Tumblr for Higher Ed

A blog about making Tumblr work for higher ed institutions, and general Tumblr marketing. I'm Emmanuel - I work on the social media team at Yale University and I run the Yale University Tumblr. Making it up as I go, and sharing what I learn. Thoughts? Contact me at emmanuel.quartey [at] yale.edu.

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*Updated* List of Universities on Tumblr

Just made a massive update to the List of Universities on Tumblr with 19 new universities and college.

Do you know an official University Tumblr that’s not on the list? Kindly let me know at equartey at gmail.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the many dozen submitters who’ve helped create and maintain this list. You rock!

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hampshire college is also on tumblr - hampshireadmissions

Thanks for the heads up! Added Hampshire College Admissions to the list.

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Does anyone know the history of #appblr?

As in, can anyone identify the moment when the appblr tag become a safe space for everyone dealing with the college admissions process?

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a thing a year ago, so it must have blossomed within the last few months. Who coined the term appblr? Do you have any leads unwrapping, bluechoochoo, kenyatta?

It’s always fascinating to see a community coalesce around a tag.

Relevant old post: The #education tag: Tumblr’s social network for teachers.

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"Perhaps high schoolers will flock to [LinkedIn’s new college admissions] service, making LinkedIn the true home for life-long résumé enrichment. Perhaps not: I have more faith in university Tumblrs." — From "Where Is a College Like a Company? LinkedIn" by Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic

Is your favorite college on Tumblr?

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YouTube on Tumblr Dashboard — Before and After:  Tumblr recently switched to the default high-quality thumbnail for YouTube previews on the desktop dashboard. The grainy “before” image comes from Emmanuel Quartey’s excellent write-up, Why do videos display the way they do inside the Tumblr dashboard? The “after” image is the same post but captured today in the new dashboard. Thanks for the YouTube thumbnail upgrade, Tumblr!

In the YouTube example above, Yale University sought questions via Tumblr for science writer and Yale alum Carl Zimmer to answer. Learn more about using Tumblr for Q&A in this case study.

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This makes me so happy! It might seem like a little thing, but this is definitely good news for video creators on Tumblr.

Many thanks to the team for making this happen.

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Thinking about the "How do you measure success on Tumblr?" question again

I've been on hiatus from the Yale Tumblr for a bit (which is why it's been pretty quiet over there), but I'm back in the driver's seat, part-time, starting on Monday, and I've been thinking once more about measuring success. How do I know if I'm doing it right, and how do I know that it's getting better over time?

Previously, I answered the question by total number of notes (likes and reblogs) per day. I soon realized that the graph fluctuates wildly based on things out of my control. For example, old posts surge when they get discovered and reblogged by a popular blog, adding to the total tally, but that success can obscure recent poor performance.

So I'm taking a step back and asking myself which numbers would be useful in helping me understand whether anything I'm doing is moving the needle one way or another:

"On average, how many notes does each post get over the course of a week? A month?": If in January, each post got an average of 20 notes, and in March, each post got an average of 40 notes (hypothetical numbers), I know I'm doing something right. This auto-generated value would be smart enough to exclude large spikes that could skew the results.

Attrition: I keep a Google spreadsheet where I track the number of followers by hand, but I worry that new followers are masking unfollows. I would like to know, on average, how many days someone follows us before they decide to unfollow. If this number gets smaller, it might mean that people are following, quickly getting bored, and unfollowing. If it get larger, it means people are hanging out for longer, maybe because they like what I'm doing.

Anecdotal evidence: Numbers will never tell the whole story. A post might be blowing up because everyone is screaming in the reblog comments. Often, I can only tell how things are actually going by reading through reblogs and fan mail feedback. And that's okay.

For the purposes of reports and the like, I'll have to start keeping a folder of the nicest comments, organized by month.

Note: I know Tumblr provides an in-built analytics dashboard for advertisers. Does anyone have a screenshot? I'd love to know what Tumblr considers important to track.

I'm curious how other people evaluate success and growth (or otherwise). Say hi: equartey at gmail dot com.

