Growing Your Social Media Following – Tumblr, Google Plus, Twitter and Pinterest Update

It’s been a while since I posted on this blog, last time I posted about social media I promised to post about how to grow a following on Tumblr, Twitter as well as Google plus so I am going to post about that today as well a little info about how I am doing on Pinterest. I have been very busy these past few months and have seen very good results for my main fitness blog since I started focusing on social media marketing. So let’s get this started, I am going to be catching you up to what I have been doing these past few months, what has been working and what I am going to do to improve my following.

How to grow Tumblr followers and views

 

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So the last time I posted about Tumblr my Tumblr blog was doing really well in terms of traffic, everything was on the up and up but soon after that the traffic went down again. I can only explain this by saying that maybe certain tags were bringing in traffic but since tumblr is constantly updated others started getting traffic for those same tags.

 

click to enlarge and see traffic stats

-          Tumblr blogs often do not rank very high on search engine results unless you are looking at the image results which are a totally different story. Tumblr ranks highly for the names of famous social media personalities and celebs, but usually when Tumblr is ranking on the search engines it’s a tag that’s ranking so the person with the most recently updated Tumblr or most shared/reblogged post for that tag which could be a particular celebs or social media personalities name gets the most traffic at that point until someone else is on the front page on that tag. This is why my traffic did not stay high for a long time because I was on the first page for a certain tag than my post was replaced by newer and more reblogged posts on the front page for that particular tag.

-          A good way to track which terms are bringing you the most traffic is to simply have a Google Analytics account for your Tumblr, insert the analytics code in your Tumblr. When you know which tag brings you the most traffic, you simply include that tag by posting more pics relevant to that tag so that your posts are always on the first page of that tag.

-          The reason normal image Tumblr posts do not often rank well in non-image searches is because there are no words in posts, people simply post images or images with quotes but the thing is Google can’t rank and image without knowing what the image is about. So what I usually do is to write a few relevant words under the posts to make sure it’s easier to rank my posts, even if it’s a picture quote I still write down the quote under the picture as a caption so that I may rank for that quote in the search results or so that my posts show up when people search for different things related to that particular quote.

-          If I post a video, I also write down a short description so that it ranks better both on Tumblr and in Google, for the same reason I wrote above for the images.

-          I also put many relevant tags or different variations of the keyword I am trying to rank the image, written post or video for.

-          I post different types of media like written quotes, old images with inspirational quotes or if you have great photoshop skills like gymandmotivation.tumblr.com you can create signature posts that everyone knows are from your blog through branding, so it’s a good idea to have your own style of blogging don’t just copy what others are doing.

-          You can post original images instead of always reblogging and then insert a link to your tumblr on the image so that people click back to your tumblr for some reason many people like clicking on images.

-          Don’t keep asking people to follow you that’s annoying. Just follow many blogs like yours and they often follow back, to make sure they notice you just like their posts, reblog some of them and also send them a message about something you noticed about them or their blog.

-          I have been posting 3 times a day queued to get posted throughout the day between 12pm and 12 am. So I post 3 times within a 12 hour window. Using this method my tumblr is growing at 10 – 15 followers a day, so my followers have been growing by between 300-400 a month. Now these are not impressive numbers buts its growth.

-          Oh and I almost forgot, there are many themes on tumblr try to play around with the code a little and personalize your theme. I took a simple and popular theme on tumblr and personalized it with my own colours and changed the background image to a plain white. Your blog needs to be unique so that people remember it and hopefully follow.

click to see personalized theme

Posting more often is said to grow your tumblr even faster because your posts will always be on the front of peoples dashboards giving them a better chance of being seen therefore a better chance for reblogs and likes, also if you are tagging properly posting more often will get you see in more places if you are using a variety of related tags. I have been posting 3 times per day and many times I queue posts weeks ahead so it’s pretty difficult to find relevant pictures and quotes that meet my standard that I can post more often than 3 times a day and schedule weeks ahead (I would have to schedule 100’s of posts and find 100’s of quotes which is a lot of work). People doing this have seen faster follower gains and more traffic than I am seeing only posting 3 times a day. So try to post like 10 times a day but queue the posts so you don’t spam people, you don’t want all your posts showing up at once in peoples dashboards.

Even though my Tumblr daily Traffic has dropped from my Jan Stats, however the time on site has improved and the pages per visit has increased meaning I have more pageviews  per visit than before and my daily followers have improved slightly. Also I am getting more regular asks than before which is good because the questions I answer are free content and they give me post ideas for my written blog which bring in good traffic. My Tumblr is Killin' It in Da Gym/ check it out, drop me a message if you like those are always welcome. Also as you can see from the title of my Tumblr I am a fitblr so choose a niche you like and blog about that, blogging about everything under the sun makes it difficult to gain followers unless you are a pretty girl, a YouTube celeb or a skinny pretty boy with a cool hairstyle with lots of fan girls.

How to grow twitter followers for free

 

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I am not twitter famous but I have figured out a way to get twitter followers who are interested in the same things I am interested in and are more likely to retweet and click on links that I share. In growing my twitter following I also wanted to connect with people I could actually form friendships with; I did not want to follow celebrities or celebrity wannabe’s. So at some point I was gaining like a hundred followers a day till I reached a follow limit when I had followed more than 2000 people. I will tell you how I was getting a 100 followers per day and the reason why I stopped this approach.

