Tumblr for Higher Ed

[Presentation Slides] Love your fandom: How Yale University is using Tumblr

About a month ago, I delivered a presentation to communications officers from across the University introducing them to the Tumblr platform, explaining how Yale approaches it, and some ideas for best practices.

The theme of the presentation was, simply, “Love your fandom.”

The SlideShare of the presentation is embedded above.

Here’s a link to the downloadable slides →
Here’s a link to the downloadable presentation notes →

Hope this is useful. Kindly let me know what you think/point out typos at emmanuel [dot] quartey [at] yale [dot] edu.

Especially curious to hear whether this resonates with other higher-ed social media managers. Does this seem about right?

Why do videos display the way they do inside the Tumblr dashboard?

Imagine if every time you posted an image to Tumblr, it automatically zoomed into a random part of the image and applied a filter over it? You would be confused and frustrated, right?

That’s how I feel about how Tumblr displays videos inside the dashboard.

THE PROBLEM

Videos are a very labour-intensive content type, requiring days or even weeks of planning, scheduling and shooting. This is why it’s heartbreaking to put resources towards something, only for it to show up in the Tumblr dashboard looking entirely unrepresentative of effort that went into it.

For example, a few weeks ago, we invited people to submit questions to popular science writer Carl Zimmer via the Yale Tumblr’s Ask Box, and we turned his filmed responses into a YouTube video.

This is what that video looks like on the Yale Tumblr page:

This is what it looks like within the Tumblr dashboard on the Android app for Nexus 7:

This is what it looks like when it shows up on the Tumblr dashboard on my laptop:

It’s that last screenshot that I find frustrating. Why is it that when Tumblr previews videos within the dashboard, it ignores the specified thumbnail image? Remember that YouTube allows certain brand pages to specify a specially prepared image as the video’s thumbnail. The choice of thumbnail is an editorial decision, much like the decision about what to run as the first page story of a newspaper, or the art direction of a magazine cover.

Why does Tumblr apply a white noise filter over the preview? Even if the randomly-chosen thumbnail landed on one of the film’s most visually interesting scenes, you wouldn’t be able to tell.

One of the great things about Tumblr is that it empowers social media managers like myself to go to the powers-that-be and make the  argument for investing greater resources into our content. When this happens, the entire platform benefits because the overall quality of the content on the site increases.

But what incentive do I have to make good-looking videos if they’re going to show up smudged and unrecognizable inside the dashboard, where the social action happens?

SOLUTIONS/EXPERIMENTS

I wince a little every time I see a garbled video on my dash, and I’ve started looking for alternatives to posting straight video. I’m currently experimenting with graphics with a click-through to the video. For example, I reposted the Carl Zimmer video as the following:

Here’s another one I did for a different video - I included a YouTube play button to make it more obvious that it’s a video:

This is obviously not ideal. I would much rather do a real video post, but linked graphics are currently the option that gives me the most control over how videos appear in the dashboard, so I’m going to keep playing with different templates. Apologies for ranting, but this has been bothering me for a really long time.

Does anyone have any idea why Tumblr ignores embedded thumbnails and smudges the preview? Does this bug anyone else, or am I just crazy?e 

Are the tag streams freaking out for anyone else?

Everything is out of chronological order - it’s like the twilight zone. Is this just me or is this something affecting other people as well?

UPDATE: Looks like it’s a bug. paul4allseasons got the following response from Tumblr Support:

Hello, Just wanted to let you know that this is not a new feature, but rather an issue that our engineers are aware of and will fix it as soon as they can. We appreciate your patience.

Thanks,

Tess

Tumblr Case Study: “Ask X” with Carl Zimmer and Pentatonix

“Ask X” is something I’m trying out on the Yale Tumblr. It’s an opportunity for anyone in the world to connect with people who’re doing inspiring work in the fields of business, science, politics and art.

It’s inspired, of course, by Reddit’s IAmA, which is an online event where Redditors do an online Q&A with interesting people - former IAmAs include Nate Silver, Christopher Poole, and Barack Obama.

The first two “Ask X” events were with Pentatonix and popular science writer Carl Zimmmer. Here’re a few thoughts about the “Ask X” format:

Read More

12 Tips for Running Your University Tumblr

A reader recently asked the following question:

Hey! So, questions about a running a college Tumblr. I’m only one person so it can be really difficult sometimes. I’m just trying to figure out ways to make it easier on me and to also have content that students and potential students will enjoy. So got any advice?

Some ideas:

1) Be obsessive about tagging: This is the single most important bit of advice I can give you. Here’s a list of the most popular tags on Tumblr - use them liberally (where appropriate). I try to have about 3 - 8 tags per post. It’s no fun if you’re posting stuff that isn’t getting any notes. Tags will get your content seen, liked and reblogged.