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[Presentation Slides] Love your fandom: How Yale University is using Tumblr

Tumblr for Higher-Ed: How Yale University is using Tumblr from quartey

About a month ago, I delivered a presentation to communications officers from across the University introducing them to the Tumblr platform, explaining how Yale approaches it, and some ideas for best practices.

The theme of the presentation was, simply, "Love your fandom."

The SlideShare of the presentation is embedded above.

Here's a link to the downloadable slides → Here's a link to the downloadable presentation notes →

Hope this is useful. Kindly let me know what you think/point out typos at equartey [at] gmail.

Especially curious to hear whether this resonates with other higher-ed social media managers. Does this seem about right?

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Why do videos display the way they do inside the Tumblr dashboard?

[UPDATE: Tumblr fixed this issue!]

Imagine if every time you posted an image to Tumblr, it automatically zoomed into a random part of the image and applied a filter over it? You would be confused and frustrated, right?

That's how I feel about how Tumblr displays videos inside the dashboard.

THE PROBLEM

Videos are a very labour-intensive content type, requiring days or even weeks of planning, scheduling and shooting. This is why it's heartbreaking to put resources towards something, only for it to show up in the Tumblr dashboard looking entirely unrepresentative of effort that went into it.

For example, a few weeks ago, we invited people to submit questions to popular science writer Carl Zimmer via the Yale Tumblr's Ask Box, and we turned his filmed responses into a YouTube video.

This is what that video looks like on the Yale Tumblr page:

This is what it looks like within the Tumblr dashboard on the Android app for Nexus 7:

This is what it looks like when it shows up on the Tumblr dashboard on my laptop:

It's that last screenshot that I find frustrating. Why is it that when Tumblr previews videos within the dashboard, it ignores the specified thumbnail image? Remember that YouTube allows certain brand pages to specify a specially prepared image as the video's thumbnail. The choice of thumbnail is an editorial decision, much like the decision about what to run as the first page story of a newspaper, or the art direction of a magazine cover.

Why does Tumblr apply a white noise filter over the preview? Even if the randomly-chosen thumbnail landed on one of the film's most visually interesting scenes, you wouldn't be able to tell.

One of the great things about Tumblr is that it empowers social media managers like myself to go to the powers-that-be and make the  argument for investing greater resources into our content. When this happens, the entire platform benefits because the overall quality of the content on the site increases.

But what incentive do I have to make good-looking videos if they're going to show up smudged and unrecognizable inside the dashboard, where the social action happens?

SOLUTIONS/EXPERIMENTS

I wince a little every time I see a garbled video on my dash, and I've started looking for alternatives to posting straight video. I'm currently experimenting with graphics with a click-through to the video. For example, I reposted the Carl Zimmer video as the following:

Here's another one I did for a different video - I included a YouTube play button to make it more obvious that it's a video:

This is obviously not ideal. I would much rather do a real video post, but linked graphics are currently the option that gives me the most control over how videos appear in the dashboard, so I'm going to keep playing with different templates. Apologies for ranting, but this has been bothering me for a really long time.

Does anyone have any idea why Tumblr ignores embedded thumbnails and smudges the preview? Does this bug anyone else, or am I just crazy?

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Are the tag streams freaking out for anyone else?

Everything is out of chronological order - it's like the twilight zone. Is this just me or is this something affecting other people as well?

UPDATE: Looks like it's a bug. paul4allseasons got the following response from Tumblr Support:

Hello, Just wanted to let you know that this is not a new feature, but rather an issue that our engineers are aware of and will fix it as soon as they can. We appreciate your patience.

Thanks,

Tess

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Tumblr Case Study: "Ask X" with Carl Zimmer and Pentatonix

"Ask X" is something I'm trying out on the Yale Tumblr. It's an opportunity for anyone in the world to connect with people who're doing inspiring work in the fields of business, science, politics and art.

