6 Tumblr Tips

By: Ryan Estes

Tumblr is a fantastic way to post and repost on the internet.  For folks without the necessary skills to build a hosted website, tumblr is your best option.  Once you’ve set up your page and template you have the option to follow other pages and therefore build your audience.  The SEO with tumblr ain’t great, but you can build up your influence very quickly by making friends and playing nice.  Let’s take a look at 6 ways to tighten up your tumblr.

Focus

The best tumblrs are micro focused.  If you want people to come back to your tumblr spend time to focus in on a uniquely specific topic.  There’s nothing wrong with using tumblr as a general catch-all journal/ blog.  But if you are interested in building a loyal readership, stay focused, and ride it out.  Here’s a list of my favorite tumblrs:

1. unhappyhipsters.com – Pictures and captions of mod homes – Comedy.
2. erichradstake.nl – Reviews and Current Events – Tech.
3. blackandwtf.tumblr.com – Weird old pics – Comedy.
4. dadsaretheoriginalhipster.tumblr.com – Pics of Men from the 60′s 70′s + 80′s – Comedy.
5. pinuppost.com – Pin-up Models – Fashion.
6. thelongdraw.tumblr.com – Band – Music.

Post to Twitter

I see a lot of folks posting from tumblr to twitter.  Good idea, but usually poor execution.

In this example you see the tumblr author didn’t take the time to properly post to twitter.  ”Video: islanddefjam:” are the default characters.  You may not know, you can fully customize your post to twitter.  Check it out:

Click ‘edit’ and fill out your tweet.  Happy sharing bitches.

Upload Multiple Photos

Tumblr has some sweet templates to upload photo clusters.  Super simple.  Just click ‘Add another photo’, and choose your layout.  When you think about posting pics in tumblr, think in multiples.  More is better.

Soundcloud Integration

Soundcloud is my favorite way to play and share audio for one reason, their player is sexy as fuck.  There are other great reasons to use Soundcloud that are’nt as vulgar:

• Comment at certain points in the recording.
• Add friends.
• Auto-post to other platforms.

When you upload your audio to Soundcloud, with a check of a box, you can post to tumblr.  Your copy, picture, and comments in Soundcloud all transfer over to your tumblr.  Very simple integration.  The downside is tumblr doesn’t post that sexy player to your profile.  They add their own simple player that does show play-count, so that’s cool.  If you want to know how to integrate the sexy player widget into your tumblr – hit me up, I’m happy to help.

Search

It’s very easy to put together a really cool tumblr.  Sure you want to add original content.  But you also want to ‘reblog’ other people’s content.  Use the search bar to scrape tumblr for complimentary pics, quotes, video, music, and articles.  In this spirit make sure you add specific tags to your posts, so others can reblog you.  Liking and reblogging is the fastest way to up your audience.

Mask Your URL

Buy a domain and point it to your tumblr.  If you’re smart you will use the same domain name as your tumblr ID.

bitchievalens.com is a tumblr.

The tumblr templates are vast and many are gorgeous.  With a purchased URL you can very quickly build a website around your business, hobby, band, or fetish… you dirty freaks.  (tumblr is largely uncensored so there is a proliferation of pornography there; a warning to the uninitiated.)

tumblr? Big fan.  If you have further questions, my door is always open.

http://talklaunch.tumblr.com/