Lessons in Tech, Empathy & Daily Music Blogging ๐ง๐ก
Remember Tumblr? That place where gifs went to live forever, fandoms flourished, and your experimental poetry probably still lingers in the digital ether?
Well, back in 2014, I decided to embark on a rather eccentric side project: write a daily music blog/Tumblr for an entire year. Yes, daily. Every. Single. Day. ๐
The blog (Morning Music Shuffle) was my attempt to combine a love of music, a need to better understand content marketing, and possibly some masochistic tendencies ๐ฅด.
What started as a quirky experiment quickly became a crash course in content creation, consistency, and most importantly - customer perspective ๐ง .
Looking back, this wasnโt just about music. It was about walking the walk ๐ฃ.
Why Marketers Need to Get Their Hands Dirty ๐ ๏ธ
Too often, we sit in meetings debating campaign frameworks, buyer journeys, and martech stacks. But hereโs the truth: you canโt understand what it means to engage an audience if youโre not doing it yourself. You need to live the customer experience ๐.
That little Tumblr blog taught me more about SEO, tagging, audience behaviour, and CX than any whiteboard ever could. Not because it was complex but because I used the platform, felt the friction, and had to earn every reader ๐งฉ.
It was content marketing in its rawest form: no paid media, no automation, no fancy analytics dashboard. Just a post, a track, and the hope someone out there enjoyed it ๐ตโค๏ธ.
That kind of empathy, really thinking about what someone else would want to read or listen to, is exactly what todayโs marketing often forgets. We forget that at the end of every campaign is a person, probably scrolling on their phone while drinking lukewarm coffee โ๐ฑ.
So, What Did I Learn From a Year on Tumblr?
๐ก Empathy beats assumptions. Real marketing starts with understanding the human on the other side of the screen.
๐ก Consistency is hard, but it builds trust (and a backlog of great content).
๐ก Tools donโt just support marketing, they shape it. Learn them, use them, respect them .
๐ก Oh, and never underestimate the power of a great playlist!
So, if you're a marketer wondering whether you really need to get hands-on with your tech stack or spend more time seeing the world through your customerโs eyesโฆ the answer is yes! Preferably, with headphones on ๐ง๐.
๐ธ : Author's own! Kraftwerk @ Tate Modern, 2013.