It's inspired, of course, by Reddit's IAmA, which is an online event where Redditors do an online Q&A with interesting people - former IAmAs include Nate Silver, Christopher Poole, and Barack Obama.

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1) ASK PENTATONIX

Pentatatonix (PTX) is an extraordinary a cappella group that rose to fame after winning the 3rd season of NBC's The Sing-Off. All five vocalists are highly accomplished musicians, including Yale alum Kevin Olusola.

PTX has a rabid fan base - this, together with the buzz building around the imminent release of the group's newest album, made them ideal candidates for the inaugural "Ask X" event. We timed the Ask Pentatonix event to coincide with the launch of the Christmas EP.

Format

People were invited to submit questions through the Yale Tumblr Ask Box. The best questions were then passed on to PTX (we used Google Docs as a clearing house for questions and answers), who answered them via text within an hour an a half on a particular day. Here's a list of the submitted questions and PTX's responses.

Results and Observations

1) We got over 300 questions. Even after accounting for duplicate and low-quality questions, there were very easily over 100 solid questions asking everything from how schools facing budget cuts could be encouraged to use a cappella as a way to keep the arts alive, to questions about Kevin's experience as a Yalie.

2) The announcement on PTX's own social media channels received far greater engagement than on Yale's channels. This underscores the importance of featuring people with an already established fan-base.

3) Answering questions was much harder than I was expecting. I initially tried to answer each question individually, but with so many questions, I quickly realized that we were basically spamming anyone who wasn't interested in the topic. I eventually settled into a pattern of posting answers in batches of 5-7 - here's an example.

4) We saw a slight increase in the number of followers. But I'm certain we lost a number of followers who were annoyed by the many posts about a topic that was irrelevant to them.

Overall, I was happy with the increased awareness of the Yale Tumblr, and pleased that so many people had participated, but I knew that we had to come up with a better delivery mechanism for answers.

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2) ASK CARL ZIMMER

The New York Times Book Review calls popular science writer Carl Zimmer (Yale Class of 1987) “as fine a science essayist as we have.” In his books, essays, articles, and blog posts, Zimmer reports from the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life.

Format

Once again we asked people to submit questions via the Yale Ask Box.

We chose the best 7 questions, and when Carl visited campus to speak at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, we filmed his responses and turned them into the following YouTube video.

Results and Observations

1) Fewer questions, but higher quality. The announcement copy made clear that "We’ll be choosing only the best 5 - 10 questions to ask him, so make them awesome!" and I think this resulted in fewer questions, but improved the quality of submissions.

2) The people whose questions were answered saw the video and reblogged it. The point of the entire endeavor was to teach people something while giving them a chance to interact with someone they might otherwise never meet in real life. It was really gratifying, therefore, to see people reblog the video with responses such as:

Well that was pretty cool. Thanks to Yale and to Carl!

and 

Sweet. Thanks for the very cool interaction, Yale!

3) The video got over 40 likes and reblogs on Tumblr. Photos usually outperform all other post types for us, so it was cool to see that much activity around a 3 minute video.

4) Nearly 900 YouTube views. Benchmarking against our other YouTube videos is difficult because as a content-type, it's in a class of its own. i.e. it's not a recording of a lecture, and neither is it a narrative, student spotlight. Still, I feel that the video could have a higher number of views. We should be able to repurpose the video many times throughout the year.

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CONCLUSION

Using video as a vehicle for responses worked much better than answering questions via text. It's a heavier lift (it required shooting and editing the video and preparing the graphics for the animation) but the advantages are that:

The the end-product is far more attractive than text posts.

The people whose questions are answered are able to take the video and share it with their networks.

It can easily be reused across our other institutional social media channels.

Posting one video is much less spammy to our followers than posting multiple text posts within an hour and a half.

The question that motivates the Yale Tumblr is "How can we take over 300 years of ideas and insight and make it accesible to our followers?" "Ask X" is one attempt at doing exactly that.

Have ideas for how "Ask X" could be improved, or have a question? Kindly let me know at emmanuel [dot] quartey [at] yale [dot] edu. Many thanks.

