22 May 2013
How To Copy All Your Instagrams To Flickr
Instagram’s exploding popularity is having long-time iPhoneography buffs pay notice and watch in horror as mainstream users cannot get enough of its crappy filters and the obscenely low 612×612 pixel resolution. And with Facebook and Android now in the picture, no wonder some early adopters go to the extremes of closing their account while others, like Apple’s marketing honcho, stopped using Instagram for it“jumped the shark”.
To the most ardent fans, the last straw was Instagram’s confusing handling of the recent terms of service changes - even if it was much ado about nothing.
If you’ve been seriously contemplating importing your Instagrams over to Flickr but were put off by the tedious manual uploads – worry not, turns out there are a few ways to get that job done without too much fuss. iDB has you covered with this quick guide to bringing in all your Instagram photos to Flickr with just a few clicks…
I’ve tested a bunch of services which take the pain out of importing Instagram snaps into Flickr, having narrowed the choices down to two super simple web apps. The whole process boils down to authorizing a service to access your Instagram and Flickr account, choosing where to import the images on Flickr and setting your album privacy.
That’s all there is to it, really.
Flickstagram
Flickstagram is easy. Just sign in with both your Instagram and Flickr account, choose a privacy level for the imported photos (Public, Friends and Family, Family or Private) hit the Go! button and walk away.
Flickstagram lets you set your Flickr set’s privacy level prior to importing.
A few moments later, depending on the size of your Instagram library, all your Instagrams should appear in a Flickr set titled ‘Instagram Photos’. Of course, your Instagram photos are kept intact and will continue to be available online.
Free The Photos
Free The Photos is powered by CloudSnap and is very similar to Flickstagram. Upon signing in with both your Instagram and Flickr account, check the “Alert me once my migration finishes” box and type in your email address where you’ll receive an alert once the migration is finished.
Hit the big Free Your Photos button and you’re done.
Free The Photos notifies you via email once it’s done importing your Instagrams.
Note that imports take anywhere between a few minutes to hours. Your mileage will vary depending on the size of your Instagram. And privacy freaks needn’t worry: neither Flickstagram nor Free The Photos will store, keep or use your photos or data because everything is streamed directly from Instagram to Flickr.
And because both services preserve meta data, the imported Flickr photos will include your Instagram captions, comments, location data and the original photo date. Even Instagram hashtags get converted to Flickr tags, which is a nice touch.
19:01 0
How Will Yahoo's Purchase of Tumblr Affect Advertisers?
By Mary Lisbeth D'Amico at ClickZ:
Yahoo's acquisition of Tumblr for $1.1 billion, announced today, will bring together Yahoo's financial resources and backend technology with the reach of one of the Web's fastest growing and hippest blogging platforms.
But with a concrete monetization strategy for Tumblr still in the works—and a need to not alienate Tumblr' youthful, ad-adverse audience—digital marketers will likely have a wait ahead of them before they see more advertising opportunities on the platform.
"As with any platform so loved by its user base, Yahoo and Tumblr must tread cautiously," says Ming Linsley, senior director, social media at media agency MEC.
But she also sees many benefits in the tie-up. Yahoo's backend infrastructure will enhance Tumblr's ability to help advertisers measure the impact of their ad campaigns on the platform, she said, while gaining access to Tumblr's 18-34 year old audience as well a successful mobile app. "There are so many visual opportunities with Tumblr," she says. Tumblr has more than 300 million monthly unique visitors and more than half of them use the mobile app for an average of seven sessions per day.
But Roj Niyogi, co-founder and CEO at Perk, a loyalty web browser company, believes that if Yahoo pushes too hard to sell ads on the platform, users could flee to new competitors such as Svbtle and Medium.
"Yahoo acquiring Tumblr only provides Yahoo the fuel and potential to thrive, but nothing more," he said. "The question is whether or not users will abandon the Tumblr ship because alternatives exist or see true value in Tumblr despite the impending monetization strategy Yahoo/Tumblr has for it."
