Presentation to the Baltimore Social Media Meetup on Tumblr

1. Tumblr Redux
Jim Keeney, Principal Consultant, FitterWeb Consulting, @FitterWeb
Katie Keeney, Tumblr Advocate, blackwidowmaker.tumblr.com
Emily Gillis, Wayward Studios, @thealmightym, jikoshia.net

2. Tumblr: Constantly evolving, growing fast
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

3. Tumblr: Boring facts to impress you
• 179.1 million blogs and 81.8 billion posts (as of 4/5/2014)
• Roughly 300 million unique visitors per month
• 30% growth rate in 2013
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

4. Tumblr is the seventh largest social
media platform
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5. And growing fast, Second behind
Pinterest
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

6. Tumblr demographics
• Tumblr users
• 67% under 35 and 39% under 25
• 56% Female
• 56% are college educated
Tumblr users are younger and smart
with a greater proportion of females
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

7. Tumblr demographics: Income
• Bi-modal income distribution
• Teenagers
• College grads
• Future spenders!
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

8. Tumblr Culture
• Tumblr is defined by the medium
• Microblogging is the belief that there are no experts, that a post is a way to start a conversation
• Be prepared for high degrees of interaction – Comments, Reblogs, Tagging
• Users are creators and curators
• Creators are writers, musicians, artists, visual remix artists, analysts and advocates
• Curators are those that mine the platform for great stuff and reblog, organize and comment
• It is the platform for participating in the evolution of new media and pop culture trends
• However, be careful. Tumblr users are staunch defenders of diversity
• They will detect false promotion
• They will punish bigotry
• Be nice, be genuine
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

9. Tumblr: The need to know
• Tumblr is a microblog with 7 different types of posts
• Text - A text post consists of plain text. Images, hyperlinks, videos, and some HTML-
based widgets can be added. The raw HTML of the post can be edited.
• Photo - A photo post consists of a single image with accompanied by a brief
description. Photos can be uploaded from your PC, or you can use the URL of an
image already on the web.
• Quote - . A quote post consists of title text (the quote) and a single line of body text
(citing the origin of the quote).
• Link - A link post consists entirely of a single piece of descriptive text, which is linked
to the website or webpage being described.
• Chat - A chat post is used to share a snippet of conversation.
• Audio - An audio post consists of a single .mp3 file (be it a music track, podcast etc),
which can be played via a Flash music player. Only one audio post is permitted daily.
• Video - A video post consists of an embedded video, which can be uploaded from
your PC, or imported from websites such as YouTube or Vimeo.
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

10. Tumblr: Engaging your communities
• Find and follow others in your community
• Participate by blogging, reblogging, replying, liking, and tagging
• Blogging
• Be consistent in your posting, keep to a clear and understandable narrative
• Post should generally be short but …
• When creating a post that is long form you can choose to post a shortened version that links
back to your blog using a read more link
• This is a good tactic to drive traffic back to your page
• Reblogging
• If you add content to the post when you reblog (comment) your content is carried with the
new post
• But be careful not to spam a post:
• Make your comment relevant
• Don't comment if there are already too many comments on the post
• Your comment shows up in the dashboard of the original poster and the person you reblogged it from
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

11. Tumblr: Engaging your communities -
cont'd
• Replying
• Replying is a way to connect to individuals and show your understanding of the
original blog content
• Replies can only be done on original posts
• A link to the originator of the post should be at the top of the post. Look for the
source link or the users name in the reblog crumbtrail.
• Stay on topic
• Liking
• Is the same as the favorite function on Twitter
• When you like you show your appreciation and add it to an archive you can review
later
• In setting you can decide whether others should be able to see you favorites
• You probably want to hide your favorites
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

12. Tumblr: Engaging your communities -
cont'd
• Tagging
• Use #tags just like Twitter
• The first five tags of your post will be included in the search index
• Organize all your posts and reblogs by including tags
• Remember to come up with a tag for you and include it in all of your posts to make it
easy for users to find your content (#BaltSocMedia)
• You can include links on your blog to all the posts that you have tagged with a
certain tag
• Say you are an expert in Social Media you might want to have a tag for Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Then you can have links to each (<username>.tumblr.com/tagged/<your tag>)
• You tag in the Hashtag bar, separate tags with commas
• You can comment in the tags and it will not show up in subsequent reblogs (but will
show on your follower's dashboard)
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

13. Tumblr: Tips and Tricks
• Xkit is a user application for Tumblr that massively improves the ease of use and
accessibility of Tumblr.
• It's composed of smaller extensions such as:
• Time stamps: see time stamps for posts on your dash
• Enhanced Queue: shuffle, mass delete, and rearrange posts easily in the queue
• One-Click Posting: creates a simple hover box that allows you to post straight from the
dashboard
• Reblog yourself
• Bookmarker/Archive: creates an easy catalog of posts you can always access
• Limit people/Shorten posts: create a shorter dashboard by freeing up clutter
• Tumblr Savior (blacklist function)
• Create a list of tags, usernames, and words that are black listed from your dashboard
• If you can't see it you won't post it
• However, there is a setting that you can use that will block it but a placeholder will show in
your dashboard that if you click on it you can then see what was blocked.
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014

14. Resources
• The follow Bit.ly bundle contain articles and websites that I used
when researching this presentation:
• http://bitly.com/bundles/keeneyhome/39
• Contact Jim Keeney: NextVestor@gmail.com
4/11/2014 ©FitterWeb Consulting, 2014