Hi. I'm a geriatric millenial who never got into tumblr when I was young and cool. Please bear with me while I try to figure this out <3
I'm a writer who has published two books but after getting burned by a shady publisher, I'm back on my BS writing fanfiction, mostly about Pedro Pascal characters such as Marcus Pike, Oberyn Martell, Joel Miller and the Mandalorian. I'm on AO3, but wanted to see if I could expand my audience <3
Tumblr Topic - The Importance of Re-blogging: Re-blogs vs Likes.
Hello lovelies,
I wanted to shed and share some info on re-blogging. Perhaps you're new to Tumblr and are not sure what re-blogging is, or means. 🤔
Or perhaps you're a silent lurker here, afraid to start re-blogging because you're not sure how or why you should.
Don't worry, I, and with a little reluctant help from Joel, (Dave has gone on a top secret mission 🤫) have you covered. 🖤
Sorry to interupt your coffee Joel, but we have work to do... chop, chop! 👏🏻
The Like Button ♡
☝🏻First of all let me just start by explaining that Tumblr is not like other social media platforms. The algorithims here are vastly different.
Where you may be used to pushing the like ♡ button over on Instagram, X/Twitter, TikTok etc..., to boost and share the things you like out to a wider audience, Tumblr's like function works very differently.
For a start, it doesn't actually mean you 'like' the post at all. It's simply a way of bookmarking the post.
And it doesn't boost that post to wider audience either.
You'll find the like button on the bottom of each blog post. Here it is circled:
So, what happens when I push the 'like' button, then?
When you hit the like ♡ button on Tumblr, that post is saved, or bookmarked, into your own like list.
Tumblr notifies the original blog poster (OP) that you "liked" their post.
That's it. 😐
That post then gets pushed to the bottom of your like pile each time you like something else. The more things you like, the more that post gets buried and forgotten about.
So, I shouldn't press the like button on Tumblr then?
Absolutely you should! Like I say, it tells the OP you liked it. And if you wanna bookmark things to come back to later, it's a great way of keeping track.
But... there is something else that's more important that you should probably do if you liked their post.
You should re-blog it. (And comment too, The Tumblr Trinity, but we'll cover comments another time.)
Okay, so what's a re-blog? 🤔
A re-blog is you sharing the original creator's post on your own blog. (Not by copy/pasting it into your own post, that's plagiarism, bub. That shit will get you killed. Joke, but it is a big no-no!) But a re-blog allows you to share the post whilst giving credit and recognition to the OP.
At the bottom of every post you'll see this continuing arrow symbol, or ouroboros if you will. 🐍 ('Cause an ouroboros depicts something forever continuing, and if you re-blog something, it's forever continuing... geddit? 🤪)
This is the re-blog button:
By re-blogging it, the algorithm on Tumblr pushes the post into all your follower's orbits and it will appear on their dashboard.
They'll see your re-blog and can either re-blog your re-blog themselves, or click on the OP's post and re-blog it directly from them.
Either way, the original content poster get's notified whenever someone re-blogs their post, as does the person who re-blogged it, if they re-blog from a re-blog - make sense? 🤪
If you simply just 'like' the post and do nothing else, no-one else is notified that you liked the post except the OP, and it goes to die a sad, lonely death at the bottom of your like graveyard. 💀
So, why is re-blogging better than just liking? If I like it, surely that means I like it, right?
Yes, if you like a post it tells the creator you like it, sure. But that's it. There's no other engagement there. It simply tells the creator "Joe Bloggs likes this." That's it. 😕
But by re-blogging the post instead, it tells the creator that "Joe Bloggs liked it so much that they wanna share it and see more from you, dude! Yay! Party in re-blog alley and everyone's invited, woo!" 🎉
You get the point. But it gives the creator that boost to share more of the content you like to see.
The more they share, the more you re-blog, and the more you re-blog, the more they share. Ouroboros, see? (And you thought it was just a snake eating it's own butt...)
🤓 Tumblr is a site that was specifically created for sharing the things you like through re-blogging. That's what makes it different to other social media platforms.
It's a place of engagement, making friends and building communities - all through sharing in the things you love.
If you want a silent and non-engaging platform where you don't have to get involved, then Instagram, X/Twitter etc... is probably the way to go...
But you're here on Tumblr for a reason, right?
