Here's A Little Lesson In The Tumblr Algorithm, For Those Who Don't Know: The Only Way For A Post To

Here's a little lesson in the Tumblr algorithm, for those who don't know: the only way for a post to be spread to someone's dash, after it's already been made, is through reblogs. Likes do very little for boosting visibility. Besides adding notes so a post has a higher likelihood of appearing at the top of search results for the tags they're featured in, likes are just caches to show/store posts you've liked. They do not significantly increase the likelihood that the post will be seen by more people. The only way to ensure this is to reblog it to your own blog, so your followers will see it.

Also, this isn't Twitter. I know that on Twitter, it's largely expected for most of your profile to consist of mostly your own tweets, and not too many retweets. Tumblr is extremely different, in that the entire site is made up of shared posts. The site is designed for maybe 5% of the content on your dash to be original content at any given moment, while 95% will be reblogs from others, and that's perfectly acceptable and expected, actually.

This is all to say that, I know a lot of you come from Tik Tok or Twitter, where liking content has a direct, positive effect on the content's visibility. I know that your FYP is dictated by what gets more likes/what the people you follow like, and that Twitter shows posts your following likes on the TL. But Tumblr is extremely different. So please, don't hesitate to reblog shit on this website, especially art/writing. If you liked an artist's work, the best thing you can do for them is reblog it because simply liking it will do very little to boost their post's visibility. This doesn't just apply to art either; if there's a PSA, theory, etc., that you enjoyed and want more people to see, the only way for that to happen is to reblog.