Thanks to Poynter, and Some Notes

Tuesday, November 29 2011

Thanks to Poynter, and Some Notes

Thanks to everyone who stopped by today’s Poynter chat about Tumblr for journalists (and more thanks to Mallary and Joe for having me!)

BEST PRACTICES
The Tumblr community very much rewards authenticity, originality and social graces. I always reduce this to:

Be Engaging: Have interesting things to say, and don’t talk simply about yourself. Respond to other Tumblr users, ask questions, etc. Remember that Tumblr is a visual medium (more than half of the 25 million things posted on Tumblr each day are pictures), so look for compelling images to tell your story whenever possible.
Be Social: Tumblr is above all a social sharing platform. Use this space to show off your best stuff, encourage others to share it with their followers, reblog posts from other Tumblrs that you think your followers will enjoy.
Be Yourself: No publication has to fundamentally change who they are to connect with people on Tumblr. The audience responds most to a personal, peer-to-peer connection with you; embrace that.

THE COMMUNITY
More than 105 million people worldwide see Tumblr blogs every month (43 million U.S.). Tumblr currently serves 13.3 billion pageviews every month; this time last year that was less than 2 billion. RIght now there are 35 million Tumblr blogs; at the current rate (nearly 3 million new blogs every month) we expect to have more than 70 million Tumblr blogs by this time next year. Those Tumblr bloggers are creating more than 45 million new posts every day.

Top 10 US DMAs and monthly unique users of Tumblr blogs, October 2011:
New York: 5.2 million
Los Angeles: 4.3 million
San Fran/Oakland: 3.7 million
Washington, DC: 1.9 million
Chicago: 1.8 million
Philadelphia: 1.7 million
Atlanta: 1.6 million
Seattle: 1.5 million
Boston: 1.4 million
Dallas: 1.3 million

Top 10 US states and monthly unique users of Tumblr blogs, October 2011:
California: 10 million
New York: 4.4 million
Texas: 3.6 million
Florida: 3.1 million
Illinois: 2.1 million
Pennsylvania: 2 million
New Jersey: 2 million
Georgia: 1.9 million
Washington: 1.7 million
Virginia: 1.6 million
Ohio: 1.5 million

USE CASES
Washington Post Innovations
This is the best example of a Tumblr blog stitched into the fabric of the publication’s existing Website. The Post’s Innovations Tumblr blog has all the community and sharing functionality of a Tumblr blog, and it carries the navigation, look and feel, and advertising of a traditional Washingtonpost.com page http://on.washingtonpost.com/

T Magazine
One of our favorite things about the T magazine Tumblr is that it’s big. Very, very big; the pictures are the star here, and they’re shown off in a way that’s hard to do on many traditional Websites. Nice voice, clean look, compelling images.http://tmagazine.tumblr.com/

GQ
GQ launched in November with a Tumblr blog that has quickly become one of the best, most original and most talked-about of the media Tumblrs.Best uses: GQ uses the ‘ask’ feature better than anyone we’ve seen to create a real dialogue with readers http://gq.tumblr.com

CNN Money Tech
The idea of this really nice group Tumblr blog is that in every newsroom reporters email interesting tidbits and commentary around; this in essence puts the Tumblr audience on that email chain:http://cnnmoneytech.tumblr.com

ProPublica: Officials Say the Darndest Things
The problem for ProPublica was that as a non-profit news org, they had to be careful to not be seen as opinionated or partisan on Tumblr. The solution is this unique Tumblr blog of quotes from public officials that takes advantage of Tumblr’s community and content distribution features. http://officialssay.tumblr.com

The Gun: CJ Chivers
Excellent example of a journalist providing really great reporting from his individual Tumblr blog: http://cjchivers.com

Find an incomplete list of media outlets and journalists here; please email additions to me.

THEMES
Art She Said: A project from Ann Taylor; when the promotion ended Tumblr users were allowed to install the theme from the project on their own Tumblr bloghttp://www.tumblr.com/theme/18357

API
Guardian SXSW coverageUses the Tumblr API to pull in posts from multiple Tumblr bloggers in a single space on the Guardian’s website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/sxsw-2011-live-coverage