Yeah, but if I re-blog everything I like, won't that be annoying? I don't wanna piss people off! 🫣
No. Let's get outta that mindset that sharing things you enjoy is annoying - it isn't.
And if anyone ever says to you to stop re-blogging or liking their stuff so much, then they're probably not understanding the whole point of engagement and sharing on Tumblr...
I guarantee you that if you re-blog something, no-one is gonna be pissed off at you, bub.
So, do I HAVE to re-blog?
Look, no-one is holding a knife to your throat demanding that you must re-blog everything-
Joel, chill my dude. We don't stab our chums here... 🙄
But creators don't share their work for it to be forgotten about or for no-one to engage with it. If we didn't want anyone to see our wacky shit, we wouldn't post it online.
Creators share their work to engage with their followers about it, especially in fandom communities.
Creators make art, GIFs, write stories, share thots thoughts, and share thier medium with you so you can enjoy it and share it and get excited about your blorbos together, thus creating a fandom community. 🤝🏻
However, you are not obliged to re-blog or like anything if you don't want to.
We understand there are people who want to just remain silent and prefer to lurk. That's completely okay and creators should never bully you or put pressure on you to do so.
☝🏻It does/will upset us however if you ask/demand more from us when you don't bother to engage or share, FYI... so please bear that in mind. If you want more, show us by re-blogging our work.
We'll always encourage you to simply re-blog what you love, because we wanna share it with you and talk about it and be your friend, and squeal over that broad-shouldered man together. 🥰
So, if I like or re-blog something, how can I find it again?
If you simply 'like' something, you have to manually scroll all the way back through your like list to find it again.
Say you liked 1000 posts. That's a hell of a lot of scrolling you gotta do to find the post you liked, right? And ain't nobody got time for that! 😨
But, if you re-blog the post, you can add tags to it so you can then search for it and find it easily on your own blog.
For example, you re-blogged a cool post about Joel Miller...
Oh, hey Joel. We're talking about you, not to you... as you were, handsome.
You can tag your re-blog 'Joel Miller' when you post it. Then, you can use the search function on your blog, 🔎 type in 'Joel Miller' and every single post you've ever re-blogged using the tag 'Joel Miller' will be found and shown to you.
Ta-da! ✨️ No scrolling for bloody hours to find it.
☝🏻You can also queue up re-blogs if you're worried about continuously re-blogging.
Wait, "queue up" re-blogs? What does that mean? 😶
Say you found 12 posts of Joel Miller you like and want to re-blog, you don't have to re-blog them all at once, one after another.
You can queue them up by adding them to your queue to be posted a few hours, days, weeks, months, or even years apart.
Queuing re-blogs also keeps the original post circulating (ouroboros 🐍). And creators will often use queued re-blogs when creating content in bulk to save time and not to flood their followers with too much content at once.
☝🏻There's no limit to the amount of times you can re-blog a post too. So if you really love that post about Joel's, uh, bulge 😏 you can re-blog it again and again.
You can only ever like a post once though. Boo. 👎🏻
So, re-blogging is the way to go then, right?
Absolutely. It makes creators very happy.
And will also make your dash very happy too as when you re-blog something, Tumblr will suggest more content that's similar to it for you to enjoy.
So if you reaaaally like Joel Miller, (and who doesn't? 🫠) your whole dash can be filled with him! Bulge ahoy! 🍆🫡
He likes the sound of that really...
🗨You can also add comments to your re-blog too...
Wait, comments?? 🤯
Yep! You can free type in the space at the bottom of the original post, and the OP will see this and is able to respond to it by re-blogging again.
You can even have a whole conversation through re-blogs if you want to. And others can be tagged to join in too for even more fun mayhem! 🤗
So if you really liked that Joel Miller fanfic you just read, you can type your thoughts into the re-blog itself.
And FYI, creators LOVE comments. (I'll cover comments and tagging in another post. Don't worry, I got you.)
And Joel just loves fun too, don't you, Joel?
So, I hope that gives you a better understanding on what re-blogging is and why it's so vital on Tumblr and in fandom communities.
If you found this post helpful in any way, then you now know what to do, right?
Re-blog it! 😁
Thanks so much for reading, and I'll catch you next time in another Tumblr Topic post. Stay kind and keep it creamy. 🖤
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