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Just noticed the ignore icon. How long has that option existed?

It doesn't show up in your normal dashboard - it only shows up when you hover over a post in one of your tracked tags. The image above is from a post in the "comics" tag.

I'm afraid to click it in case it blocks someone/hides all posts from a person. Anyone have any idea what it does?

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Gave a presentation yesterday about Tumblr for higher ed to communications officers from around the university.

Many of the professional schools and university-affiliated institutions have their own communications teams, and it was great scheming with some of them about whether Tumblr makes sense for their unit. Will post the slides soon.

Thanks to Robin Ladouceur for the photo!

UPDATE: Just realized that a more accurate title for this slide would be something like "Best Practices." Number 6 (Like, reblog, and follow) doesn't make much sense under an "Anatomy of a Good Post" list.

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Tricia Wang at #TumblrArt Symposium: “There is a possible tension between Tumblr’s respect for unbounded, flexible identity and the Madison Avenue push to learn more and more about the people they want to reach on the Tumblr platform. So essentially, advertisers… Please. Don’t. Kill. Tumblr. So far, Tumblr has not shown any signs this is going to happen. If anything, they continue to publicly talk about the importance of maintaining Tumblr’s creative culture.” [Video of Tricia’s talk starts at 01:11:53]

I sincerely don’t think it’s possible to overstate this sentiment.

I think Tumblr has done an admirable job so far educating brands about why this space so special for so many people. But this whole thing is built on trust. All it takes is a series of missteps to ruin an amazing thing.

Again, thankfully, it really does appear that Tumblr gets this. Based on the language coming from the team, it seems that they’re very serious about turning a profit while remaining an advocate for the community. Fingers crossed that this continues.

Everything ends, but dear God, let’s take this thing as far as it can possibly go.

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12 Tips for Running Your University Tumblr

A reader recently asked the following question:

Hey! So, questions about a running a college Tumblr. I'm only one person so it can be really difficult sometimes. I'm just trying to figure out ways to make it easier on me and to also have content that students and potential students will enjoy. So got any advice?

Some ideas:

1) Be obsessive about tagging: This is the single most important bit of advice I can give you. Here's a list of the most popular tags on Tumblr - use them liberally (where appropriate). I try to have about 3 - 8 tags per post. It's no fun if you're posting stuff that isn't getting any notes. Tags will get your content seen, liked and reblogged.

One more time: only 10% of Tumblr users tag, so tagging smartly multiplies the likelihood of your content being found and shared.

2) Raid your University digital archives: All of them. There's gold in there, which the Vintage tag will love. Additionally, archival material is a great way to tell the story of the history of your institution.

3) Establish a relationship with other communications teams around the University: Most universities have independent schools, departments and cultural institutions that have their own communications team. Befriend these people. Seriously. Take them out to coffee, remember their birthdays, heck - agree to take care of their kids! Why? Because chances are that amazing things come across their desk all day, and you want to create a culture of sharing, so that they often pass on interesting content.

4) Have a student on your team: It's worth hiring a student photographer, videographer or researcher. Not only do they help with content creation, they have an ear on the ground and a finger on the pulse of the institution. Additionally, since many of them live on campus, they're available to document some of the great shows/events/performances that happen in the evenings - i.e. during a time when the university photographer might already be home with his/her family.

5) Create an email address where members of the community can send in photos and tips about things happening across campus: Make frequent announcements encouraging people to send in stuff. You'll be stunned by the quality of stuff that can come in. You want to create a culture where anytime something cool is happening, people know to ping you.

6) Showcase student work: Does your school have a publicly searchable portfolio of student work? If so, take a page from the School of Visual Arts Tumblr and mine that collection to highlight student work on your blog (SVA shares content from the SVA Behance page). Is there a calendar of student performances? Have someone on your team go down and take pictures of your kids in action. Let everyone know how amazing they are.

7) Timing can be important: As this graphic shows, activity is up on Tumblr during the evenings (note that the times are in Central Time Zone).

