Tumblr is one of those social media channels that many businesses are on the fence about. Using Tumblr is not as key to a social media marketing strategy as using Facebook or Twitter, so most marketers focus their attention elsewhere. But did you know that when it comes to web rankings, Tumblr’s popularity is right up there with Pinterest’s?
As of right now, Tumblr hosts over 130 million blogs. 130 million! That’s almost twice as many blogs as WordPress hosts. And all those users are just the beginning – Tumblr gets 300 million unique visitors each month. Depending on the demographics you are trying to market your business to, the stats on Tumblr may hold even more good news for you: Around half of the users are under the age of 25.
So, yes, Tumblr is definitely worth incorporating into your social media marketing strategy. But what’s the best way to do that? We’ve compiled a list of tips to guide you on your way.
1. Understand how it works. Tumblr is a complex creature – part blogging platform, part social media platform. While it hosts blogs just like WordPress, it also includes Facebook-type elements such as sharing, liking, following, and even the use of hashtags. So the right blog content posted here has the potential to go viral quickly.
2. Take advantage of the links. Tumblr offers users an interesting way to share content with others, called reblogging. If a user wants to share someone else’s blog post with their own followers, they re-post that content within their own blog, where it might, in turn, be reposted again by their followers. Each time that your blog is reposted, it creates a dofollow backlink to your original post. That means, if 5 people reblog your post…and then 5 friends of each of them also reblog your post…you’ve suddenly gotten 30 backlinks to your post. And if you happen to have added a link to another site in your original post…that site will get 30 backlinks as well!
3. Use hashtags. Unlike on Facebook, people on Tumblr actually do use hashtags to search for new content. So even if you have no followers to begin with, if you start out by using popular hashtags, your content will be getting reblogs in no time flat. And any content you post will gain a longer lifespan if it’s attached to an evergreen hashtag.
4. Create shareable content. Make sure the content you post on Tumblr invites shares, by making it funny, or useful, or by attaching an attention-grabbing image, meme, or animated gif. For the most part, people use Tumblr as a microblogging platform, so long posts aren’t as common as shorter, image-based posts. But longer content is also posted and can be just as popular. Focus on what your audience would want to share, and craft your content to fit that mold.
5. Focus on tags, not keywords. While search engines use keywords to help find websites relevant to your query, Tumblr uses the tags chosen by the blogger. So in your content, you don’t need to focus as much on including keywords as you normally would to draw search engine traffic. Instead, simply choose around 10 tags to explain and categorize your content so that people searching for those topics on Tumblr will be led to your blog.
6. Don’t forget to network. Just like any other social media platform, Tumblr is a community. Follow other users. Like and share their content. Draw in your connections and friends from other social media platforms to widen your circle even further. The more people you are connected to, the bigger the audience for your content will be.
Have you started using Tumblr to market your business? What have your results been? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.
