Things to post about on Dreamwidth

Putting together a post for Tumblr, but I figure I'll probably want to back it up here, so I'm typing it here first to make copy-pasting easier 😂

[Edit] Now rebloggable on Tumblr! [/Edit]

[Edit 2] Added a few more things to this version! I'll be copy-pasting it to newcomers, the_great_tumblr_purge, and the new Dreamwidth Sharing community on Tumblr shortly. [/edit]

----

There's a question that may be on a lot of minds right now, that some people may be afraid to ask. Or you might not even think to ask it until after you're in deep enough that you'll feel silly for doing so. So let's get it out of the way ASAP.

"But what do I even post on Dreamwidth? Don't all posts there need to be super long and thoughtful?"

Not even a little bit! As with any social media site, posting is the blood that keeps social interactions going. Comments are also vital, but they don't happen without posts to comment on. Unfortunately, with the (I'm sorry to say) sub-par image hosting interface on Dreamwidth (that will hopefully be fixed someday, but probably is at least several years out, I'm even sorrier to say), people who are used to an image-heavy social media site might be a bit daunted by Dreamwidth's text-heavy interface. So here's some ideas of things you can post:

Shitposts. It is entirely fine, okay, and even wonderful to make shitposts on Dreamwidth! Since Dreamwidth isn't a content aggregation site and doesn't have built-in reblogging, you probably shouldn't expect them to go very far (unless a member of metaquotes sees them and wants to share), but they're still welcome 👍

GIPs, or, Gratuitous Icon Posts! Free users get a total of 15 icons to use like reaction images and gifs, and sometimes when you upload one, you just want to share it with everyone right away! That's when you make a Gratuitous Icon Post. You can literally just make a post using that icon, and then put GIP in the text field, and boom! You're done.

Steal some prompts from sunshine_challenge, snowflake_challenge, or thefridayfive. While you can also do any of these challenges in real time, there's nothing stopping you from doing them whenever you want, and The Friday Five has a huge number of back-posts to dig through. Just go back a few pages on the main community page, pick a day with questions you like the look of, and post those (with your answers) to your journal!

Another good place to steal some prompts is Questions and Questionnaires for 3weeks4dreamwidth; Three Weeks for Dreamwidth is the annual celebration of Dreamwidth's birthday, and a lot of people come up with fun things to do for it that you can do at any time.

Check out allbingo as well! While a lot of the bingo cards are made with fests in mind, there's no reason you can't pick or make a random bingo card and use the squares to come up with topics to post about. Money says the community would be down to celebrate a posting bingo with you, too!

Do you have a pet? Or more than one? Post about what they're doing right this second. Someone's bound to be interested in that!

To-do lists. Not only can it be helpful to have these actually written out, some of your followers may chime in to root for you to do them!

Media reviews in three sentences or less. Of course you can make them longer if you want, but if you're just looking to get a quick post out, this one might be pretty fun.

Something you're looking forward to! It doesn't have to be a big thing, even something like, "I can't wait for my next afternoon nap!" or "I just bought a new book and I'm really looking forward to reading it!" or "I wanna go home so I can pet my dog so bad!" Any of those would be a fine post.

Three (or more) Things Make a List: If you've got at least three things you've been meaning to post about, but don't have a lot to say about any of them, jumble them all together in the same post! Pretty sure this tradition dates back farther than Dreamwidth, though damned if I could say where it started.

Reoccurring posts are great for if you want to share something regularly and prompt discussion. Just come up with a few quick lines that you can copy-paste and share whenever, and boom! Solid posting strategy right there. There's a number of communities where this approach is fairly common, in addition to individual users.

It may not seem like these ideas have a lot in common, but one thing they're all good for is starting a conversation with your followers. And that's at least half the fun of Dreamwidth, IMO.

There's more ideas out there, but these should at least get you started. And if you keep it up, you'll have the hang of Dreamwidth in no time 😉

(With thanks to ysabetwordsmith for some of these suggestions 💖)