Since being founded in 2007, the social media website Tumblr has expanded to more than 250 million blogs. Tumblr’s format allows users to write original text posts, share images, and upload videos and audio files. Whatever stage of development your music career has reached, Tumblr can be a great way to share and promote your album online. In this article, we’ll explore some easy tips to help bands and solo artists get the most out of Tumblr. Best of all – it’s completely free to use.
How to Set Up a Music Blog on Tumblr
Making a blog on Tumblr is easy, but you still need to put some thought into choosing your username, theme, and description. To get started, just follow these steps:
- When you visit Tumblr’s homepage, you’ll be prompted to sign in or create a new account. Click the blue “Sign Up” button.
- You’ll be taken to a login screen which will ask you for the email address and password you’d like to use.
Choose a unique URL. All URLs are formatted as “username (dot) Tumblr (dot) com,” and you can’t have a username someone else has already registered. Try to use your band name, or the name you use as a solo artist. If it’s already taken, use something as similar as possible, as the same username with dashes in between the words. Avoid clogging your URL with numbers, which can make it difficult to remember.
- You can also choose a title for your blog, which can be anything and can be changed at any time.
- Make sure you fill out the “description” area with some brief information about your band or solo act.
Tumblr’s “theme garden” has over 1,000 different layouts to choose from. Make sure you choose an uncluttered theme that presents your content in a simple, easy-to-navigate fashion. Since you’re likely to be posting primarily audio files, you might want to avoid the themes that are geared specifically toward text or high-res photographs. Since Tumblr lets users customize their themes, the sky’s the limit when it comes to what your page ultimately looks like. You can customize your theme in two ways:
- If you’re technically challenged, use the simple checkbox options under the “edit” and “customize” buttons.
- If you’re good with computers, go crazy making as many manual edits as you want to the theme’s HTML code. (In fact, you could even code your own theme from scratch if you’re up to the task.)
Popular Hashtags for Musicians and DJs: Finding Your Fanbase
Whether you’re writing a text post, sharing a link, or uploading a file from your computer, Tumblr gives you the option to include as many as 30 tags – more than enough to cover all the bases you need. With 38,000 posts per minute adding up to more than 116.9 billion individual posts as of September 2015, tagging is absolutely crucial if you want to prevent your content from being lost in space. In fact, tagging is essentially the only way your posts can be found by users who aren’t already “following” your blog, since your posts will only appear on the “dashboards” of your followers.
Use your tags strategically by including a mix of generic and specific words and phrases. Here’s a small sampling of the many terms you could consider using (and don’t forget about plural forms):
#album #albumrelease #art #artist #audio #bandcamp #bass #dance #demo #dj #drums #electronic #guitar #hiphop #indie #live #livemusic #lyrics #mixtape #mp3 #music #musician #musicproducer #musicproduction #musicpromotion #musicvideo #promoteyourmusic #rapper #soundcloud #spotify
You can get ideas for even more tags by checking out other people’s posts. For example, perform a search with the word “music,” and take a look at the other tags included on the posts which appear. Tagging is fast and easy, so there’s no excuse not to do it. When you start to publish an entry, a window will pop up with space for the post and a small field at the bottom just for tags. Simply click on the tagging area, and type in the terms you’d like to include.
On a related note, it’s key never to forget about the main advantage of social media: interacting with fans. Personal interaction makes fans happy, and when fans are happy, they’re that much more likely to share your links online and talk to their friends about your music. There are two main ways to interact with fans on Tumblr. When customizing your blog, make sure to:
- Allow user submissions. You don’t have to accept all the submissions you receive, but if nothing else, it’s a fun way to open up a dialogue with your listeners.
- Make sure your blog includes an “ask” feature. That way fans can drop you a line. You have control over whether to publish your individual asks, and whether you’ll accept anonymous asks.
Utilizing social media is a great start for any independent artist, but needless to say, there’s much more to finding success as a musician. When you’re ready to talk about bringing your band or solo act to the next level, call the Planetary Group music promotion team in L.A. at (323) 952-5050 to see how we can help.