I would follow the hash tag #followforfollow or #followback or some variation of this and I would follow every one of those people. Then I would follow guys who are twitter promoters and get on follow trains basically following everyone who retweeted a certain tweet about people who follow back.  I got lots of followers this way but they were not good followers, because they were just kids wishing to be twitter famous, the problem with people obsessed with being twitter famous is that they copy others tweets, or they tweet crap and they unfollow people as soon as they have many followers making it seem like they are twitter famous when all they did was lie and say they were #followback.

My thoughts back when I was following all these people was that fitness is for everyone “who doesn’t want to get fit?” I thought. I was wrong I soon used http://who.unfollowed.me to find those who unfollowed me or who were not following me back after a while to unfollow all of those bastards.

My next tactic since I was into fitness was to use fitness hashtags to find relevant people to follow. I did that successfully using tags like #fitnessfollow, and #fitfam and #beastmode and various variations of those tags to follow different people interested in fitness. I was just following people because they were into fitness and many of them followed back and it was great but many did not follow back and here's why... Those #fitfam members with alot of followers already stop following back after a while so they get a twitter famous mentality and some start off following back but as soon as they reach like 2000 followers they unfollow people and adopt the loser twitter famous mentality. I did the same to those fitfam fame seeking bastards that I did to the #followback liars I unfollowed their asses. There is a lot of talk about how great the #fitfam is but I have found that only a few are genuine and willing to have real interaction others are there merely to get attention by showing off their bodies and getting attention and compliments.

What I learned from the above experience was to check the persons follow to followback ratio before you follow them if they have too many followers and they are only following back a few, do not follow that person.

To get better followers follow those who follow people who follow you with the same interests. Follow new people who like the same things you do and tweet them whenever you see a tweet you can reply to, retweet tweets you like and favourite tweets from others it gets them to notice you and you can build a twitter relationship from there.

Another tip is to follow famous twitter accounts that are not personal such as accounts like she want the D or a gym motivation twitter accounts in the fitness niche then follow most people who are following them people they are more likely to be people just like you but make sure to check the things I pointed out above to make sure they are not bastards like the rest of the twitter famous wannabe’s.

If you liked my twitter advice make sure you tweet this post and tweet something to me @ZuLuMuScLE I would like to get to know more people.

How grow Google plus followers and get more traffic to your blog from Google plus

 

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Google plus has become my favourite social network this year, I did not understand it much last year but I have grown to love it. I have made a lot of new friends there who I interact with on a regular bases and a lot of people and bloggers have come to know my fitness blog www.zulumuscle.com because of G+. I have had people pitch ideas at me and I have gotten guest posting opportunities to other blog and to my blog through Google plus. It’s a great place for both professional and social relationships.

It is very easy to get more followers for Google plus, all you have to do is find communities on Google plus that are in line with your interests and in my case that is fitness communities. In those fitness communities you will find thousands of people so in order to get them to add you to their circles you have to be a contributor to those communities by posting there regularly, now I am not just talking about posting your own stuff I mean engaging with people there asking questions, answering question, posting helpful link and pictures quotes and relevant videos.

Then as soon as you are a regular and people in those communities recognize you because of your daily helpful posts you will get some who add you to their circle, you can be a good person and add them back (remember you are no celeb), and for others you will need to make the first move and add them and most of them will add you back.

Also just to make sure the chance of them adding you back is high check they circles to see if they are followed by more people than they follow back, if they have less people in their circles than they are in other people’s circles it is unlikely they will follow you back unless you share really good content. Follow as many people as possible and post to your goggle plus daily.

Getting more traffic from Google plus

To get many views to your blog posts just share your posts on all relevant communities when you write them and add a description of what you talk about in the post and why you wrote it, it’s a community so you have to encourage discussion not just drop a link there. Make sure you engage with the community not just drop a link every time you post because your post won’t get many views then. You have to form relationships with people in the Google plus communities so they want to share your stuff because you are their friend and provide helpful information.

Post regularly in communities by sharing all kinds of stuff not just your blog posts; share other google plus users posts as well so that they can share your stuff with their followers if they like it. I always find that I have very few people in common with my followers so if they share my posts to their circle another set of eyes views my post.

Sharing on many related communities will get you traffic and it will give you 1+’s which will make sure your post ranks highly in search engines especially in the results of people in your circles and their circles if they 1+’d your post. SO there are so many benefits to using Google plus and following many people, joining all relevant communities and sharing your posts and other people posts on these communities and forming relationships which all helps you grow your following and 1 pluses and traffic.

Growing Pinterest followers and traffic from Pinterest

 

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I do not have many followers on Pinterest but they are growing slowly and they are are starting to share my pins more regularly. I am going to post a few observations I made while using Pinterest.

Just like the other social networks you have to find a relevant nice to post to and then you have to follow tags in that niche to find people to follow so I would search for gym motivation in Pinterest and find people sharing gym motivation then like their post and repin a few of their pins then I would follow all their fitness related pins, I have found that most people follow back on Pinterest. The only people who don’t follow back are the 100 automatically followed pinners I followed when I first got Pinterest. From the people that I purposefully followed I would say more than 90% have followed back and were it not for my limited time I would put more time into Pinterest and find more like minded people on Pinterest.

