Tumblr and Fall
Image by The Oatmeal
Previously, I wrote about the benefits of using Tumblr, a multimedia micro-blogging platform that is best suited to short posts with images, video, and audio. While not as powerful as Wordpress or backed by Google's Blogger service, Tumblr has quickly gained ground as a popular platform of its own and has past Wordpress.com as the most popular blog platform.
But is that enough to make it worth your time?
For all of the things that make Tumblr great, there are a number of obvious and not so obvious weaknesses of the Tumblr platform that make it less robust that Wordpress and other major blogging platforms. Let's a explore a few of those weaknesses and how they impact use of Tumblr.
- Tumblr's servers are unreliable - Tumblr makes things very easy by hosting all of your content on its servers. This is great if you don't have any knowledge about how to host your own blog. However, Tumblr's servers are infamous among their users for crashing and bringing down everyone's blogs with them. If your Tumblr is your primary blog or website, this can be a death sentence because your audience won't be able to reach your website. Consider your needs and how you want Tumblr to play into your social media strategy. If it needs to be available 24/7, start looking for different blogging software.
- It's hard to measure viral impact - One of Tumblr's great features is that users can instantly republish your materials by "reblogging" it. This instantly spreads your content to their followers and their audience, creating another way for your content to go viral. However, even though you can install analytics software into your Tumblr blog, you won't be able to see the analytics for anyone who reblogs your content. This can make measuring the impact of your content a nightmare as you try and figure out what 50 reblogs actually mean for you and your business.
- Tumblr is Terrible at SEO - SEO, or search engine optimization, is essential for bloggers or organizations to spread their message and search engine marketing. Unfortunately, because of the way Tumblr posts are formatted and programmed, most themes are not ready to be highly searched. They make it difficult for Google to process the information and prioritize what is important and what the content is actually about. If search engine marketing is a major part of your content strategy, you may want to look at other platforms with more customizable search engine optimization features.
- Tumblr is Bare Bones - Tumblr is designed to be minimal. Features that seem standard on other blog platforms such as comments aren't offered. This is an intentional omission to bloster the community's use of reblogs. But these bare bones features limit sharing content on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and other social networks that drive traffic to blogs. If you want to add in Facebook's Like button or Twitter's Tweet Button, be prepared to add some code to your Tumblr blog.
So, Tumblr isn't as powerful and has flaws that other platforms do not have. Should you choose Tumblr to host your blog?
The short answer is it depends. What tare the needs and goals of your blog? If you need something set up fast, and you need to publish multimedia content as fast as Twitter, Tumblr is a great option. Tumblr is also great if you want flexibility to not only quickly share photos, videos, and audio, but also write longer posts or center commentary around that media.
I always keep Tumblr available as an option and see how it can apply to the situation I am working on. You never know when a rapdily updated blog will be more effective than a Facebook page or Twitter account. If you're looking to quickly reach a young audience with entertaining content, you won't find a better social network than Tumblr to reach those people quickly.
With all those weaknesses, are you still willing to use Tumblr? Would you give it a try for your blog?
Comments
It's seems your highlighted Tumblr weaknesses can be applied to any hosted service including wordpress.com.
Google Wordpress outage, twitter outage, fill in the blank outage. This managed risk must be weighed against the TCO of maintaining your own self-hosted solution and staff.
Can the value of a Retweet be assigned a similar weight as a Reblog on a basic level? Add that Reblogging encourages commenting. This was important enough to Google to become a key feature in G+. Many smart folks have asked if G+ is a twitter or tumblr killer, not a Facebook replacement. I'm interested to hear your perspective on this.
Do you have more information and examples of the SEO short-comings? I would like to learn more details about this point. I have already googled this topic and found some useful tips to help here. It's a challenge to balance this point against the overwhelming growth and traffic stats. Share notes?
Tumblr is simple to use and is what you make it. It's template system is very friendly to use also. You can't discount the social side of Tumblr. It's easy to add Like buttons to any blog template no matter the platform. I do not think the Tumblr customization design is a weakness; it is a strength to be flexible and clean in approach. There are thousands of beautiful elegant themes that can be utilized with the click of a mouse. Another place that tumblr excels out of the box is mobile and email publishing.
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