What is it?
Founded in 2007 by David Karp and bought by Yahoo earlier this year, Tumblr is partly a micro blogging site and partly a social networking site. Tumblr is one of the top 15 websites in the USA with an impressive 146.5 million blogs published on the site. It’s certainly worth taking seriously, as it appears one of the most popular blogging sites of our time.
How can it be used?
With user numbers and popularity on the rise, it’s a perfect marketing tool for businesses that are trying to expand and raise brand awareness.
Tumblr is very much the same as the other blogging sites but it is key to simply get involved and be active within the site. Some of the best ways to make the most of it are:
- Follow other blogs – see what other people are doing so you can learn from them and interact
- Like, and re-blog other peoples work when you like what you see
- Make the most of the hashtags – search for what interests you and see what you can find under certain hashtags, such as #marketing #digital
- Be sociable and use etiquette, if someone follows you/re-blogs you, try and reciprocate the favour if you have similar interests
- Think in terms of visual, as Tumblr focuses more on images – use your imagination with the images you use to help attract people’s attention
Why use it?
First and foremost, it’s free, well, the main site is but you have to pay for some of the themes.
It is an instant and easy way to share information over the web.
A key advantage of Tumblr is due to the previously mentioned aspect of the site being part micro blog, part social networking site. It allows you to share anything, from posting text with links and photos, to music and videos. All of this can be achieved effortlessly from your browser, phone, and desktop or wherever you happen to be. Not only can you select from an endless variety of content but you can also customise how your content appears and it’s equally as useful for business as it is consumers.
It would seem that digital is the only way these days; you can’t neglect it. Whether you are a business or a consumer. People are turning to social sites for news content more than ever.
What industries use it?
Is Tumblr being used by business, or just teenage fan girls? A bit of both. Tumblr seems to be doing well across a wide spectrum of users.
It’s worth noting that if you are using it for your business, it may sound obvious, but try and use the exact same name as your company and keep it consistent with your other social media channels as it is imperative for building a successful brand.
It is made clear that there are no limits to what industries can invest in Tumblr. Comedy Central indulges in using the social networking platform to exploit its brand. Fans love the content and savvy brands understand that the best way to make an impact on an audience already bombarded with television adverts, is to go beyond shouting slogans to create interesting content and Tumblr successfully provides the platform to do so.
Is it ‘cool’?
Tumblr are probably trying to establish an element of ‘cool’ by missing out the ‘e’ from the way you may assume Tumblr to be spelt, although this seems to have become a theme with sites such as Flickr adopting this lazy text slang image.
The site itself is growing very quickly. Yahoo bought the site with the intention of nurturing its growth, using it to get at Yahoo’s main rivals, Google.
It will be important for Yahoo to prevent Tumblr’s bloggers from leaving to explore different platforms and avoid annoying users with ads, something we’ve already started to see on Twitter and Facebook.
Will they be around for long?
As with most social media there is so much out there that it can be construed as being hard to keep up with. Due to Tumblr’s exposure, they have multiple competitors, ranging as widely from Pinterest to WordPress. Being owned by Yahoo would suggest a certain element of longevity for Tumblr.
Given the trend of social networking companies going public on the stock exchange, such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, many have said this has devalued these companies in terms of PR. Many people believe these sites should be around for social good so as soon as they try and monetise them the novelty has worn off. Tumblr’s presence provides a platform for new age democracy around the globe so there is little doubt that it will be taking a turn for the worse anytime soon.