I have found that pinning images regularly throughout the day gets me a lot of repins and likes and has increased clicks to my fitness blog even though I post pictures mostly from my Tumblr dashboard from other blogs.

You should add a pin button to your bookmarks bar so that whichever site you are on you can pin images whether or not that site has pin buttons. When you pin posts that have been pinned by others, it usually shows others who have pinned that picture so it’s a good idea to follow those people.

Make sure you don’t put everything together so have different pin boards for different categories for example since I am a fitness blogger I have boards dedicated to female fitness, gym motivation, ripped celebs, bodyweight training, abs workouts etc. Another good idea is to have a cool image as the cover for each board. Income diary wrote some good posts on getting pinterest traffic and having personalised pin board covers with written titles http://www.incomediary.com/the-beginners-guide-to-seeing-massive-pinterest-traffic.

So that is it for now, as I learn more I will share more on this blog. It’s pretty difficult to be on so many different social networks at the same time and be able to grow your following and traffic from each of them that’s why each month I focus my attention on two social networks more than the others that is Google Plus and Tumblr (recently) as they give me some good traffic which sticks around on my blog for longer. I am sure with more work Pinterest can be a gold mine just as was revealed in the income diary post I shared above. I do not blog regularly on this blog but that is I have not had time between school and my fitness blog, gym and social media marketing. What I can tell you is since I have started focussing on G+ and Tumblr my fitness blog traffic has grown from like 150-200 visitors a day to 750-1000 visitors a day, now that traffic is not the best in the world but it’s a big growth in traffic, also note that those are just visitors so the page views are even more than that.

Thanks for reading this far, this was a long post (over 3000 words), please share this post if you liked it and add me to your google plus circles and say hi.

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Time Flies Whether You Use It or You Don't

I used to think I had my life all figured out, I thought I knew what I wanted but I was wrong. I always say I have time, I am still young but I know I won’t be young forever. I have always wanted to find some sort of direction, some calling, something for me to chase after and to be passionate about but the only thing I am passionate about at this moment is fitness but what else? I feel there should be something bigger out there that I have to be chasing. I feel I’m capable of achieving whatever I want but the problem is that I don’t know what I want, I guess you could say I am sort of lost.

 

How do you view the concept of time?

In the mean time while I try to find myself I have to study so that I have a secure future, because life is horrible to people without money and education is the easiest and safest way to make money, even though education does not guarantee employment, it increases chances of employment. I have no passion for what I am studying that is the problem because I am not sure if it’s what I want but I can’t just sit around and do nothing.  

What I do know is that I want to be my own boss some day, and I want to live a free, comfortable life. I always hated the idea of following orders without question and always relying on someone else for anything. I am a loner, I am dependent only on myself, and I hate owing people so I will try by all means to make sure I do not owe anybody. Sure sometimes it’s good to let others in and accept help when you need it but it’s not in my nature to ask for help/assistance. Heck there have been times in the past couple years when I should have asked for help and I did not, and I suffered because of it.

 

Do you take advantage of the time you have each day?

I want to start using my time effectively, learn to trust other people and accept and ask for help if there is a need for it. Time really flies; I don’t want to be 30 and have kids without having ever achieved anything or followed my dreams. I don’t want to regret not doing things; I would rather make mistakes and learn from them, than be too cautious and not go anywhere. I feel like I was in High School just yesterday yet it’s been like 4 years, I guess the next thing I will be 30 and feel like 21 was just yesterday as well. Getting older happens without you noticing, it flies by through the good and the bad times, through your failures and successes, the best thing to do is not waste too much time and pursue what you want, even taking the long way around if you know how it’s connected to your ultimate goal. But before you can do all that chasing you have to know what you are chasing after and why...

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You Should Buy a Domain Name for Your Blogspot Blog (ironic isn't it?)

you should buy a domain name for your blogspot blog

I have had my main blog now zulumuscle for just under 17 months, I have seen the traffic grow, because of my efforts such as writing regularly and writing articles elsewhere for link building, commenting on other blogs, submitting articles to article directories and submitting every articles to bookmarking sites. For those same reasons I have seen my blog lose most of its traffic. It has been a journey building, having my house damaged and rebuilding for the past 17 months, I have survived google update after google update, and now it seems my blog is coming out even stronger than before. The first 16 months of my blogs existence it had a blogspot.com after the blog name so that affected it in many ways which I shall discuss below.

blogspot.com domain names suck

Hosting a blog on blogger is affordable well because its free and it is reliable so you know that your site is always available. Just because you are hosting your blog on blogger does not mean you have to have a free domain name that ends with www.blogname.blogspot .com, for 10$ a year you can have a www.blogname.com domain name yet many people fail to buy one. I was one of those people but I always wanted to buy a domain name it’s just that I did not know how I was going to buy it as no one in my household has a credit card (we are against credit cards because you are spending money you don’t have), I tried 4 months in to buy a domain name with my debit card but the bank I was in said the card I had even though it was a visa was unable to purchase things online, I could get paypal because putting money into paypal or receiving money from paypal, heck verifying paypal in my country without having a credit card is a pain in the ass. So you get why I did not purchase a domain name earlier? That was ofcourse until a month or so ago when I found this local website which sold domain name where I was able to pay for my domain name with a local bank card (debit card); I was over the moon and purchased the domain name immediately.

