With this week’s announcement that Yahoo will purchase Tumblr for $1.1 billion, it may be a good time for brands to reevaluate how they can leverage the image-driven platform to reach their targets. If the marriage of the two companies is successful, then it’s likely that Tumblr will have the infrastructure to begin to expand their ad packages which until now have been largely experimental and focused on formats that meld nicely with the social/blogging site’s own aesthetic. For brands that have their eye on millennials — a group with which Tumblr has been highly successful — and that are savvy content builders, now is a great time to explore any new outreach opportunities using Tumblr that may have been back-burnered.
And there’s certainly no shortage of opportunities.
The latest numbers show that there are over 100 million blogs hosted on the site, generating 89 million new posts daily. Users spend up to an hour and a half per day there and the site is listed by Quantcast as one of the top ten sites in the U.S.
Brand success with Tumblr comes from the ability to create visually captivating content, centered around a theme described with short, well-written text. Put another way, brands that can connect good, unobtrusive editorial with strong images do well on the platform. And unlike with other social platforms, brands are less likely to “annoy” audiences with too many posts on Tumblr because the tightly-woven themes here tend to lend themselves more to frequent posting.
Another benefit of Tumblr for brands is the unique way it allows you to create interest around a particular topic for niche communities because users have already opted in to follow specific tags and topics, thus giving brands a highly-qualified audience to which they can push relevant messages. Additionally, Tumblr sites are considered public websites so they are indexed on search engines which means your content can show up on public searches for anyone looking for information on your topics.
The basic things to keep in mind as you create a strategy for your brand’s presence on Tumblr are to:
- Focus heavily on strong, captivating, compelling images
- Create content around specific topic or themes
- Then think about how you can build a community or culture around this theme
- Develop concise, but well-written editorial
- Link back to your brand’s site as often as it makes sense
If Tumblr has fallen off your radar, it’s time to take another look. The platform has millions of engaged users, and savvy marketers, even before this week’s announcement, are experiencing the benefits of reaching audiences through Tumblr. And although ROI cannot be measured in sales, it can be seen in awareness and engagement.
To learn more about how your company can leverage Tumblr to raise awareness and increase engagement, contact the Zen Media Group and we’ll connect you with a team of social media experts that can help you better understand how to get the most from the platform and enhance your overall social media strategy.
