Do you have any advice for someone who wants to start a sims focused tumblr?
This is a difficult question to answer, largely because of the first piece of advice that springs to mind when I read this -- it sorta depends why you’re asking... it almost becomes a little unspecific? But I’ll try to gather up some random points that might be relevant. :)
⇛ Do it for the “right” reasons. That might sound really weird, because I’m sure there could be several valid reasons to want a sims blog, but far too often you see people talking about how they never get any notes on their posts and people never message them, while other simblrs (some might even go as far as saying “worse simblrs”...? Which is of course a ridiculous thing to say) get millions of notes and it’s disheartening, blahblahblah. I don’t know if things are different in the TS3/TS4 simblr community, but in my experience from the TS2 one (or at least this is how I see it:), it’s about sharing things from a game you love, be it with one or two people who +like your posts, 500 people who +like your posts... or maybe nothing more than random people scrolling past your posts in the tags going “huh, neat” without liking it or saying anything to you. In my opinion, a blog about anything (not just The Sims) should be about things you want to share because you want to, not some sort of popularity contest to see who gets the most appreciation from random internet strangers. Don’t compare yourself to others. If it wasn’t for the TS2 Tumblr community, I’d probably basically never play my game anymore, because nothing inspires me to play like scrolling through my dashboard or browsing the tags - and I think a lot of people have this in common - so even if you get one or two or six hundred notes on your posts, you’ll probably be inspiring someone somewhere to want to play their game; either directly by doing something cool others want to try out too, or by decorating a nice little kitchen that makes people go “dang I’mma build all the kitchens, unffff”.
That bullet point became a little “political”, but I see it as really important so it just had to be said... :p onwards to more practical things, maybe?
⇛ Tag your stuff properly. Sooner rather than later. And I don’t just mean tagging it with the relevant game for the sake of all of Tumblr and people browsing the tags, but for yourself too - especially if, like me, you have a mild (severe) stroke of OCD and like keeping your blog organized by tagging neighborhoods, families, specific sims etc etc... I had to go through my blog recently and re-tag a bunch of old posts, because I never separated between the different premade hoods in my tags, and it became a proper hot mess. x) So to avoid headaches (if you’re OCD, at least) - tag early.
⇛ Don’t make your sims blog a sideblog. Though this is certainly debatable and there are probably shared opinions (as with anything), I’ve seen a whole host of people doing this because they already already had a personal Tumblr, and just created a sideblog through that because... well, I don’t really know why - but it seems to be something people end up regretting. Shared dashboards, strangely liking a bunch of posts as Honeycakemachinexoxoxo instead of simmergal123 (I hope nobody actually uses those, in which case I’m sorry!) kinda makes it hard for people to recognize who’s who, I guess... not that you have to have a “simmer name” (said vimpse with her unpronounceable, random TS2 community name), but it does save explaining “I follow you on my main blog”. Making a whole new account for your sims blog is also probably worth it because...:
⇛ Consider a “reblog blog” / inspiration blog. This, too, comes down to preference of course, but in fairness you did ask for my advice, so that’s what you’re getting: one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone posts a lot of really good original content from their own game on their simblr, but then also reblog 900 other posts from other simblrs a day. I know you can block reblogs to remedy this, but it’s not just a repeat-dashboard problem - sometimes I like visiting people’s blogs to look at their game, but then every 3-4th page has to be skipped because it’s reblogs of other people’s content... maybe I’m being finicky, but I honestly just prefer simblrs who keep their blog their own. Hence the “reblog blog” / inspiration sideblog -- sometimes it’s also fun to have a place to go to see what people I get inspired by get inspired by in return!
⇛ Don’t be afraid to talk to / ask people things! This might be the pot calling the kettle a cake shape (or whatever), but you don’t have to just sit quietly in your corner and wonder why it feels like you’re not participating in the community because you’re afraid to talk to people, for whatever reason. We’re all people (some of us are cats), we all love The Sims; strike up a conversation with someone! About their game! Or their ‘hood! Or their sims! Or their OTPs! Or whatever! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that end badly, and for the very, very, very most part: everyone around these parts are super friendly. :)(it’s been a while since anyone’s called me “a bitch” around here, but that was a thing a while ago because I have a tendency to be really... straight up about what I think, sometimes perhaps not in the kindest way, but most of the time I’m nice! Sometimes I wonder if that’s why people apologize profusely sometimes when they send an ask with a question :/ I’m sorry if I give the impression that I’m mean or don’t want to be talked to because I answer abruptly if it’s something I’ve been asked a million times before!... and this isn’t at all relevant to the topic at hand but whatever :p)
⇛ Do exactly what you want to, and have fun. Which ties everything together, I guess! Feel free to completely ignore all the specific practical advice I’ve just given you, and do whatever you want - because in the end it’s your blog, and nobody can tell you how to run it (just like I bet some people would like it if I’d stop posting novel-length responses now and then :D I regret nothing!). You just kinda have to do what works for you, from posting style to content, so that you can be the one having fun with your blog, not every Tom, Dick and Harry you might want to please because you do X, Y and Z that they don’t like. ^_^ Be free, simmer-diamonds!
Hopefully some of that was semi-helpful, or at least some type of informative (though maybe not about the correct topic :p), and if you do decide to make your very first simblr, let me know so I can share the love and check it out. :) -- unless you plan on blogging TS3 because I’m sorry I don’t think I can handle that, but that’s a different story for another time.