Country specific urls suck

Now let me get back to telling you why blogspot.com free domain suck before I can tell you how me buying a domain name is connected to this whole thing. See early last year blogger made it so if you were using their free blogspot.com domain name, visitors from different countries will see/visit different urls. Those from UK would see blognameblogspot.co.uk , Canadians would see blognameblogspot.ca and a few other countries would see country specific urls. What this meant was it was like you had many sites with the same content and different urls. This sucked on many levels as this meant you would now have to rank different urls for different countries, this would affect your traffic and your pagerank. I for one saw this effect my blog was growing in traffic for a while before the changes it had a page rank of 3 at one point then the different country specific urls were activated and I started seeing a decrease in visits and my page rank dropped down to 1 for the blog.spot.com url, I did not bother checking the rest as they gave me insignificant traffic except for blogspot.co.uk. 

I started noticing that my traffic became one sided, by this I mean before the country specific urls I was seeing growing traffic from all countries afterwards other countries disappeared and my traffic became mainly us, ca and uk.  Brasil, germany, Poland, spain etc. who seemed to be growing before dropped off the map. I tried different things, still posted regularly but traffic did not seem to be directly proportional to the work I put in like before. I got my traffic back to the level where it was before at around 800-950 page views per day but I had a hard time growing it past that point. These multiple urls certainly were not helping if I wanted to improve global numbers, my link building was always directed at my blogspot.com url and not the other country specific ones no wonder my us traffic was growing to replace the traffic I once had from other countries.

Have you ever seen a blogspot domain being number one in the search engine for a competitive keyword? I haven’t and on the rare occasion that it is, that’s usually right after google does one of its updates and shakes up search engines and it’s usually a spam blog probably created for linking purposes with garbage in it. People do not take a blogspot.com blog serious; they do not click ads as much as they would in a private domain because they do not trust blogspot domains becuse of the bad reputation that spammers give blogspot domains. Many blogspot domains are run as casual blog sorta like this one so no one really takes them serious. It is hard to build an authority blog on a blogspot domain name. There are some really popular blog with blogspot domain names but it’s much easier especially now with these country specific urls to just buy a domain name. There are many of us with well kept, regularly updated blogspot blogs who would be more successful had we used a private domain name which brings me back to me buying a domain name. So this month I got a private domain name and was expecting to lose some traffic first but I have been surprised by the results.

What has been happening in my first month with a private domain name?

Well for the first few days, traffic went down because the blog was still in transition, redirecting and whatever goes on behind the scenes when you buy a domain name after more than a year using a free domain name. I had nothing to lose since my page rank was so low and I had read that I would not lose traffic as it would all be redirected to the new address. After the redirection my traffic was back to normal, but what happened next surprised me, I started getting traffic from terms I was not ranking for before, I also saw a rise in traffic on a few day it was double of my normal traffic. This month is not over yet I am just talking about these past 20 days. I have started doing some linking work to make sure I rank my new web address well, because it was not possible before with the free domain name. I also suspect people share content more when it is a dot com then when it’s a blogspot dot com. I have began to see increased sharing of my posts as well but that could be because of my increased activity in social media, which I shall write about soon just to let you know how I have grown my following on several different social media sites. The traffic this month is right now equal to the most traffic I have ever gotten in one month, even though I had a couple of days with just around 25% of the usual visits because of the transition and I have only published for articles this month which is less than usual. I cannot wait to see what happens next.

I have always noticed that other blogs in my niche did not post regularly, they posted about 4 times per month and had 8 times my traffic, with what I have seen so far it’s evident that the domain name plays some part in that not only content because I have some good content and case studies, and list posts. I used to post  a lot in the past with more than 12 posts per month but I slowed down to about 8 per month for a while but my intention was always to post less but longer posts and focus more on marketing because what’s the use of having great content if no one ever gets to see it.

The next post will be about How I have been growing my social media following so be sure to come back for that soon.

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Nigeria Win the AFCON 2013 – Sunday Mba Scores the Winning Goal on a Sunday

"Born on Sunday, named on Sunday, played on Sunday, scored on Sunday, Pls join me in welcoming Sunday Mba...."~Wahab Adeshoga

After a beautiful closing ceremony with performances from some of Africa’s biggest musicians, Nigeria faced Burkina Faso in the AFCON final to see who the best team in the continent is. The match was well attended as all the tickets to the 94 000 seat National Stadium were sold out. The Nigerian supporters outnumbered the Burkina Faso supporters but there were many South Africans in the Stadium supporting the under dogs, there were even some Ethiopian fans in attendance.

Nigeria v Burkina Faso Result

Nigerian dominated the first half and was rewarded when Sunday Mba scored late in the first half. The Burkina Faso that was playing in the first half was not the Burkina Faso that we have seen throughout the tournament. In the second half Nigeria continued to dominate the match and missed many opportunities to seal the match. Burkina Faso began to play well and made moves forward but to no avail. They continued attacking in the dying stages on the match but it was too little too late. Sunday Mba’s goal was enough to win Nigeria the AFCON on this day, the 10^th of February on a Sunday.

Stephen Keshi Joins an Elite Club

Nigerian coach Stephen Keshi becomes only the second African coach to win the AFCON as both a player and a coach.

