Annie Werner speaks on internships, personal branding and Tumblr

By Sara Williams



Photo courtesy of anniewerner.tumblr.com


Annie Werner spoke on Tuesday about the journey to her career, the role of social media in art and the ways students can use personal branding through Tumblr.

Werner, a San Marcos native and New York University alumna, has worked as an art evangelist for Tumblr for two years. Her job is to pitch Tumblr to art outlets and museums and show these organizations how using the social media site will help them. She also maintains Tumblr’s art blog, tumblropenarts, and plans events for the art community.

While in college, Werner was an editor at NYU Local and had internships with BlackBook media and Village Voice. She graduated from an individual study program all while maintaining her own Tumblr blog.

Werner got an internship with Tumblr after responding to an open call for interns. For the first six months, she stuffed envelopes, but said she learned new skills by attending meetings, asking questions and taking her tasks seriously.

“When you are at the bottom of the totem pole, be observant,” Werner said.

After working at Tumblr for a year, Werner earned a full time position with the arts community.

Werner’s advice to students hoping to go into social media is to read from numerous news sources and try out the latest social media startups as well as current favorites.

“You want to be able to respond when someone asks how Tumblr is different from Pinterest,” Werner said.

Tumblr has approximately 74 million blogs and is the No. 20 most visited website in the U.S. It also has a near even ratio of female to male users, which is unusual for a social media site, where typically most users are female.

 When using Tumblr for personal branding, Werner said the best way to gain followers and maintain an interesting blog is to make sure most posts are visually interesting, tag all posts properly and, above all, be authentic.

“Just being true to who you are is the best approach,” Werner said. “Don’t be a living press release.”