In a conference call today, Yahoo executives roughly detailed their plans for beefing up the advertising on the site by 2014, which reportedly only saw about $13 million in revenue last year. CEO Marissa Mayer said the company will explore unusual formats, including running ads with the explicit permission of selected bloggers.
Tumblr first introduced native ads in April 2012 and, more recently, introduced sponsored posts into its mobile app.
In a statement announcing the deal, Meyer also said that Tumblr users will be able to use Yahoo's personalization technology and search infrastructure to help discover content, while Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts to Yahoo's network and search.
Mayer also stressed that Tumblr will remain independent, with David Karp remaining as CEO and that the "product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators."
Perk's Roj says he sees potential if the companies develop in-stream advertising similar to that recently introduced by Yahoo on its homepage, which are embedded into their Twitteresque newsfeed. "Similar strategies implemented on Tumblr could help strike the right balance and not have Tumblr users running to competing services," Roj said.
Greg Kahn, chief business development officer at, MXM, a customer engagement agency, is optimistic that well-crafted native ads on Tumblr will not scare a significant portion of its user base.
"Facebook and Twitter may have had some people drop off the platform since the introduction of native ads, but I think both are still incredibly relevant. Consumers are starting to understand that they need to pay for content in one form or the other, either through advertisements or premium subscriptions," he said.
18:48 0
Flickr Gets A Makeover — It's Been Supersized And Instagrammed
Today, under the guidance of new CEO Marissa Mayer, the company has given the oft maligned image-sharing community a major facelift. Yahoo’s announcement promises a Flickr that’s “more spectacular, much bigger, and one you can take anywhere.”
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the grid. Here’s what’s new on your Flickr account:
Room To Grow
As recently as yesterday, free Flickr users could upload and display 200 images at a time. Now every user has one terabyte of storage space. For those of you playing along at home, that’s enough for roughly 200,000 photos. Or as the Flickr staff puts it even more dramatically, “you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one.”
Following Flickr’s consistently freemium model, you can get even more perks by going pro. Fifty dollars will remove all advertisements. And for the serious professional, $499.99 will double your storage space to two terabytes per year. Or, you know, more than 400,000 photos.
If you already had an original Flickr Pro account, priced at $24.95, you’re getting a heck of a deal. Yahoo has upgraded you to the $49.99 option until August 2013, free of charge. Pro user Aaron Brazell sent us a screenshot of his pro account, pictured below:
Introducing The Grid
The most instantly noticeable change is an aesthetic one. Your photos have enlarged themselves to jaw dropping size and now dominate the screen. Taking a cue from Instagram, your home page is now an infinite scroll through your contacts’ recent photos.
Your profile page has also gone the way of Pinterest and Windows 8, filling the page with a grid of images. Just like Facebook and Twitter, your profile page includes a background photo to offset your profile picture.
I found that Flickr had already put one of my Favorites as my background image, a photo I didn’t even take myself. As it’s not credited, I certainly hope the photographer doesn’t take issue.
Wait, What’s Going On?
A lot here has changed and Flickr power users are still trying to figure out what’s new. Flickr’s most active discussion forum, Flickr Central, is abuzz with comments about the change. Given that these are the people that continued to daily use Flickr even as the rest of the Internet complained it was dead, it’s no surprise they’re unhappy with the change.
“I signed on Flickr to post a story about Yahoo vowing not to screw up Tumblr … and then I see the clusterfuck that is the new homepage,” one user wrote.
Meanwhile, confusion abounds at Flickr’s official Help Forum. I’d be amazed if the staff can answer all 1,100 plus questions that were added in the last hour. It looks like Yahoo might want to update Flickr’s FAQ guidelines, which still link to old news like the ability to pay $24.95 for a pro subscription.
If you're confused, don't add to the backlog. I have reached out to Yahoo for details on when the new FAQ will be up and will update when we know more.