8) Post topical content: Keep an eye on the news and post content that relates with an issue happening out in the world.

9) Set a posting schedule: But don't be too brutal on yourself. I shoot for 2-5 posts at about the same time each a day, depending on how much content I have available. Sometimes, I'll skip posting for a few days in order to work on creating something.

10) Use tag search to search for the name of your university and track it. That stream might offer up ideas for content, and provide relevant posts for you to reblog, which counts towards your post quota! ;)

11) Repurpose content: remix it as a video, a quote, an infographic or even an infocomic.

12) Be human: Keep your tone light, kind, and familiar. Don't be afraid to show that there's a human being behind the account!

In summary, love your fandom. Once more, with feeling: love your followers, and the people who bother to tag, reblog and like your stuff. Obsess over ways to delight them, and treat them with respect, and good humour.

Have any more ideas to add to this list? Kindly share them with me at emmanuel[dot]quartey[at]yale[dot]edu. Thank you!

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Where does passive interaction end, and meaningful interaction begin?

Where does passive interaction end, and meaningful participation begin?

This is the animating question in a post by Willa Koerner, who oversees digital engagement at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Koerner's piece is focused on museums, but I find myself returning to it often because it voices many of my own frustrations with higher ed social media.

Based on popular opinion, the passive action of “liking” or “re-tweeting” something is currently recognized as a valid form of engagement. I fear that this is one of the reasons that so many social media nay-sayers still exist. Since when does clicking a button signify any sort of meaningful interaction? This goes along with the problem that social media managers have, which is how to gauge success in a world where return on investment is notoriously difficult to prove.

Preach.

Sometimes, it seems as if social media managers for educational and cultural institutions have to decide between posting fluff  to rack up engagement numbers, or risk boring people by communicating something a little more substantive. At some point, you need to take a stand.

As a rule, I veer away from calls to action such as “RT this if you love creativity!” or “like this if you love art!” It has been interesting to see how different projects have either exceeded or fallen short of my expectations for engagement, as the projects have varied immensely in terms of participation. I have come to understand that low-barrier to entry prompts are a necessity when it comes to generating responses; however, with these low-barrier prompts comes the promise of low-quality contributions...

One of the things I enjoy most about posting to the Yale Tumblr is that I rarely feel that I'm having to choose between fun and informative. Often, I feel that the community rewards content that is both of these things.

That is undoubtedly a broad generalization, but I do know that sifting through Facebook comments can sometimes be an exercise in despair, whereas I always look forward to reading the reblog comments on Tumblr posts. Seriously, I try to read every single one.

I've said before that I think people come to Tumblr because they want to learn. When they log in, they're opening themselves up to discovery and delight, and you can have a much more meaningful interaction with a core community of enthusiasts than with a disinterested horde. And that mutual respect and appreciation - the sense of providing real value to  each other - is what matters most.

If you have thoughts about what meaningful engagement looks like on Tumblr, I would love to chat. Kindly shoot me an email at emmanuel[dot]quartey[at]yale[dot]edu.

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This video is the single best introduction to Tumblr for brands.

It clocks in at a little over 30 minutes, and in that short time, Tumblr's Alexis Kaplan explains what Tumblr is, outlines how it's distinct from other platforms, and provides great case studies.

If you're in higher-ed, please don't be turned off by the many references to "brands". It's easy to let your eyes glaze over when the conversation turns to how fashion labels and soft-drink manufacturers are using the platform, but there are so many opportunities here far beyond those obvious examples.

All it takes is a little imagination to recognize them.

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The URL of this unofficial university Tumblr - ecdininghell.tumblr.com - is a bit of a misnomer since the blog is not a compilation of dining hall horror stories. Rather, it's a collection of the witty, hilarious, and often heart-warming banter between students of Emerson College and an anonymous dining hall worker via comment cards. A student takes photos of the cards and posts them online.

It's a neat way to spotlight a fun, quirky aspect of student life, and the Emerson College community definitely comes across looking very good here.

Thanks to bluechoochoo for the tip!