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AFCON 2013 Final SA - Nigeria v Burkina Faso

Aristide Bance the Burkinabe Forward celebrating 

It’s on this Sunday as the Super Eagles of Nigeria take on the Burkinabe’s. Nigeria are reaching their first final since the year 2000 whereas Burkina Faso are going to be playing in their first final, their previous best performance having been a semi-final exit when they hosted the AFCON.

Super Eagles the Giants are Becoming Confident Predators

Nigeria is confident going into the final as they have been showing an increase in performance in each game. The people of Nigeria had doubts about this team and there were questions surrounding many of their star players who were left out of the AFCON 2013 South Africa. I even doubted if the super eagles would get past the quarterfinals as they were going to face Ivory Coast who were the pre-tournament favourites and had played well during the group stages. Nigeria surprised everyone by playing well in defeating the Ivoirians who seem to always choke on the big stage (they remind me of the South African Cricket team). The team is getting support now and even those who doubted Stephen Keshi and his team are behind their team now. The AFCON seems to have united Nigerians as evidenced by the twitter comments I read following Nigeria’s victories. If Stephen Keshi’s side win the final on Sunday he will become only the second African to win the AFCON both as player and coach.

The Underdogs are Looking to Upset the Giants 

On the other hand, the Burkinabe’s are not to be taken lightly. They surprised everyone by making past the group stages, since in previous AFCON’s they had not managed to win a match on foreign land. They made it out of the group stages with the help of their top goal scorer in this AFCON Alaine Traoure who was injured in the final match of the group stages. He will not be playing in the final but will be there to support his team mates. Another key member of the Burkinabe squad Jonathon Pitroipa was sent off on Wednesday for simulation after he was tackled in the Ghanaians penalty area but after an appeal for him to play in the final as the simulation was a wrong call by the referee; he has been cleared to play in the final. It must be a relief for the Burkinabe as he is by far their best player of the tournament so far.   Things are looking up for the Burkinabe and they are growing in confidence as evident in their match against Ghana. Despite being denied a penalty, losing Pitroipa and having what looked like a legitimate goal denied they came out on top. Their Striker Aristide Bance had a good game on Wednesday with numerous shots at goal in which he converted one to equal the score against Ghana. Bance even showed confidence when he took a cheeky penalty during the penalty shootout which Burkina Faso won 3-2. This lanky striker could prove to be a menace against the Super Eagles. 

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Burkina Faso Make it to The Final of The AFCON 2013 Ghana is Out

Bance the goalscorer for Burkina Faso
Source: Twitter

In what was arguably the most exciting game of the tournament Burkina Faso have qualified to go to the finals of the AFCON 2013, beating the favourites Ghana 3-2 on penalties after drawing the game 1-1 in 120 minutes of open play. Burkina Faso controlled the game they out played Ghana. Even though Ghana had a few chances to score which they missed Burkina Faso had more chances, Bance the Burkina Faso forward has multiple chances to convert, he hit the cross bar once and scored their goal in the second half after Ghana had scored from the penalty spot in the first half.

Ghana had trouble dealing with the Burkina Faso attack, they had trouble dealing with Bance and Janathon Pitroipa. The referee was against Burkina Faso in this match first he denied them what looked like a clear goal, then he gave Pitroipa a red card when he had clearly been fouled in the 18 area, saying that he was diving . It was Pitroipa's second yellow that is why he got a red. Despite this the Burkinabe's pulled through and won the match that they should have won in open play through penalties.

Burkina Faso has now for the first time qualified for the final of the AFCON, where they will meet the Super Eagles of Nigeria. This will be an epic match, a David v Goliath match. Burkina Faso have been entertaining throughout this tournament and have had a solid defense only conceding twice so far in the tournament.
They have made the sand pit that is Mbombela Stadium their home, doing very well there. They have been my favourite team this tournament, and I am looking forward to seeing them play Nigeria in the final this weekend.

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Nigeria is Through to The Finals of AFCON Mali is out

Nigeria win semi-final 4-1 against Mali
Source:Twitter

Nigeria Have made it to the AFCON 2013 final after not being in a final since year 2000. They made it to the final after beating Mali by a convincing 4 goals to 1. Mali qualified to the semi-final after upsetting the host nation by winning 3-1 on penalties after 120 minutes of tough football which resulted in a 1-1 score in open play. Elderson Echiejile scored the opener a low header from a lovely cross from victor Moses. Brown Edeye scored their second goal. Nigeria made it 3 when Emmanuel Emenike's shot was deflected into the net.

In the second half Nigeria scored their forth when substitute Ahmed Musa tapped it in. Mali finally got a consolation goal late in the second half scored by Cheick Diarra.

We are now waiting to see who Nigeria are going to face in the final between Burkina Faso and Ghana. The favorites going into the match is Ghana but this is football so everyone has a chance.  This match is going to play later today in about an hours time at 20:30.

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Getting More Followers, Visitors, Reblogs, and Likes on Tumblr

Getting more Tumblr Reblogs and likes from my tumblr dashboard

Tumblr is a very popular blogging and social media platform, if you are looking to start a blog this is a great platform in terms of how your content gets shared by others. You could also use Tumblr  as a picture blog that links to your main written blog because people on Tumblr like short content as opposed to 1000 word posts. If you are planning to start a Tumblr blog or already have one but want to increase your followers and the hits you get each day then continue reading this post as I share some of the stuff I learnt since joining Tumblr about 9 months ago.