One more time: only 10% of Tumblr users tag, so tagging smartly multiplies the likelihood of your content being found and shared.

2) Raid your University digital archives: All of them. There’s gold in there, which the Vintage tag will love. Additionally, archival material is a great way to tell the story of the history of your institution.

3) Establish a relationship with other communications teams around the University: Most universities have independent schools, departments and cultural institutions that have their own communications team. Befriend these people. Seriously. Take them out to coffee, remember their birthdays, heck - agree to take care of their kids! Why? Because chances are that amazing things come across their desk all day, and you want to create a culture of sharing, so that they often pass on interesting content.

4) Have a student on your team: It’s worth hiring a student photographer, videographer or researcher. Not only do they help with content creation, they have an ear on the ground and a finger on the pulse of the institution. Additionally, since many of them live on campus, they’re available to document some of the great shows/events/performances that happen in the evenings - i.e. during a time when the university photographer might already be home with his/her family.

5) Create an email address where members of the community can send in photos and tips about things happening across campus: Make frequent announcements encouraging people to send in stuff. You’ll be stunned by the quality of stuff that can come in. You want to create a culture where anytime something cool is happening, people know to ping you.

6) Showcase student work: Does your school have a publicly searchable portfolio of student work? If so, take a page from the School of Visual Arts Tumblr and mine that collection to highlight student work on your blog (SVA shares content from the SVA Behance page). Is there a calendar of student performances? Have someone on your team go down and take pictures of your kids in action. Let everyone know how amazing they are.

7) Timing can be important: As this graphic shows, activity is up on Tumblr during the evenings (note that the times are in Central Time Zone).

8) Post topical content: Keep an eye on the news and post content that relates with an issue happening out in the world.

9) Set a posting schedule: But don’t be too brutal on yourself. I shoot for 2-5 posts at about the same time each a day, depending on how much content I have available. Sometimes, I’ll skip posting for a few days in order to work on creating something.

10) Use tag search to search for the name of your university and track it. That stream might offer up ideas for content, and provide relevant posts for you to reblog, which counts towards your post quota! ;)

11) Repurpose content: remix it as a video, a quote, an infographic or even an infocomic.

12) Be human: Keep your tone light, kind, and familiar. Don’t be afraid to show that there’s a human being behind the account!

In summary, love your fandom. Once more, with feeling: love your followers, and the people who bother to tag, reblog and like your stuff. Obsess over ways to delight them, and treat them with respect, and good humour.

Have any more ideas to add to this list? Kindly share them with me at emmanuel[dot]quartey[at]yale[dot]edu. Thank you!

Where does passive interaction end, and meaningful interaction begin?

Where does passive interaction end, and meaningful participation begin?

This is the animating question in a post by Willa Koerner, who oversees digital engagement at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Koerner’s piece is focused on museums, but I find myself returning to it often because it voices many of my own frustrations with higher ed social media.

Based on popular opinion, the passive action of “liking” or “re-tweeting” something is currently recognized as a valid form of engagement. I fear that this is one of the reasons that so many social media nay-sayers still exist. Since when does clicking a button signify any sort of meaningful interaction? This goes along with the problem that social media managers have, which is how to gauge success in a world where return on investment is notoriously difficult to prove.

Preach.

Sometimes, it seems as if social media managers for educational and cultural institutions have to decide between posting fluff  to rack up engagement numbers, or risk boring people by communicating something a little more substantive. At some point, you need to take a stand.

As a rule, I veer away from calls to action such as “RT this if you love creativity!” or “like this if you love art!” It has been interesting to see how different projects have either exceeded or fallen short of my expectations for engagement, as the projects have varied immensely in terms of participation. I have come to understand that low-barrier to entry prompts are a necessity when it comes to generating responses; however, with these low-barrier prompts comes the promise of low-quality contributions…

One of the things I enjoy most about posting to the Yale Tumblr is that I rarely feel that I’m having to choose between fun and informative. Often, I feel that the community rewards content that is both of these things.

That is undoubtedly a broad generalization, but I do know that sifting through Facebook comments can sometimes be an exercise in despair, whereas I always look forward to reading the reblog comments on Tumblr posts. Seriously, I try to read every single one.

I’ve said before that I think people come to Tumblr because they want to learn. When they log in, they’re opening themselves up to discovery and delight, and you can have a much more meaningful interaction with a core community of enthusiasts than with a disinterested horde. And that mutual respect and appreciation - the sense of providing real value to  each other - is what matters most.

If you have thoughts about what meaningful engagement looks like on Tumblr, I would love to chat. Kindly shoot me an email at emmanuel[dot]quartey[at]yale[dot]edu.