how to make a tumblr post (and get notes!)
Have never seen any post discuss these exact things, so i'm sharing my insights with y'all*
Use images. They don't have to be good or spectacular like this extremely coherent thing I just made. They just need to catch the eye break up dashboard monotony.
The gif search feature is an unreliable wild card at best and a NSFW eye gouge at worst, but it gives credit to the op of the gif
If you're an artist your whole post is your images, so skip to the links and tags section of this post because the rest won't help much.
-> Image Descriptions
When making a post that contains images, hover over an image and click the meatballs icon in the lower right corner of the image. Click "update description" to add a description. It isn't always necessary, but it is very courteous for a variety of accessibility reasons.
-> Text
Break up your text. Run-on sentences are standard here, lack of punctuation too, you can really do whatever you want, but avoid massive blocks of text. unless you've got a really incendiary opening line and the entire center of that granite chunk of text is actually comedy gold, hard-hitting tumblr journalism, or one of those zany confessional posts that can be followed up by the drive thru meme
break up
your text.
and go light on the ALL CAPS. save it for emphasis or when you're feeling very unhinged or saRcAStiC y'know how that goes, i don't need to explain it. this site has a very dry tone to its posts so caps are rare. also periods
Bullet points and numbered posts are good and fine. The "Chat" post option is used less often these days, but different groups found uses for it so it sticks around.
Titles Matter
they help break up text and put people at ease. they are best for informative, mature posts but can make you look like a square in more relaxed conversations. sometimes they are also great for emphasis in a comedic sh*tpost (censorship is entirely up to you, btw. you don't have to censor much on tumblr except titties and genitals).
Tumblr automatically shortens long posts now, but etiquette asks that you tag #long post if you want to avoid clogging up someone's dash. It don't matter too much though, this is the "color of the sky" site, so get used to posts being too long
That being said "READ MORE" is a fantastic feature. Use it when you want some level of privacy like "hey, only click below if you want to hear about my problems" or "click below to read my 18+ fanfic." Read more is also great in case you want to delete something forever. If a reblogged post has a read more, but op deleted the og post, that content is gone (readmore has to be on the og post at time of posting for this to work, btw; edits to og post do not span all reblogs)
the other bells and whistles like colored font or italics are helpful in improving text, but we don't really rely on them. every mode of looking at this site alters those aspects somehow so we often ignore them
-> Links
Hint: People don't want to click links. We don't know where they're taking us. Most of us are on our phone and don't want to open another tab or leave the app to go on the browser. We're cozy here on Tumblr and do not wish to be whisked away (unless it's a rickroll)
Don't leave the link thumbnail to do all the work, like so
add a little sneak peak info, maybe your favorite line from the article or a reason why it's important for people to know the info on the other side of that link. Sell it!
When you're adding a link into a list, i.e. no large thumbnail just a line of text leading you to another site, try not to copy/paste the link as is
"https://......"
No one wants to click on that it's gross and scary. It's screams "meh, i'll click later if i feel like it." If the build up to the link is too good to resist ("if you want to save the orphaned puppies here's the link") then that http mess is sufficient.
Otherwise, dress your links up a little by including the title or a description of what the link goes to:
Or, if it's an informal post where you're just popping info in to back up whatever insane thing you just said, just write something like "link here" or "(x)" and hyperlink it.
-> Tags
artists, writers, and other creators: leave a tag on your creative content that makes it easy for blog visitors to see it all at once. e.g. "My work" and we click on that while on your blog and see only your works
You can have up to thirty tags on any post. All will make your post show up in searches and followed tags (it used to be only the first five tags that got you traction). However,
Please. Do not tag everything you can possibly imagine being relevant to your post because
It's called tag spam and it's against TOS
Everyone here hates that
No one is going to check all those tags ever. Someone might search one five years from now and accidentally find your post hanging out in the ether and they'll still ignore it.
Your imagination is wicked tiny because I guarantee the perfect tag is going to be something indecipherable and seemingly niche.
Follow popular tags (or at least be aware of them)
If yours is an off-the-cuff post and you don't have time to find out what a niche group is into then wing it, sure, idc. this is also the shitposting site do whatever you want
Don't put your hate in the fan tags. This is the unapologetically-like-dumb-things site and your negativity is not wanted. You can still complain, just avoid tagging to get the attention of the fans of whatever you're complaining about. That enables pvp and even nonfans will know you deserve the backlash
-> Audio & Video
clickable by nature because we all love noise and moving images so there's no special way to share posts like this. just post them with good tags and maybe a one-liner, and they'll sell themselves
Tip: it's nice to add descriptions to these too but it isn't common
Protip: if the audio is the best part of the video (e.g. a baby burps REALLY loudly and it's hilarious) please caption or tag "Unmute!"
-> mkay bye
that's all i can think of right now. will update later if i remember something
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*this is year eleven of my time on tumbles and i studied marketing in college for like six of those years and have been applying that bupkis to tumblr ever since. every post i see that gets no traction and every lovely artist that goes nowhere on here bothers me so deeply and i sincerely want y'all to succeed <3 <3
+ If you find this helpful and want to support my blog, I have a ko-fi!
+ If you're concerned about my mental health from being on Tumblr so long and want to contribute to my "get better" fund, I have a ko-fi!
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