How to Get More Tumblr Followers

• To get followers on Tumblr you need to get   people to see your stuff first. How do you make people see your stuff? Well first you have to make it interesting, if it is interesting people will share it and with a social/blogging network like Tumblr your blog could go viral.

• Post stuff that is unique, do not just reblog other people, if you want to grow your number of followers you should post mostly stuff that you created or you found, stuff that you think no one else has posted on Tumblr yet. You want to be the go to person not the copycat.

• Tag your pictures with the write keywords for your target market, go to google type in the first few words of the terms you want to rank for, use the other related searches that show up on google in your tags to get more people. For example if you are a fitspo, people on google now search for terms like gym motivation tumblr instead of just gym motivation so use that as one of your tags.

• Do not just post pictures; write something related to the picture as a caption. Write down a quote that you think goes well with the picture. It’s not enough having a picture having a quote written on it, the search engine can’t read that. Most people do not write stuff underneath their pictures that is why you do not find a lot of tumble blogs ranking well in google for non picture searches. I managed to rank my Tumblr blog well on the first page of google for my target keywords because I give all my pictures written titles or captions that are quotes or little words of wisdom.

• Schedule your posts so that you posts often per day and your posts are spread out throughout the day so that you do not spam people’s dashboards. I usually only post 2 to 3 posts per day spread evenly throughout the day, Posting more would have given me more followers but I am unable to do that right now as I do not have the time and I do not want to simply reblog other peoples post’s.

• Follow other tumblr blogs and read their about me pages and give a well thought out compliment to the blogger or just start a conversation. Then like their stuff and reblog some of their stuff so that they take notice, this will lead to that person checking out your Tumblr and reblogging, liking or even following you.

• When you reblog other people’s stuff be sure to write something as a caption to make it unique, possibly a caption related to the pic or a funny comment, Tumblr peeps love a sense of humor.

• Reply to those who ask you stuff except maybe those annoying anons who have nothing better to do than ask rubbish.

Screenshot of my Tumblr Google Analytics, showing growing traffic to my Tumblr  from AUG 2012 - JAN  2013
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

• I prefer a theme with a side bar, not the cluttered theme with pictures everywhere. A simple theme with a few pictures per page does the job. In your side bar place a picture of your or your interests creates a good first impression, and if the people are interested in getting to know you further make sure you have an “about me” page where you share some interesting things about yourself. You can modify and personalise a theme to look unique by messing about with the code. I personally just googled colour codes and I changed my common theme to a unique one. Check out my blog to see for yourself http://aesthetic8packabsworkoutprogram.tumblr.com/ , its nothing spectacular but it serves its function.

• If you are good with photoshop even better for you because you could create beautiful images and be as successful as http://gymandmotivation.tumblr.com/. That blog has a great design and a huge following which grows every day.

• Lastly do not give up, I was stuck on 70 followers for a while about 6 months ago till I started doing the things I have been telling you about, now my Tumblr is growing at about  10 -15 followers a day. I know that is not a big number but it’s something, its shows growth. 

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The New Audi R8 V10 2013 Model – A Dream Supercar

The new R8 V10 2013

I remember the first time I saw an Audi R8 on the web; I was amazed that a super car could look so futuristic yet so sexy. I was even more amazed that the luxury car manufacturer Audi was making super cars now. The next thing I saw it in Iron Man being driven by Robert Downey Junior, he made that car look even cooler, a car fit for the wealthiest man in the world (I thought), and a car fit for super heroes and super hero movies. If the same guy who created the iron man suit could drive the R8, it meant it that this car was technologically advanced. The next thing I know I was driving this car in games. A year or two later I finally saw the car with my own eyes, it was outside a club I was at, I was in awe. Finally I could confirm with my own eyes that the pictures were not lying, unlike the pretty girls you see on magazines and on the internet that often turn out not as pretty in reality, this car was the real deal.

2013 R8 Interior 

R8 2013 Model

Audi has given their R8 a minor facelift but it’s still has a mid-engine all wheel drive, the engines remain unchanged. All that has changed is that the R8 has been fitted with a new front grill and the use of Led Headlights and tail lights and it has a new transmission.

It comes in a 4.2 litre 430hp V8 engine and a 5.2 litre 525hp V10 engine. It comes in a six-speed manual transmission and a new S tronic seven-speed dual-clutch auto. The V10 with an S tronic transmission can accelerate to 100km/h in just 3.5 seconds.

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Day 2 AFCON 2013 SA Quarterfinals – Burkina Faso v Togo Results

The Togo team during their quarterfinal v Burkina Faso
source: Tadegnon

After the great match of Nigeria v Ivory Coast with Nigeria going through to the Semi-finals, Togo v Burkina Faso followed at Mbombela Staduim. Mbombela Staduim being the worst pitch in this tournament, I had read an article saying they had manually removed some of the sand from the pitch but that did not seem to help as it was still horrible during the quarterfinal match.

Burkina Faso v Togo

Burkina Faso had played really well during their group matches, drawing twice and trashing the Ethiopians 4-0. Togo on the other hand had lost a one, won one and managed a draw in their final match to qualify for the first time to the quarterfinals of the AFCON.

