Tumblr has been one of the main social networks during the last years. Even if not as globally known as Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, it has been one of the primary tools for creators and artists because of its versatility and the advantages it offers to people compared to other networks. Nowadays it has a bigger user base than WordPress, which could be considered it’s main competitor. Tumblr could be thought as a bit more basic tool than it, which makes it much more attractive for personal use, although some small businesses and creators do also use it.
The main feature of tumblr it’s the ability to make completely personalized blogs, which let you get either the skin (the appearance) that suits the most your content, or even make it from scratch. This allows it to be a tool suitable for different profiles: You can make a blog focused on writing, on photography, on sharing a specific thematic content or even art, appart from using it as a personal blog. It does even allow to post audio files or video files, let it be either hosted on tumblr itself or from places such as Vimeo and YouTube.
In a way, we could consider those seven points to be it’s main features:
- Full control over the visual appearance of your blog. Editing your blog’s appearance is surprisingly easy: You have plenty of already-made free skins, but you can also make your own. You get full control over the HTML, CSS and JavaScript of your page, which means you can structure your blog in the way you consider more fitting to your needs.
- Due to the ability of editing your blog’s visual appearance, you can use it as a Portfolio for your photos, drawings or even writing. And as it is still a social network, you can get other people to see the new content you publish on it.
- Unlike Instagram, it has the ability to reblog to share in your own blog other people’s content. This both benefits the author, as he can get support from fans, and it does also allow for making blogs specialized on sharing a specific kind of content, such as fashion, news, jokes, etc.
- You are allowed to submit up to 10 images in each post and write as much as you want, which is rather unique compared to most social networks. It gives you the ability to express yourself properly without worrying for character limits.
- Your blog can have multiple pages on it to give specific information, put links to other websites, having your own biography, amongst others.
- Tumblr allows you to send and receive asks so you can communicate directly with people you follow and get feedback from your fans. Those asks can be published to be replied in your blog with other followers. It also allows for people to submit content to your blog (under your approval), so some blogs can be made thanks to the effort of other people. Finally, tumblr does also have a chat for more private communication.
- You can have multiple blogs in the same account. This is specially handy if you seek to have a content specific blog, for sharing your own creations, and a more personal blog. As they can all share the same account it makes the management of them much easier.
For those reasons, Tumblr -while it might not be overly popular as other social networks- is a great tool for content creators. While it allows for a more social network kind of use, the possibilities it gives in blog terms make it a great tool that every photographer, artist or writer should at least consider the next time they search for a new place to publish their content.