Insights

Should your brand be on Tumblr?

You may groan at the thought of building another social media profile to market your brand. It can take considerable time, effort and money to craft an effective social media campaign, which is why you want to make sure you invest in the right platforms.

In our new blog series, we take an in depth look at so-called “fringe” social platforms, with Tumblr the focus for this article. We explain what Tumblr is, who’s using it, and give you an idea whether it’s worth your while building a presence for your brand.

What is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a blogging and social media platform that’s home to more than 241 million blogs. It lets you post all kinds of multimedia and other content to your very own short-form blog, which can then be shared easily across different social platforms.

Key features of Tumblr include the ability to:

  • Follow other blogs and monitor content through a live feed
  • Comment, reblog and like posts
  • Make blogs private or public
  • Upload all types of media including text posts, photos, video, audio, quotes and links to long-form articles
  • Connect blogs to Twitter and Facebook accounts to send automatic updates when content is posted
  • Schedule posts for future time/date

Are my customers using Tumblr?

There are about 81 million posts created on Tumblr each day across more than 241 million blogs. More than half of Tumblr’s users are aged between 18 and 34. The nature of the site means these users tend to spend more time creating and digesting content on the site, which makes them incredibly engaged; which is great for marketing purposes!

Like many social media sites, Tumblr has seen a shift in demographics since launching in 2007. For instance, the share of 18-24 year olds, which accounted for almost half of users in 2013, has seen a massive drop. While at the same time, the site has seen the 25-34 age bracket grow considerably. At the end of the day, if you’re consumer-orientated in any way and your market is in these age brackets, it may be worth taking a look at Tumblr.

Is it an effective use of my time?

On Facebook, if you post ten times a day it’s frowned upon. Whereas on Tumblr this behaviour is normal and expected, which means greater exposure for your brand. You could use Tumblr as you primary blog as Threadless has done for its brand and Hyundai did for the World Cup, or as a social media network to quickly and easily share content.

Benefits for using Tumblr include:

  • Tumblr has great SEO (search engine optimisation) potential, as posts can be found and accessed directly through search engines like Google.
  • Tumblr is optimised for mobile devices, which is becoming increasingly important now that Google has changed its algorithm.
  • You can customise your domain name for a fairly limited functioning website or business blog. Your web designer can help set this up.
  • It’s interlinked with Google Analytics so you can track user behaviour and guide future decisions.
  • Tumblr is free!

Remember, when deciding whether to take on any new social platform, it’s important to consider whether you have the time needed to learn the platform (if required), create regular content, cross-promote through other channels and experiment with what works. You don’t have to be on every social channel – just the ones that matter to you and your target audience.

What other fringe social channels should I be using?

One way to find out which social sites your market is using, is by asking them. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn about other so-called “fringe” social sites that we’ve been investigating as part of our latest blog series, you can Like us on Facebook or follow iFactory on Twitter to find out more.

iFactory has been delivering targeted digital marketing solutions to businesses for more than ten years. Grow your business further and contact iFactory today on 07 3844 0577.

Read more insights