I've been planning to make a themed blog (around the concept of duty to one another, service, kindness, etc.) for a while now, and have been saving up posts to do so, but my main blog is a huge jumble of everything that interests me. You've always been a favorite blogger and you keep your blogs (this and wearecleric) well curated. Would you have any advice on how to pull this off without falling into whatever pitfalls there are? Either way, thanks for always brightening my dash.
Wow, what a nice message! Thank you so much!
I've considered making a few "How to Tumblr" posts over the years, but they change features & layouts frequently enough that whatever I wrote would probably be inapplicable in a few short months. I do have a few things that I've done consistently that I think have helped:
I actually have over 25 URLs here on Tumblr, but I regularly update less than half a dozen of them. My main here & WeAreCleric are definitely where I put most of my efforts, but I have the others for various reasons ranging from personal projects (writing tips & recipes) to professional pursuits (blog for a local hackerspace) to coordinating efforts (claiming a few extra URLs for @weareadventurers ). Each of these have very specific uses with very specific content. Even here in my "main," which is a little less focused, there is still a personality and theme all its own.
It sounds like you have a good idea of what you want the sideblog’s theme to be, so good for you!
This part will probably unfold as you operate the blog, but tags are a great way to organize your blog, as well as a way of letting people know what kind of things you’re interested in or blog about. This can help you find other blogs to follow, as well as get more followers to your blog. Common tags for this blog are of course things like “RPGs” or “DnD,” but it’s important to decide what tags you’re going to use so you can be consistent. It took me a while to land on “RPGs,” and for a while I was randomly assigning “RPG” “TTRPG” or other such variations. Just pick something, and be consistent, but don’t be afraid to make a change if you realize something different would be more effective.
I blog almost 100% from my queue. As a matter of fact, with the exception of asks or direct interaction with mutuals, every post you see on this blog was most likely spat out by my queue.
Not only that, but before these posts made it to my queue, there’s a good chance they sat in my “Drafts” folder for quite a while (again, with the above exceptions). This helps me a few different ways:
If there’s misinformation in the post, usually you can just wait a few days before the truth comes to light. Everyone likes to be the first one on the bandwagon, but waiting until tempers aren’t quite as hot can keep you from reblogging a lot of misleading posts.
More recent versions of the post might have really good additional information, funnier comments, or that one perfect gif to sum everything up. This can keep you from reblogging 50 million versions of the same post in 24 hours because it just keeps getting better.
It helps your blog be more consistent in generating content. Rather than dumping a bunch of posts all at once, and then not having anything again for several days or maybe weeks, saving the posts you like gives you a well of content you can draw from whenever you need it. Right now I have 375 drafts in my folder, waiting to be thrown into my queue.
It allows you to create variety where you want variety, and consistency when you want consistency. Specifically for “WeAreCleric,” I’m constantly trying to balance the serious and sometimes controversial aspects of various real-world religious, with the silliness of roleplaying games. Collecting posts in my drafts folder lets me be careful about what posts I’m putting next to each other. It lets me provide comic relief when necessary, but also allows me to make sure I’m not sticking something funny fart joke next to a somber post about real-world issues.
As an example, here are the rhythms I use for my two main blogs.
LawfulGoodness Queue Pattern
2nd: nerd-related non-RPG (comics, scifi/fantasy, etc)
3rd: "off-topic" not really nerd-related, but something I think is worth mentioning/reblogging
4th: nerd-related non-RPG
My main has the most content saved up and I’m able to find useful content the most readily for it, so I’ve found having my queue set to 5 posts per day works pretty well. Plus, when you scroll through my blog, it feels like there’s more RPG content on there than there is, because so much of it is back-to-back (one day’s first post shows up next to the last post from the day before). I’m not spamming anybody’s dash with unwanted content; even if they don’t like any of my off-topic content, it never fills their dash experience, so I don’t annoy my followers too much.
WeAreCleric Queue Pattern
I have a harder time finding the right balance for WeAreCleric, mainly because there’s less content I feel comfortable posting. I don’t want it to be a strictly “religious” blog, but it needs a certain amount of positive religious content just to be consistent. As a result, my queue pattern over there varies a bit more, but it something like:
Day 1 Post 2: Encouragement / positivity post
Day 2 Post 1: Real-world religious post
Day 2 Post 2: Fantasy Art
I used to try and blog various religions on specific days
Tranquility Tuesdays (Buddhism)
Wheel of Wednesday - Hindu
Semite Saturdays (Judaism)
While that was fun for a while, I realized that I had to spend a LOT of time searching for content for some of them, while others were easier to come by. I started feeling like I was giving unfair preferential treatment to some religions over others, almost feeling guilty for sharing my own beliefs if I hadn’t shared enough of somebody’s else’s recently. I was expecting way too much of myself and keeping it from being fun, while also wrecking my conscience.
“What’s that? The Lawful Good was inventing rules with the best of intention but that nobody should be expected to live up to and that take the fun out of everything? Say it ain’t so!”
So, all that to say: having a blog should be fun. Unless you’re some kind of social media content director for a startup or something, don’t stress about it too much. There’s certainly a few tricks you can use to help organize and establish a voice for your blog, but you should only use them if they are helping. Hopefully, some of these words are useful!
Now, to add this to my queue for the 3rd post of the day (ie, “off-topic”) and to give it the tag I use for all my musings on Tumblr and Tumblring: meta
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
origamiaround
izzy806
jbbartram-illu
blakekathryn
