8 Tips For A Real Tight Tumblr Strat
If your attention span is too short to blog, but you’re turned off by Twitter’s boring lack of pictures, Tumblr has emerged as the Internet’s most important self-publishing platform for self-important people.
Just yesterday the NY Times did a real buzzy piece on just how important Tumblr actually is (John Mayer is on here now - important). It was a pretty nice stratnalysis, except for the part where they called SoupSoup the ‘King of Tumblr’. He’s a cool bro, but I think we can all agree that I am Tumblr’s one true king (correct it, NY Times).
Anyway, if you haven’t already gotten the hint: You need to get Tumblring. So here are 10 tips to help you put together a real tight Tumblr strat.
1. On Tumblr people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their content. This ain’t LinkedIn, and around here your personal brand is only as sticky as the cool/funny stuff you find on the Internet and then put into the stream. But remember: the early bird gets the meme reblogs, so if you want to drive lots of likes, you’d better be jacking buzz by 6am EST.
2. So what kind of content works on Tumblr? People love to like: Viral Vimeos with Zach Galifianakis, things/stuff hipsters love/hate, random photographs or screenshots of things we forgot about from the ’80s or ’90s, pop culture-related infographics, animal pictures, pithy little passive-aggressive rants about anonymous people who pissed you off, artsy shit, CollegeHumors, songs everybody obviously likes, design/font porn and the phrase “Fuck Yeah” placed before everything.
3. Giving credit is for losers. If you’re sitting on a hot piece of viral gold-meme, don’t even bother checking to see if it’s already been posted on BuzzFeed/Videogum/The Daily What/Urlesque/FFFFound!/Gawker/Vulture/EPIC Ponyz/et al. Just go ahead and post it like you made it yourself. Maybe no one else will notice and you’ll get a bajillion reblogs.
4. Post Gratuitous Pictures of Yourself. Finally, a place for you to put every single grainy iPhone photo of yourself taken at some AMAZING media event or karaoke night or just sitting in your bedroom illuminated by the lonely glow of your laptop screen. Posting cool/flattering photos of yourself is super-important, because it visually reinforces the personal brand you’re trying to cultivate with your content. Tumblr has even created GPOYW (Gratuitous Picture of Yourself Wednesday), an entire day every week in which everyone is encouraged to post pics of themselves without the shame of seeming narcissistic (thanks to the ingenious move of ironically acknowledging its gratuitousness).
5. Posting pics of yourself goes double for the ladies. Seriously, just post a few sexy (or at least flattering) photos from time to time and then you can pretty much do whatever you want on Tumblr. Dream haikus, long 9,000 word ruminations on some boy you had a crush on in the 7th grade, metaphorical photo essays featuring your sleeping kitty, the pretty shoes you want to buy - it doesn’t matter, you’ll get countless likes and reblogs from all the bros who think that providing you with personal Tumblr validation might somehow get them laid.
6. And dudes: it’s safe to overshare here. Tumblr is not like Livejournal, because Tumblr people hate that comparison, but basically Tumblr is like Livejournal. So between all your rebuzzing and stratjacking, you’ve also got to curate a pseudo-sensitive aspect to your personal brand, which you can easily do by throwing in a few introspective, navel-gazey posts to show that you also have a softer sensitive side. And you shouldn’t feel afraid to open up and really share. Long overwrought confessions about your painful personal revelations are twice as powerful when presented in someone’s dashboard between a picture of masturbating hippo and an autotuned remix of the Keyboard Cat song.
7. Get on the Radar of Tumblrs Who Matter. From what I can tell, the Tumblr Radar is the single most important driver of PV’s and like-traffic on Tumblr. But it seems to be controlled by a shadowy cabal of algorithms and influential Tumblrs such as David Karp, Topherchris, Meaghano, and Blakeley. If you beg your followers to recommend your strat enough, you can get your Tumblr listed in the directory, which will allow you to drive-wire your content into the streams of these influential Tumblrs in order for it to trigger the virality resonators so you can get onto the Radar. Then you’ll get a ton of reblogs and people will like you.
8. Reblog, reblog, reblog. The tightest, most streamlined and efficient strat of all is just being a super sick curator and knowing how to aggregate all the most killer content into your own stream by strategically reblogging other people. It sounds super easy, to just press a button and re-publish the words/images/ideas/viral vidz/memes of another person, but knowing what kind of buzz to blast is not something they teach in school (at least not until schools start hiring me). You’ve got to practice every day, honing your reblog skills like Rocky training for his rematch with Apollo Creed. So if you have any idea what the fuck you are doing here, you will press that ‘reblog’ button in the upper-right corner RIGHT NOW.
