So, You Made A Tumblr Blog

So, you made a Tumblr blog

You're finally here, after seeing many screenshot on Instagram, and hearing many times this site is dead on Twitter. Here you are, and you got no clue how any of this works. That's okay, this should help

[these are just social cues about how this site works that us old users don't even think about but can feel confusing for users coming from other platforms.]

Let's begin:

How does this site work? Easy! The blood and soul of this site is reblogs (not to mistake them with reposting). Think of it as finding something cool and going "hey guys check out what my buddy did", except way less annoying because you can do it 300x times a day and no one will mind and actually they'll thank you for it. A reblog might sound like a Big Deal but it's the equivalent of an Instagram like, as in the currency of the platform.

What if I don't want to spam the dashboard? Then you can use the queue. Click the options on the reblog window and chose "add to queue", you can configure it from your blog options for when and how it posts. You'll find many users use tags that include the word 'queue' to signal that it isn't an "online" reblog, this is totally optional.

What about the tags everyone treats as sacred? Tags are mostly for your organization, but also for speaking your mind (keep in mind, it's considered rude to diss the creation/fandom/ship in the tags of a positive post! The creator will see it in their activity page and it's a bummer, keep your comments silly or positive. If you wanna vent make your own post and tag it accordingly with anti-fandom/ship/character). If you don't have anything to say on the tags of a reblog don't let that stop you! Reblog without tags, you can always reblog it again later if you came up with something to say (no, OP won't mind).

What about likes? Likes are more like bookmarks for stuff you wanna find easily later, maybe for a personal post of a friend. You'll find you can actually hide your likes page (as the people you follow) on your blog, that's the common practice. Litterally no one will go look at your likes page,,, ever. trust me, it's easier to just have it hidden.

On the contrary, reblogs and original posts tell people what you're interested in, what you enjoy/don't enjoy. This is what it'll decide if someone wants to follow you or not: what kind of content you'll bring to their dash (don't worry if it's not consistent, we'll get to that later). Likes are mostly just for yourself.

What are replies for then? Probably the least used feature. You can use it to reply to a friend's personal post, or if you have a question for OP that needs an answer. This is not like a Twitter or Instagram comment! They won't boost the post and the creator would rather you'd put that praising comment in the tags of a reblog. They'll see it in their activity page for sure 😉

How do I find blogs w juicy posts to reblog as a newie? Search a fandom/ship you like and follow the top blogs there, scroll till you find a post you like and follow the original poster. They might follow back if they check out your blog and see you reblog content they like and congrats! You're mutuals 💕

You can also follow tags and there's always creation hubs blogs that exist solely for the purpose of creating or rebloging gifsets and content of a specific fandom/ship.

Do timelines matter? Is it cringe to reblog old things? An unequivocal no. You'll find its hard to know when something was posted to begin with, and we love that! It doesn't matter if it's from a deactivated blog, if it's 5 days or 7 years old, reblog it anyways, you won't be judged because no one will look at the date it was posted either.

What is it this about "curating your online experience"? Just like Instagram, you can block people, just like Twitter, you can also mute/filter words. On Tumblr you can also filter tags. (They'll appear like posts w a message that they contain filtered content). And like neither, you can turn off all suggestions so you see stuff only from people you follow, in the order it was posted.

How do I do this? Settings > dashboard > preferences > best stuff first/include stuff in your orbit/include "based on your likes!" > Off/on as you prefer!

Next is tags and keywords, these will depend on who you follow and what stuff you're sick of seeing. Filter freely! No one will know except you and the better tailored to your interests your dash is, the more fun using this platform will be. Remember, this site doesn't have an algorithm that hides content from the people you follow based on your activity like other platforms, so don't hold back. (Filtered tags are also great to use like on twitter to hide spoilers or trigger warnings, with the added bonus that tagging those is a popular policy here, it can be more effective than on twitter.)

I'll give you a tip: if you've blocked someone but are still coming across their stuff in people's reblogs, load their URL as a muted word and say bye to their annoying content for sure 😘 I also use it for meme posts that start to get on my nerves.

What about those comments about the likes and reblogs ratios? Well, that's A Thing here. Like I said before, reblogs are the whole point of this site, so when in recent years people seem to have switched to only ever liking stuff (along w many other reasons. It's not one single person's fault), the site traffic has plummeted. This has been very disheartening for creators who started to feel like the fandom communities they loved and interacted with on the daily became silent audiences who are not interested in making the community grow or even engage with it. It sort of escalated from there.

The bottom line is that we all want to support and enrich the fandom/s we're in, so I wrote this in the hopes that it'd give new users an idea of how to best do it in this particular platform 💗

For more info you can check tumblr's official guide