18:42 0
#INFOGRAPHIC: How to Use 10 Social Networks to grow Your Personal Brand
05:59 0
21 May 2013
33 Blogging Tips to Maximize Social Media Reach
Via Heidy Cohen Blog:
While many bloggers think that blogging is about lovingly crafting each post, the reality is that you need to promote your content to ensure each post reaches its widest possible audience. To this end, think outside the blog.
Since social media feeds on a never-ending stream of content, it’s ideal for accomplishing this goal.
Here are thirty-three tips for using social media to expand your blog’s readership by driving traffic from an array of platforms.
1. Claim your name on various social media platforms. Where appropriate, register your blog’s name separately.
- Complete each social media profile. Let people know who’s behind the avatar. Also, include at least one personal detail.
- Link to your blog in each social media profile. Include your blog address (aka URL).
- Use blog keywords in your social media description. Enhance your social media optimization by consistently employing your top keywords.
- Continue your blog’s branding. Make your social media profile is recognizable by incorporating your logo and/or blogger headshot.
2. Include social media sharing buttons on your blog. Make it easy for readers to share your blog content. If they have to jump through hoops in terms of remembering passwords or signing in, you’re hurting your content’s sharability.
- Add social sharing buttons at the top and bottom of your post. Reduce reader hurdles. Don’t make readers scroll to the top to share your content.
- Thank fans publically. Make social connections who share your blog posts feel good by giving them a shout out of recognition on social media.
3. Make an appointment to engage and share content regularly on social media. Don’t leave your social sharing activity to chance nor let it consume hours of your time.
- Create a social media sharing schedule. Set a time and mark it on your calendar to check in on what’s being said on social media and to share information. Make this part of your daily work routine to streamline your activity and be consistent. This is a good activity to do when you have small chunks of time such as commuting and between meetings. (Here’s the lowdown on creating a social media editorial calendar.)
- Aim to show up on social media at least once a day. Use this time to share and/or schedule content. Even better is to stop by three times a day such as morning, noon and close of business.
- Keep your blog-related social media time separate from your personal social media interactions. One easy way to accomplish this is avoid personal use of social media during your work hours.
4. Give your social media shares the personal touch. While you can set up automated social shares, it’s more personal to provide contextually relevant commentary to information you share.
- Provide contextually relevant social sharing. Tailor your social shares to the social media platform and avoid the cookie cutter approach.
- Use the power of your community to help spread the word. For this, Triberr is useful.
5. Leverage the power of images on social media platforms. Images are powerful tools to draw prospects into your blog posts.
- Use images to attract readers. Include at least one image per post. This is most important for Facebook and Pinterest.
- Create tailored, shareable images. Ian Cleary of Razor Social recommends using PicMonkey to incorporate text into your image.
6. Respond to social media comments related to your blog posts. Encourage followers who’ve shared your content by answering comments on the appropriate social media platform.
- Thank people who share and comment on your blog posts publically. This is a great way to build your community.
- Let people know that you’ve referenced them in your blog posts.Give them a social media shout out.
7. Be a good social media citizen. Participate on social media beyond sharing your own content.
- Engage in social media activities. Become part of the community. Be selective and interact in one or more social media forums. One benefit is that, once people get to know you, they are more likely to share your content.
- Help others on social media. Answer other people’s questions and where appropriate, share a link to a relevant blog post.
8. Avoid the “Me, Me, Me” on social media. Mix up the content you share. Don’t limit your social media activity to promoting just your own content.
- Curate other bloggers’ posts to help establish your authority in the field. In Peggy Fitzpatrick’s words, “Being generous with other’s content helps your own content and your social media karma.”
- Space your social media shares over time. You don’t want to fill up other people’s social media streams with your blog posts in a short period of time since this will tick them off.
9. Test different strategies. Don’t just continue to do the same thing because it’s what you’ve always done.
- Monitor what other bloggers are doing on social media. Keep an eye on other bloggers’ social media activity to get ideas for how to expand your own use of these platforms. Understand that social shares aren’t necessarily the best measure of success.
- Modify your social media approach. Test using different forms of content and posting times.
