Shorthand blogging in five minutes

11-05-09 | Posted by: melanie

How would you like a blog in five minutes? I recently created one using Tumblr. Even better, it's a free service.

Tumblr is like shorthand blogging, you can easily share all the interesting images, videos, links and quotes you find around the web, creating a varied tapestry of content without needing to write time consuming blog posts. You simply see something you like and ‘tumble’ it and by magic it appears on your blog. If you are so inclined you can also write traditional blog posts.

How can a Tumblr blog help my organisation?

A Tumblr blog can be a good way to give your brand a personality, tell a story about a specific issue, be a mood board of inspiration or act as a simple reference tool. You can share what you find funny, cool, creative, inspiring or just down right weird!

Blogging strategy

Before you dive in and set up an account I’d recommend spending 5 minutes (so that’s 10 minutes in total) thinking about the strategy for your blog. What’s the point of it? Is it going to help your overall business objectives? Who is it aimed at? Importantly, how are you going to maintain it? There’s nothing worse than coming across a blog that hasn’t been contributed to in a while. However, I’d also balance these concerns with the idea that sometimes you need to try something out and see how it works to find out the best way to use it.

It is pretty simple to create an account and start sharing, which I think is what makes it so attractive. Once you are logged in there are lots of different ways you can 'tumble'. I use the Firefox plugin, each time I find something I want to publish I just click on the 'Share on Tumblr' in my browser. If you have an iphone you can download an app which allows you to share pictures you’ve taken on your phone. Here’s one I made earlier.

Publicising your blog

You can add a badge to your main website, embed the blog or keep it as a stand alone address. You can choose a look and feel for your blog from a number of different themes (we’re using ‘minimalist’) or you can create your own.

Other stuff

Tumblr is an evolving tool, they have social networking elements where you can follow other blogs a la Twitter, you can ‘like’ posts on other blogs and tag each of your items. I’d recommend reading the FAQs and Goodies for more info.

If you are interested in creating a blog and would like some advice or help setting this up please get in touch and tell us your plans.