Tumblr For Dummies Portable Edition

Creating versus Collecting Content

Once you’ve decided what to post on your Tumblr blog, the next thing to consider is whether you’ll be creating new content, collecting content from other sources, or combining new and collected information on your blog in some kind of interesting and unified way. Of course, there are as many ways to build a blog as there are people, so what you ultimately choose to do is entirely up to you and your imagination.

Creating content

Tumblr blogs that create content almost exclusively present original ideas and media related to a single topic or things that reflect an individual or group’s personality, interests, or goals. In most cases, this means posting only new and original entries that haven’t been taken from anyone or anywhere else, either on the Web or from another source.

The major benefit of this type of blog is that you can almost absolutely bypass any potential legal issues related to copyright infringement. By showing your own work and ideas, you run virtually no risk of being sued, or of having to pay fees or fines for using someone else’s work without permission. For instance, you might create a Tumblr blog to illustrate pictures of your daily outfits, the way Jessica Quirk does at http://whatiwore.tumblr.com (shown in Figure 3-1).

Figure 3-1: Tumblr blogs with original content put a spotlight on your creative talents.

In addition to ...