Alicia Keys Demonstrates The Art Of Tumblr

Alicia Keys launched a Tumblr blog and it's an excellent reminder that the rich or, in this case, celebrities are not like you and me. The up and coming artist puts in a lot of work just to get noticed on any social media network while the celebrity generates news simply by opening a new account. Yet checking her Tumblr blog helped me see how Tumblr can be far superior than many other social platforms for aggregating and distributing one's quick hit content.

Alicia Keys' Mashable Promo for Her Tumblr Blog*

In a Mashable post that Alicia Keys described in a Tweet as revealing the "inside" story regarding her "new obsession", her use of Tumblr is described as both the "evolution" and the "maturation" of the socially savvy celebrity.

Mashable writer Christina Warren attempts to make a case that Keys' move from Twitter and Facebook to Tumblr is an example of "connected celebrities …graduating into more nuanced and mature interactions" but that's kind of ridiculous given that Alicia Keys' Tumblr blog is basically running the same content as her Twitter, Facebook and WhoSay accounts. Given that related content across accounts, Warren's statement that on Tumblr the "more intimate nature of what is being shared is more appealing for fans and followers" suggests she hasn't closely examined Keys' other accounts.

But Keys' "new obsession" does demonstrate what a great social media content aggregator Tumblr has become. On her account one finds all the main announcements of projects with which she's involved or is supporting that are also appearing on her other accounts. Plus, though I'm not drawn to her Tumblr color scheme, the pics are bigger than on Facebook without junk in the sidebar, the look is much more appealing than her Twitter account and the content is integrated into one consumable stream in contrast to the individually accessed content categories on WhoSay.

She and/or her team are also starting to reblog content from other Tumblr users and given that Keys is widely referenced on Tumblr, the reblogging feature should soon be working to her advantage.

So whether or not Ms. Keys deserves our attention for starting a Tumblr blog, I think she and her team have created a great example of how to use Tumblr to bring together social media content in a manner that fully leverages the strengths of the platform.

[*Keys doesn't actually say much in her 30 second appearance in this video but I find it indicative of the depths to which commercial blogging and related forms of web publishing have gone to see a 30 second video preceded by a 30 second commercial!]

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Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith maintains his freelance writing hub at Flux Research and blogs at All World Dance and This Business of Blogging. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.