What Does It Mean to Submit a Text Post on Tumblr?

The microblogging site Tumblr enables seven different types of posts -- including text posts -- that apply different formatting based on the type of content shared. You can add text to any type of post, but a text post is specially formatted for just text, while a photo post, for example, is formatted for images.

Viewing Post Types on the Dashboard

When you log into Tumblr you're presented with your dashboard, which shows you posts from the blogs you follow as well as links to the different types of posts you can make to your own blog. Across the top in a voice bubble are the seven different post types you can make to your blog: Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio and Video. In the settings -- also accessible from you dashboard through the gear icon -- you can define the formatting for each post type.

About Text Posts

When you submit a text post, that text is put on your Tumblr blog -- also called Tumbleblog -- and all your followers can see it. Text posts have three main components: a title, a body and tags. The tags help people to search for interesting content on Tumblr. The body is the content of what you have to say to the wide world and the title is how it will be listed when people search for it. Titles aren't mandatory, but they help, especially with text posts. Within a text post you can format the text and add links, pictures or even custom HTML Web programming code. But the focus is on your words.

Ways to Submit Text Posts

When you submit your text post it can do several things, depending on what you want to happen. If you click the "Post" button, it will be immediately posted to the top of your blog. But if you click the arrow to the right of the button you can see more options. You can add the text post to your blog's queue to be posted after all the other blogs in the queue are live. You can set a publication date and time to have it publish later, if you want. If you're not done with the post you can save it as a draft to finish later. Or if you want to communicate privately with other people who administrate the same blog you can publish the post privately.

User Generated Submissions

If you want some help getting content for your blog, you can allow users to offer submissions. In the settings for your blog -- accessible through the dashboard -- you can enable the option "Let People Submit Posts." Then users will be able to send you posts -- in your Tumblr inbox -- which you can either allow or disallow for your blog.