#posting tips

Tumblr isn’t like other platforms — here, reblogging is everything. It’s how posts travel, conversations grow, and communities form.

I see a lot of new artists posting Spn art and it can be a struggle to get your art out there. Or you might be new to Tumblr and not sure how best to put yourself forward.

I post Spn art and do a lot of bangs when my health permits. And I have picked up some tips that I have found helpful for posting art tumblr 😄 so I thought I would share.

Please feel free to take any of these points or leave them as suits you!

✨Personalise your header and icon. Bots will often make posts with popular tags and stolen art, to try and gain followers before throwing out the spam links, but some clues the account is a bot is not having personalised headers and icons, not having a long history of posts (more than a few days), and not talking about their art or fandom. So make sure you don’t look like a bot 😄

✨Interact with accounts you enjoy. Like, comment and reblog your favourite accounts and they will likely return the favour and you will get more followers. The first way your post gets noticed is by your followers. Interacting isn’t always easy if one is an introvert or doesn’t have much time for social media, but do what you can where you can.

✨If don’t have many followers then the next best thing is to use tags more. People follow key tags to find new posts from blogs they are not aware of. I recommend using the ‘Spn fanart’ tag on all your art posts. Also be sure to include: common ship names, the character names, and key words like: cute, funny, angst, angel, wings, etc 👍🏻 😄 this will help people find your posts, so be sure to tag consistently!

✨Make a personal art tag, it could be ‘your name art’ or something as wacky as you like. But tag all your art with it! If someone sees your art post out in the Spn fanart tags and they like it, they can click your art tag to see the rest of your art posts.

✨Don’t include links to outside webpages unless absolutely necessary. If you are posting for a bang, reblog the bang master post for the story which has the links to ao3, but then make your own art post and only link to the tumblr master post. Tumblr often hides posts with links to outside webpages (so that the porn bots sending you to spam websites get minimised, but unfortunately this also minimises links to ao3 or shops 😔). Links to another post inside of tumblr are ok tho! So to keep your art post from being hidden from searches, only link back to the master tumblr post with the story info. If people want to read the story they can follow the ao3 link from there. But it’s better that they actually get to see your art (the ‘advert’ for the story) in the first place so that they know it exists!

Also keep this info in mind if you are linking to your shop or your other socials. Your direct followers will see your shop posts but because of the external links the post might be hidden from searches. Consider doing a mix of posts with direct shop links and ones that get the info out there but link back to a pinned tumblr post or bio post with the outside link.

✨Don’t crowd your art. Many people view tumblr on mobile so your pictures will look small. People can’t really see the details if you put 2 images side by side. Put one image on each line and consider making some cropped images to show close up details of your favourite bits. You need to catch people as they are quickly scrolling past, so be sure that you make it easy for them to see what you are offering.

✨And finally don’t be afraid to do reblogs. It isn’t rude to reblog your own work, it’s helpful. Dashboards can get very busy and even if people follow you, your post might be burried a long way down if they don’t get back online multiple times a day. Reblogs will give them a chance to see what they missed. As long as you are not posting on the hour every hour, most people appreciate 2 or 3 reblogs at different times to save them having to scrolled back for days! 😄 and don’t forget that tumblr is multinational. Time zone reblogs can be helpful.

✨oh I forgot one more thing! Don’t put yourself down! No piece of art is perfect! Ever! But Michelangelo doesn’t start off by apologising that the statue of David is out of proportion. And neither should you! Let your work shine where it shines and don’t bury it in put-downs before you even give others the chance to enjoy its triumphs! You deserve better and so do they!

Those are the main points my friends. If you have any other helpful tips that you want to share, feel free to reblog this and add on points. We were all new to this hellsite (affectionate) at some point. And life is already hard for us struggling artists so whatever we can do to help each other is a good thing 💛

Hi all,

This is just a little note/PSA for the people who a new to posting round here. First of all, welcome to tumblr, it's a weird and wonderful place and I hope you find your own little corner full of love and acceptance. It's always hard to navigate new places and I applaud you all for having the courage to post your stories for us all to read and enjoy.

Now the main point of this, I've noticed that recently the number of people who haven't been utilising the "read more" feature and putting their stories under a cut is rising. And I figure that maybe some of you just don't know how to do it, or you think the website does it for you.

But it's becoming harder to scroll through my dash with multiple stories and reblogs (most with stories 3k+ words) without a read more on them and it's driving me a little insane.

So anyway, as a refresher...

So, @gingerbreadmonsters brought up an issue that many writers probably face when posting content. In an effort to spread some useful knowledge, I decided to make this post to help a fellow creator out :D 

I will do my best to explain and hopefully it can help save many writers/creators the headache of cross-posting 🤭

Under the cut to save the dashboards!

I’m already missing some fic posts for Harlots week because for some reason, when you insert a link from AO3 in your post, it does not show up in the tags. 

So I thought I would do a small tutorial to explain how to get the fics to show up in the tags. 

1. First open up your fic in your AO3 account:

2. Click share. Once you click share it will bring you to this page:

3. Click on the tumblr icon, it will open up into a post in your tumblr:

4. Type in your tags and then post. It should show up in the tag!

5. If you want to include your own description, just erase the description that the AO3 share provided and write your own. You can also add a photo if you desire or a read more:

6. If you want to add a gif you will have to save the post as a draft first:

Once you open the post in your drafts, you should be able to add a gif if you desire:

7. Add your tags and post!