Microblogging: Sammy Luterbach

Throughout the course of the semester, I have spent a lot of time on Twitter and Tumblr thinking about my actions as I went along. I think both microblogging sites are enormously interesting, but I find Twitter to be the most fascinating. The site is simultaneously fun and informative, but it has allowed me to make professional connections. I have been able to be a part of different communities and contribute to the content on the internet in my own way. It has been really cool to experience Twitter from a personal perspective and from a professional perspective. My personal account is fun because I can be my full self and express my personality while still participating in the communities I am a part of: the CollegeFashionista community, the fashion community in general, the UW-Madison and Madison communities, and observing the celebrity community. On my professional @CFUWisconsin, my goal is to create a community of our own. It's a lot of hard work that I need to think about creatively and professionally. My most recent goal has been to inject a specific personality into the brand, and I feel like I've been a bit more successful at that in the past work. I used more "I's" and "me's" and injected more opinions and fun photos into my tweets.

Since I really enjoyed working with Twitter, I decided to contribute to their Wikipedia page. Their page was protected so I just had to submit a request to edit, but I talked about the value of using Twitter for a business by saying, "Twitter is a great place for businesses to communicate with their customers in real-time and gain valuable insight from them. It's an easy way to be a part of a community and start your own community. It's also a great place to build relationships with customers, partners, and influencers online." I learned this information myself, but also found that Twitter.com/about said that same thing and used that as my reference.

 

Tumblr has been quite interesting as well. I found Tumblr to be most rewarding from a professional perspective because I had a clear goal: to gain the most reblogs, followers, and ultimately, direct attention to CollegeFashionista.com. I spent time testing which photos were the most accepted and loved ones by the community that follows us and hopes that it would allow us to gain for followers. I think I was fairly successful in doing so, since we have gained around 800 followers this semester and get way more reblogs than we ever have in the past. It has been like trying to develop a good formula for us, so it was fun experimenting. I tried finding a formula for my personal Tumblr, but I never really gained followers that weren't my friends. I think in order to do so, I would have to really advertise my blog on other social media outlets. I kind of enjoy keeping Tumblr to myself though. I feel like if I were to gain more followers, I would have more of a responsibility to follow a strict schedule everyday and maintain it. Right now, my Tumblr is an outlet for expression and creativity and a place to store inspirational photos I find online.

Microblogging: Sammy Luterbach

This week for my practicum project, I plan on discussing my work and findings on Tumblr. First, I will talk about what has been happening on CollegeFashionista's Tumblr and then I will talk a bit about my personal Tumblr.

When I started my social media internship with CollegeFashionista at the beginning of the semester, the Tumblr page had been made and I was given specific direction on how to run it. I would use the queue feature to schedule one street style photo from the site each day at 9am all at once about a week before they would go live. Each post would include minimal tagging, and it would link back to CollegeFashionista.com. The number one goal with these posts was to get them re-blogged, which would lead to more people following us on Twitter, which would spread awareness of CollegeFashionista. Every Friday, I put together a post called "Friday Favorite Tumblr" where I would contact one Tumblr page I liked, interview the person behind it, and do a little write-up along with a street style photo of them. Our goal with these particular posts was to create a sense of community with other fashion-oriented Tumblrs, which ultimately would help us spread awareness as well. We do no re-blogging on this Tumblr, only original content.


After having a meeting about the Tumblr page and being able to give some input, we switched things around a little bit. Instead of having only one street style photo go live a day, we now have five. Sometimes those photos include behind the scenes action or outtakes from photo shoots, advertorials, etc., which is fun because our Tumblr is the only place where you can find photos like that. I also include more tags with each post. Instead of doing the "Friday Favorite Tumblr" posts, I now only do monthly favorite Tumblrs. The posts are a lot of work and not very successful in terms of re-blogs or likes, so they are now scaled back. I think these posts are not as successful because they are very wordy and not very graphic. I think Tumblr is more successful when it's used visually, which is different from other blog sites, like Blogger, for example. There are also plans for a new layout, but professional programmers are handling that instead of me. The goal is to have more photos visible at once, instead of simply seeing one after another. Since making these changes in the last week, CollegeFashionista gained around 100 new followers and got lots of re-blogs on many different photos.

My personal Tumblr page is far less exciting. It's something I do for fun and is basically just a collection of images I like. I go on Tumblr and just go on a re-blogging spree, re-blogging as many images I want with no rhyme or reason. This week, I made an attempt to go on my Tumblr everyday to keep it updated, and I uploaded original photos from my personal blog and my CollegeFashionista post. I gained two followers, but had zero re-blogs on my original photos. I think the most successful Tumblrs are consistent, have evenly spread out posts, and have a specific point of view. I am going to make an attempt to use the queue feature more on my personal Tumblr in order to be more consistent. I also think I might have to change the layout of my Tumblr, in order to make it look more professional and less amateur.

Microblogging: Sammy Luterbach

I was really excited to be assigned to microblogging for this practicum project for a couple of reasons. First of all, I already have both a Twitter and Tumblr account and I love them, so I am comfortable with both and can really delve into doing something different with them. Second, I have a social media internship with CollegeFashionista where one of my jobs is to control the site's Tumblr page, so I spend a great deal of time on Tumblr thinking about ways to improve the page, gain more followers, and get our photos re-blogged. This project will be a great extension of my work and fun on both Twitter and Tumblr.

I was hesitant to create a Twitter when it first became popular because I thought it was just going to be a different version of Facebook, but once I bit the bullet, I found out that I couldn't have been more wrong. On Twitter, you only have 140 characters to say what you need to say, and it better be creative or no one will read more than two words. It's a challenge! I've also found that Twitter is somewhere where people share a lot of links and news. In fact, I really consider Twitter to be a news source for me, because I follow reputable sources. On Twitter, I like to talk to people in the fashion industry, celebrities, and the other CollegeFashionista interns across the country. I've even had celebrities Tweet back at me; it's so fun! I don't really use Twitter to talk to my friends, and I don't post a ton of original content, so I am going to start doing more of that in hopes of receiving more comments and starting more conversations.

Tumblr is one of the easiest platforms to share original information on in an original way. You can share photos, blog posts, quotes, anything on a page that you can totally control to make it look like it's your very own blog. On Tumblr, you also follow other Tumblr pages. When you first log-in, you are brought to your Dashboard where you can see all of the photos or information that the people you follow have shared, and you can re-blog any of this so it will appear on your own page. On my personal Tumblr, I pretty much only re-blog inspirational or cool photos. I want to make an effort to include more original content and gain more followers. On CollegeFashionista's Tumblr, we are already undergoing changes in order to gain more followers. I will share more on the changes in a later blog.