10. Track your results. Don’t just guess what’s working, really measure your progress.
- Use a social media call-to-action. This helps prod readers to read and share your content.
- Measure blog activity related to your goals. Count actions that contribute to sales.
To maximize the readership of each blog post, use social media consistently and effectively but avoid excessive self-promotion.
What are your favorite tips for using social media to distribute your blog posts?
Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen
Heidi Cohen
01:26 1
Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. Amazon vs. Skydrive: Which One Is Fastest?
As cloud computing services become ever more popular, you might begin to wonder how much you can really trust them to perform when you need them? I decided to find out - by testing the top file-transfer/file-storage/file-backup services.
In many ways, getting a file from one computer to multiple computers is the most challenging task for the cloud. And because I like to use multiple computers running multiple operating systems, including Linux, Windows and the Mac, that function is particularly important to me.
Cloud Services Can Lag
I am pretty agnostic when it comes to cloud providers - as long as they are free or close to it. However, as I was moving files around while preparing my most recent book A Week at the Beach The 2013 Emerald Isle Travel Guide I was a little surprised at the lags I sometimes experienced using the big-name cloud-based file-transfer services.
More than once when I wanted to use a file from one computer to another, I was disappointed by my cloud services. There were a few times that I got so tired of waiting for a file to show up on my other computer’s cloud drive that I resorted to sneakernet using a USB thumb drive.
After my book was published, I decided to go back and run some simple tests to see just how long the four best-known file-transfer/backup services actually take to put the files where you want them.
To compare Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud, and Microsoft’s SkyDrive I started by exporting a 500K JPEG test image from Lightroom on my Windows 8 computer directly to each of the four services.
Fighting The Randomization Factor
After running the tests a few times, I noticed what can only be described as random operating system differences. Sometimes the file would pop up first on my Mac and other times it showed up first on my Windows 7 laptop.
In order to eliminate the operating system differences, I restarted the tests and this time stopped the timer when the file showed up on either my Mac running Mountain Lion or my Windows 7 laptop. I also reran my tests with a variety of sizes and types of files. In all I ran twenty-five sets of tests.
The differences were significant, if not overwhelmingly huge. The fastest synchs took less than 3 seconds, while a few others took several minutes. The biggest chunk of tests clocked in between 10 seconds and one minute. A few synchsnever completed. But which service recorded the best times with the fewest problems?
Dropbox FTW!
Dropbox ended up being fastest 56% of the time. Even more importantly, it was slowest only 4% of the time.
Skydrive brought up the rear. It was fastest on 12% of the tests, but but slowest on a whopping 80% of the tests. It also had two files that never showed up on the Mac and one that never showed on the Windows 7 laptop.
The Amazon Cloud slightly outpaced Google Drive - which had one file that never showed up on the Mac and another that took a very long time to complete.
If my tests convinced me of anything, it is that Skydrive is a work in progress and has a long way to go. I even had trouble setting up the tests on Skydrive.
My tests also revealed a number of odd results. When testing files saved from Word, strange extra files sometimes showed up on all the cloud drives except Dropbox. The file names always began with the characters “~$”. Sometimes the mystery files disappeared and sometimes they hung around.
Cloud Drive Recommendations
So here are some quick recommendations:
- First, do not treat your cloud drive as one huge dumping ground. Create folders and try to force a little organization on yourself.
- If you save a file to the cloud in order to work on it from another computer, quit the application or close the file on the first computer after you have saved the file to the cloud drive.
- Make sure you have a local copy of important files in your documents folder - not just the replicated cloud folder on your computer. Interesting things sometimes happen when cloud files get updated or deleted from another computer. When you come back to the computer where you first created a file, you could be in for a nasty surprise.
- If you cannot get a cloud folder on your computer to update, trying quitting the cloud application or rebooting your system.
Dropbox and Amazon appear to be the most reliable solutions with only occasional delays. Google isn't far behind, and I can't imagine that Microsoft won't work hard to improve Skydrive - the company's subscription model depends on it.
Even so, I have no plans to throw away my USB thumb drives.
01:15 0
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