The match between Togo and Burkina Faso was fast paced with Burkina Faso attacking from early in the match; they had a few opportunities to score but fumbled in front of goal. The Togolese also had a few wasted chances during the first half which they failed to convert. In the second half Burkina Faso launched attack after attack again to no avail. The Togolese attacked whenever they could too but again they failed to score. The match went to extra time, this time the Burkina Faso team was going on a full on attack at times with their whole team with the exception of the keeper on the Togolese side of the field. Burkina Faso was rewarded when Jonathon Pitroipa headed in a beautiful gaol in the 105^th minute of play before the extra time half time whistle was blown. Burkina Faso kept possession of the ball during the second half of extra time to secure a victory and reach the semi finals for only the second time since 1998 AFCON.

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Day 2 AFCON 2013 Quarterfinals – Nigeria v Ivory Coast results

Nigerian fans celebrating Nigeria beating Ivory Coast 2-1.
Source: Twitter

Day two of the AFCON 2013 South Africa promised to be an entertaining day, because African giants Nigeria and Ivory Coast the favourites to take the cup were going to go head to head. This was for many people the final before the final, unfortunate for one of the teams as there had to be a winner and a loser.

Ivory Coast v Nigeria

Nigeria had a bad start to the tournament with many people believing that this was not their best squared considering the amount of football talent in Nigeria. They only just managed to get into the quarterfinals by winning their last game against Ethiopia by 2 goals to nil from the penalty spot.

Ivory Coast on the other hand had dominated their group, by clinching 2 wins before they had to sweat to come back from a 2-0 deficit against Algeria who brought the game to the Ivoirians only to draw the match 2-2.

Coming into the match the Ivoirians were the favourites, with many thinking this Nigerian squad was going to book their flights back to Nigeria after their match, but it was not to be so. Nigeria the super eagles finally showed up to the AFCON 2012. They had their best showing of the tournament so far, they attacked the Ivoirians from the get go, so it was not surprise when they scored first(Emenike) even though I felt the Ivoirian goal keeper should have block that ball since it was in his direction. In the second half the Ivoirians finally showed up to the match in an effort to fight back, they were rewarded for their efforts when they scored from a beautiful header (Tiote). This was not to be their day as later in the second half the Nigerians scored a beautiful and powerful shot into the top corner (Sunday Mba) of the Ivoirian net.

Ivory Coast the favourites are out, in the quarterfinals of the AFCON 2013, they join the hosts South Africa and Cape Verde in the teams eliminated in the quarterfinals.

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AFCON 2013 South Africa Day 1 of the Quarterfinals results

Keita giving Yeye a wedgie during Mali v SA game AFCON 2013

It was a beautiful day of football on the second of February 2013 during the AFCON 2013. Ghana played against the giant killers Cape Verde and Mali faced the hosts Bafana Bafana. The first quarter finals were clashes between group A of AFCON 2013 and group B of AFCON 2013.

Ghana v Cape Verde

Ghana had been one of the favourites to win the tournament since the beginning of the AFCON, they had also supported the favourite tag by coming out top of their group with 7 points, drawing their first match and convincingly winning their next two games. Cape Verde on the other hand were the underdogs of the tournament from the get go having qualified by eliminating Cameroon in the qualifiers. They began their tournament with two draws and end the group stages with an impressive win over Angola by coming from a goal behind to win the game 2-1.

Cape Verde started the quarterfinal well taking the game to the Ghanaians, they had many shots at goal compared to Ghana but they failed to hit the target, Ghana started off slow but were growing in stature as the match progressed. Ghana got a penalty when their player was shoved off a ball in the 18 area. Ghana converted the penalty into a goal but that did not stop the Cape Verdeans from attacking. In fact when the goal was scored the game became more exciting. The Cape Verdeans launched attack after attack but it was to no avail as they failed to score. During a last minute attack by the Cape Verdeans each and every one of their players went to the Ghanaian goal in an attempt to score from a corner, including their keeper. They failed to score,  the ball was cleared by Ghana and they launched a counter attack which turned into a goal as they netted into the empty goal of Cape Verde to make it 2-0.

Mali v South Africa

Mali had a tough group stage, they began with a victory over Niger, then a loss to Ghana then they drew their final match against the DRC to secure a second place finish in their group. South Africa started their tournament under pressure from the home crowd expecting a victory in the first match against Cape Verde but was held to a boring 0-0 draw. South Africa improved in their second Match by starting like a house on fire to defeat Angola 2-0. There once again impressive when they came back twice against the Moroccans to draw the match 2-2 and secured a place in the next round top of their group.

The South Africans played their best since the tournament began in the first half during the quarterfinal, constantly attacking the much favoured Malians. They scored a deserved goal when Thuso Phala crossed the ball to Rantie who tapped into the back of the net. South Africa began the second half well but let the Malians get back into the game when an un-marked Keita scored a stunning header from a cross. The Malians were now improving as the match approached 90 minutes but the match ended with a 1-1 score so it had to go into extra time. During extra time both teams tried to score the winning goal but could not convert the opportunities they created. Extra time was over and it was now time for penalties. Mali won by converting all 3 penalties whereas the South Africans only managed to score one, with Furman, Mahlangu and Majoro not converting. Shabalala was the only South African to convert from the spot. Mali had for the second year running moved on to the semi finals by defeating the hosts on penalties. 

