How to use Tumblr

Fed up with Facebook and tired of Twitter? Why not try the other social network and microblogging site, Tumblr?

Tumblr is a fast and furious way to share stuff with friends and the world in more characters than Twitter and with more personalisation than Facebook. Plus, you can use it to find out about interesting stuff from other Tumblr users just like you.

Tumblr is dead easy to set up and use – just follow these simple instructions.

1. Sign up

Head over to tumblr.com and click the Sign up button. You’ll be asked to enter your email address, choose a password and pick a username. The username will become the title of your new homepage and ‘tumble blog’ – so choose with care.

 

 

2. Start using

The next two screens will ask you your age and to enter the captcha text to prove you’re human. Then you’re into the Tumblr dashboard.

There are some options to add information about yourself, but don’t worry about that now. Click on the ‘Find blogs’ button on the right – this will take you to a list of existing pages on Tumblr – there are millions, but you can search by keyword or category to find ones that might interest you. Once you’ve found one, just click ‘Follow’ and it will be added to your feed.

 

 

3. How to Reblog

If you see a post you like, you can click the ‘Reblog’ button. This is like the retweet function in Twitter, and will automatically add the post to your feed for any followers you have to see. You can comment on posts that you reblog too, and leave comments for the original author too.

4. Add posts

The genius of Tumblr is that it makes adding posts very simple. From your dashboard, adding a text post or images or video is as simple as clicking the button at the top and typing. You can add links to images and clips in the dialogue that appears.

 

5. Better ways to add posts

Even better, though, is the browser shortcut. Click on the question mark icon, and then on Apps – there’s a large button marked ‘Share on Tumblr’.

Just drag this to the bookmarks bar on your browser, and if you see something you like on any webpage you can click it and it will create a post using the links, images and videos on that page. You can add your own comments too.

 

Use Tumblr when you're out and about

6. Use it from your phone

Tumblr comes into its own when you’re out and about though.

With the mobile app, you can upload shots and videos from your phone, just like Instagram or Facebook but connect to a far wider audience of friends and follows.

The simplicity of Tumblr has made it the home of choice for very niche blogs – Awkward Stock Photos, for example, is dedicated to the most bizarre images from professional photo libraries around the world.

 

7. Customise the look

The most important part of Tumblr, though, is that it’s very easy to personalise your page.

Once you’re happy with your initial set-up, simply click the gear-like settings icon and you can change the name of your homepage (by default it’s yourusername.tumblr.com) to something more appropriate for what you’ll be writing about.

Even better, you can change the visual look – click on the ‘Customise theme’ button and you’ll be taken to a page with thousands of designs to choose from.

Activating them is just a single mouse click, and if you don’t like the one you’ve chosen, just select another from the same page.

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