Tumblr – Multi-media blogging with little moderation responsibility!

by Susan Kleinwecher, social media coordinator for the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth

What Tumblr Is: Tumblr is a microblogging service providing a short-form blog, or tumblelog, with an array of features allowing easy posts of text, quotes, photos, links, audio, and video posts. The multimedia platform is adaptable and easy to use. According to DigitalSherpa, “You can set up a Tumblr blog and be posting in the time it takes you to brew your morning coffee.” UnlikeTwitter, on Tumblr you don’t have to battle an uncomfortable 140-word character limit and you may freely post graphics with your posts. Tumblr combines all  the traditional elements of a blogging platform with the social and sharing features of popular social media networks, in a simple and concise platform.

Ahah! Tumblr does not have a comment feature. Wow, that simpifies moderation responsibilities!

Getting Started: At Tumblr.com, sign up for an account. Get familiar with your dashboard, which is where new posts of blogs you follow will be. Upload a portrait photo that looks like you for your primary blog, and a relevant image to represent any secondary blog like one you might have for the Episcopal General Convention.

Post text, photos, quotes, links, audio, video. Re-blog. Chat with others on Tumblr. Give it a try!

Tutorials:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/253487/how_to_get_started_with_tumblr.html
http://www.tumblr.com/tips

Connect with the Diocese: Go to  diofw.tumblr.com and follow the blog on Tumblr. Go to http://diofw-gc2012.tumblr.com/  and follow the blog on Tumblr. If you are in our deputaton, the blog admin(s) will manually invite you to contribute to the diofw-gc2012 blog. After you’ve been invited to contribute, write a test post in any format – text, photo, quote, link, audio, video.   When that works, you’re off and running!

Blog admins, you may invite others to contribute to your blog, from the blog dashboard under Members. Submit email addresses, and invitees will receive an email with instructions to join the blog and register if they are not a Tumblr user yet.  New members can post, but not change blog settings unlesss you promote them to an admin.

Best Practices (soooo good that we’d really like to mandate them): For each post : tag, tag tag – You don’t need to put a tag in quotes or start with a hashtag. Hit return on your keyboard to enter a tag. Then add another one! These keywords make your blog search-friendly, your content findable,  and they will promote SEO.  They are essential.

You’ll want to fill your content with links, not just to your website and other social sites, but to other blogs or people in your network. Each time your post is ‘reblogged’ it will carry these links with them. That’s good for SEO.

Engage with Others: Your way of engaging on Tumblr is to:

• ‘Follow’ – Click in a particular Tumblr blog where it says ‘Follow’
• ‘Reblog’ – Find a blog you enjoy that you would want shared and share it on your own Tumblr blog by cliking ‘Reblog’ at the top of that post.
• ‘Like’ – Click on the heart on a post to ‘like’ the post.

Each Tumblr blog has its own URL, so audiences don’t need to be a member of the Tumblr community to view your posts. The URL makes your Tumblr page available to everyone. Tweet your Tumblr posts by URL.

Use a Tumblr bookmarklet (button on your bookmarks bar) to quickly share things you find on the web.

Go Mobile: When you’re comfortable with using Tumblr in your browser, get it on your smartphone by downloading the official Tumblr app for Android, iPhone, or Blackberry.

Add your ideas and comments on Tumblr!