I'll Tumblr For Ya
Last week, the number of blogs powered by Tumblr surpassed those on Wordpress.com, making Tumblr one of the world’s most popular blogging platforms. While not on the scale of Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter yet, Tumblr is an important method for people to share information and messages that continues to grow.
What is Tumblr?
If Twitter got together with Blogger and had a child, Tumblr would be their baby. Tumblr is a multimedia micro-blogging platform. Posts are short, but not limited in length like they are on Twitter. Posts often also feature images, audio, and video. Users can also use themes to decorate their Tumblr however they like. It’s the best of both words, combining concise messages with creativity only limited by the publisher.
On Tumblr, users can follow other blogs that they like, and they can reply, reblog, and like posts from other users. The reblogs and replies keep users coming back as people want to see what others think of their posts. These features set Tumblr apart as a blogging community because users easily connect and communicate with one another as they post to their own blog.
While people have been flocking to Tumblr for a while now, many brands are still testing the waters. But companies like NPR, The New Yorker, and Ann Taylor jumping on, it may be time to consider starting a Tumblr blog for your brand.
What are the benefits of Tumblr?
- It’s free - Like many social media services, the biggest cost to using Tumblr will be the time you need to put into it. If you've got the time though, Tumblr makes it worth your while. The service is free to use, and Tumblr hosts your blog for free. There are hundreds of free themes you can use and customize to your blog. Many themes are customized to particular kinds of posts, so if you’ve been waiting to start your brand's photoblog, you're one step away from finding a great design.
- It’s really easy - Tumblr categorizes all posts into text, photos, links, quotes, conversations, audio, and video. Then Tumblr makes it ridiculously simple to post within those categories. You can add comments, citations, tags, and more information to any of those kinds of posts. There’s no more excuse why you and your team can’t blog on a regular basis with Tumblr. These ease of use also extends into the ability of your content to spread. With people able to easily push the like or reblog buttons, your content can spread very quickly.
- It's customizable - There are thousands of themes for Tumblr blogs, ranging from simple to complex. If you're not a designer, you can find a theme that you like and drop in your company's logo, or if you have design resources, you can make a brand new theme customized to your business. The amount of customization can help extend your brand into another social network while keeping the look and feel of your other web properties.
- You can measure it with Google Analytics - Unlike Facebook and Twitter, where you may have to use costly tools to measure the impact of what you are doing, you can use Google’s free analytics tool to measure your traffic and results on your Tumblr blog. If you have some knowledge of HTML, it’s pretty easy to install Google Analytics into your blog theme and start measuring what’s going on with your blog and how it plays into your greater web marketing strategy.
With Tumblr continuing to grow as a blog platform and social network, it's important to understand what's driving its success and how it can be used by individuals and businesses. But there's much more to Tumblr that just its strengths. Later this week, I will explore the down sides and potential pitfalls of Tumblr.
Have you used Tumblr? What do you think are it's biggest strengths? Do you think it has staying power, or is it just a flash in the blogosphere?
Comments
Enjoyed your post. I have a WordPress blog and have also been experimenting with a Tumbler blog called PR Twits theprcoach.tumblr.com
Tumblr is so easy to use and measure, it may very well supplant Facebook for PR & marketing. BUT, and it's a big one, noone has figured out how to monetize Tumblr.
Jeff - Glad to see your experiments with Tumblr. I've been using the service since 2008 as a personal blog, and then for my humor blog. I really love the simplicity and sharing features of the platform.
You're right on the money though. Monetization is a big "but" about Tumblr. While they do sell premium themes, those clearly aren't covering costs for a service of their size. It will be interesting to see what other ideas they come up with as the need to monetize pushes the service.
Great article, Jay. I just watched the following video about Tumblr this morning on CNN: www.cnn.com. Interesting to hear the motivation for the technology.
Leave a Comment