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AFCON2013 South Africa Group Stages Over, Quarter Finalists, Fixtures

Goodbye Beautiful Ethiopian girls at AFCON supporting their team
PIC FROM: JOYFM FACEBOOK

It has been quite an eventful past couple weeks at the AFCON 2013 South Africa. We started off with 16 teams now 8 have been eliminated and we move on to the next round of matches the Knockout stages, the business end of the tournament, the quarter finals. Over the past couple of weeks we saw a boring start to the AFCON with many matches ending in draws, but that did not last very long because by the second group games teams like South Africa, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso improved their game and started scoring those crucial goals and with those goals the AFCON got more interesting. Teams Like Cape Verde who only have about 500 000 people in their entire country did well and impressed many people, the girls did not want Cape Verde to leave as they were enjoying the “eye candy” according to some twitter updates I read earlier these past couple of weeks. Teams like Angola continued to under-perform during this tournament just as they did in previous AFCON’s.

Which Teams Were Eliminated from the AFCON 2013 South Africa?

All of the Northern African teams were eliminated during the first round during the group stages, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia are all out. Algeria had a bad tournament and failed to pull off a single victory or to score in the first two matches, they had a 2 goal lead late in the second half but managed to screw up and concede to late goals from Ivory Coast. Morocco played well but not well enough, they played 3 draws which was not good enough to secure a quarter final spot. Morocco tried to win the last match against the lowest ranked side in their group South Africa but it was not to be as the hosts  managed to come back twice in the game to secure a draw and to end top of their group. Tunisia failed to qualify even after being given two penalties in their final match against Togo, where the ref was giving most of the decisions to their side, they only managed to get one penalty in the back of the net and their draw was not enough to see them through to the next round.

The Upset of this tournament so far is the group stages Knockout of Zambia the defending champions who got knocked out when they failed to win their final match against Burkina Faso. Angola also got eliminated during the first round, their poor AFCON performance record continues. Ethiopia were also eliminated despite having thousands of vibrant fans supporting them during their matches, they started the AfCON 2013 well giving people hope but then they were trashed 4-0 by Burkina Faso and 2-0 by Nigeria to seal their AFCON first round exit. Niger are also out, it is like they never showed up for the AFCON.  DR Congo were also eliminated after staging a great come back from 2-0 down against Ghana in first match, but disappointing in their next two matches.

Which teams qualified for the AfCON Quarterfinals?

Ivory Coast were the first to qualify with a 2-1 win over Togo and a 3-0 win over Tunisia to seal their place in the quarterfinals after only two games. The host Nation South Africa qualified with two draws and a convincing win over Angola. Ghana was not playing their best football but they also qualified to the next round quite easily.  Mali is a regular in qualifying to the next round, even though they qualified they did not play very well, their coach stated that it was because most of his players were not getting game time at their teams so we should expect to see them improve as the tournament progresses. Nigeria have had a poor showing so far, this being the weakest Nigerian team I have ever seen but they managed to qualify to the next round. Togo managed to qualify to the next round as well, even though the ref was against them in their final match they pulled through. Burkina Faso sealed their place by beating Ethiopia 4-0 and getting a draw against the defending champions. The surprise qualifiers have been the 500 000 nation Cape Verde who qualified by beating Angola during their last group match.

Quarterfinal Fixtures

Ghana vs Cape Verde, Saturday Feb 2, Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium, 17:00

South Africa vs Mali, Saturday Feb 2, Moses Mabhida Stadium, 20:30

Ivory Coast vs Nigeria, Sunday Feb 3, Royal Bafokeng Stadium, 17:00

Burkina Faso vs Togo, Sunday Feb 3, Mbombela Stadium, 20:30

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The AFCON Has Officially Begun, Still Waiting For The First Goal

Soccer City Afcon 2013
photo by Agencia Brasil

Today the AFCON officially started with the president of South Africa welcoming all the 5 African nations to South Africa and opening the games. It was a rainy day in Johannesburg much like it’s been raining in many areas throughout the country. There was a bit of doubt as to whether the National Stadium/ Soccer City was going to be able to handle opening ceremony plus the two matches between South Africa vs Cape Verde and Morocco vs Angola.  At the end of the day the opening ceremony and the two matches were hosted successfully there.

The Opening Match: South Africa vs Cape Verde

This was a highly anticipated match in South Africa which was attended by 88 000 fans with their vuvuzelas, the South Africans wanting the host nation to start off the competition with a win to make progressing to the next stage easier but it was not to be as the match ended in a goalless draw. It was a boring and disappointing match I hope these two teams play much more entertaining football in their next matches and that they score some goals.

The Second Group A Match: Morocco vs Angola

After the goalless draw between the host nation Bafana Bafana vs Cape Verde, we were hoping to see some goals seeming as any team which won this match would be placed at the top of the group and have an advantage going into the next match. Unfortunately this match also ended in a goalless draw which means there are still zero goals in the 2013 AFCON after two matches, let’s hope the goals will come soon in these next few matches, the last thing we want is a boring low scoring AFCON. To be fair though Morocco were the better team during this game but they failed to convert their opportunities up front.

This was only day 1 and the nerves may have gotten to the players, let us hope as they get used to the competition and the pressure the nerves will settle and we will start seeing some goals.

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