the Huffington Post is not a one off, there are many blogs that generate significant revenue in then millions. One of those is Mashable.

Mashable’s model is based almost exclusively on building huge amounts of traffic that makes it an attractive platform for advertising. Current page views per month total approximately 50 million.  This also means producing a lot of content. To put that in perspective Mashable publishes dozens of articles a day to feed the content beast.

They work hard at optimizing their advertising and  have developed technology for:

• Infinite ad scrolling
• Story telling ads unit
• Content velocity algorithm

This blogging business model is becoming harder as advertising rates fall. But the rewards can be great with some reports that Peter Cashmore is worth nearly $100 Million US and the blog has been valued at $over $200 million.

2. Sponsorship

Suzi Dafnis is the clever business brain behind a very successful blog that targets business women in Australia. It is called the Australian Business Women’s Network.  She must be doing something right! It has just won “Best Australian Blogs Competition” in the business Category.

Sponsorship is the main revenue source with sponsors including American Express, Optus and GoToWebinar.

3. Webinars and Seminars

Social Media Examiner was only started 4 years ago by Mike Stelzner and made its first million dollars within 12 months through paid online webinars. Mike (who by the way is one of the true gentlemen of the blogging world) has used his attention to detail, process and savvy business acumen to create a blog that is now ranked in the top 60 blogs in the world in just 48 months.

Mike knows how to shine the spotlight on others and hence they have returned the favour.

Prior to starting the Social Media Examiner blog Mike had run other blogs and businesses including one on how to “Write White Papers”. Mike has moved into producing conferences, with the recent success of the inaugural “Social Media Marketing World” in  San Diego.

If you want an insight into how he made his blog such a success I would recommend you read his book “Launch – How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition”

4. Speaking

Blogs can be the platform that makes you visible. This includes being invited to speak at conferences, workshops and seminars. Guy Kawasaki uses his blog as an online platform to promote his speaking and his books. 

Guy understands the importance of an online platform for building credibility and marketing his personal brand. He also understands the power of social media and has nearly 1.3 million Twitter followers

5. Books

Tim Ferriss is the author of  the New York Times best seller “The Four Hour Work Week”, which was about creating a success lifestyle in a web world. He has used his blog to launch not just one but three books after the huge success of his first book.

Tim uses his blog as his promotion platform for his books and for engaging and sharing his inspiration for experiments in lifestyle design.

6. Affiliate

Affiliate marketing  is the art of either selling other people’s products on your blog or getting affiliates to sell your products.  Brendon Burchard is one of many who have perfected this art and science.

One of the the key secrets to succeeding in this is building promotional partnerships with powerful online influencers and other bloggers who have significant followings online. Some of the pioneers in this space include Frank Kerns and Jeff Walker.

It can supercharge your revenue. For a further insight into how Brendon achieved success his book “Millionaire Messenger” is worth a read.

Another blogger and podcaster that understands how to use affiliate marketing to create revenue and is worth checking out is Pat Flynn, who is the force behind the blog “Smart Passive Income”

7. Consulting

Mark Schaefer is the force behind the awesome blog “Grow“. He uses his blog as his front door and shingle to his consulting, educating and training business that helps businesses grow by tapping into the marketing power of social media.

He is also the author of  several books including  ”Return on Influence” and “The Tao of Twitter”

8. Online Courses

Amy Porterfield is a blogger and a professional Facebook expert who has created and developed online training which is her main revenue stream. Her flagship course is Facebook  Training 101 – FB Influence. 

She understood the importance of her blog as the online portal to her online courses.

9. eBooks

Darren Rowse is the genius behind Problogger. Not only has he made that blog a business success but also started a Photography Blog called “Digital Photography School” with over 1 million subscribers . His eBooks on “blogging” and “photography” have become his main source of income

Darren makes money from his blog in 12 different ways. So making money from your blog is not just limited to one revenue stream. The challenge is working out how you can monetize with multiple channel sources.

10. Premium content – Paid Membership

Timothy Sykes blog is about how to make money on the stock market and his main source of revenue is by selling premium content which is accessed through paying to be a member on his site.

Premium content that is only accessible via monthly membership is a proven model and another one worth checking out is Psd.Tutsplus.com which is a resource and learning site for those who want to learn photoshop.

11. Sell Products

Tucker Max is a blog and brand that is memorable but maybe for all the wrong reasons. If hedonism is your thing then Tucker Max is is your man. He makes money from the blog in a variety of ways. The main source of income is selling his products on Amazon.

It highlights that even a bad image can be monetised. The creativity is up to you!

What about you?

As we have seen, blogging can  be both a business and an online portal to to express yourself. The challenge is deciding what you want it to be and how can you make it into a business and lifestyle that works for you.

So how do you make money from your blog? What types of revenue models attract you?

Look forward to hearing your stories in the comments below.

Want to learn how to create and market a successful global blog?

My book – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

How to Make Money from Your Blog: 11 Powerful Case Studies | Jeffbullas’s Blog.

In a detailed post, the site’s tech team has published a fairly thorough tick-tock on how the attack was carried out.

This is the opposite of what companies usually do when they experience a security breach. The Syrian Electronic Army, the pro-Assad group that has been attacking the Twitter accounts of many Western media organizations in recent weeks, including CBS News, the BBC, Associated Press, and others). None of those organizations have followed up with any significant disclosure about what happened.

When companies and organizations suffer a computer breach of any kind, the impulse is to keep the details of how it was carried out close to the vest. There are many legitimate reasons for this, not the least of which is that it’s embarrassing. And the details can shed light on internal processes and procedures that might be of value to competitors.

In addition, there’s a public relations consideration. Stories about hacking attacks are negative. If there’s any media coverage, there’s an understandable desire for the coverage to stop. Disclosures about how it happened yield another round of coverage that would otherwise be unwanted. In cases like this, the desire for no coverage wins out.

As one media organization after another has fallen for the Syrian Electronic Army’s tricks, there seemed to be a common thread that ran through the circumstances of each incident. All appear to have fallen prey to some kind of “phishing” attack. These are spoofed emails that look legitimate but which contain attachments or links that are used to gather information like usernames and passwords to carry out the attack.

What The Onion has disclosed is that the attackers in this case used a sophisticated multilayered attack, using information gleaned in the first round to then launch a second that gathers more information, and so on, until at last they had penetrated the target: The Onion’s Twitter account, with a healthy five million followers.

I may have missed something along the way, but this is by far the most detailed account of any of these attacks that I’ve read. And the more people who read it, the better, because eventually the methods used will stop working.

I’ve long thought that there ought to be more transparency from private companies in these matters, especially from media organizations who have a certain amount of accountability to the public that they serve. When hackers thought to be based in China attacked several media organizations, including The Wall Street Journal (which, like this website, is owned by News Corp.) and the New York Times, the apparent intent was to monitor communications about reporting those organizations were doing about Chinese officials and companies.

In the case of the Syrian Electronic Army, the intent was to take advantage of the Twitter followers these organizations have attracted and hijack their accounts to spread political propaganda. The attacks do some short-term damage to reputations, and result in some embarrassing press coverage for a day or so. Usually, no one ever learns anything useful, because the details remain obscured. Yesterday, The Onion changed that. It’s an example we can all learn from.

Why The Onion Is Awesome for Publishing Details of Its Twitter Hack – Arik Hesseldahl – News – AllThingsD.