How to Make the Most of Tumblr for your Brand
When devising your marketing strategy, Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn have long been the first port of call. There may be a missing ingredient, however, another important platform to give your content that extra push.
With over 132 million blogs on the site alone, Tumblr’s potential reach is huge. According to Quantcast, the site received over 5.5 billion pageviews in May 2013 alone. With user numbers and popularity on the rise, it’s a perfect marketing tool for businesses that are trying to extend their reach and raise brand awareness.
1.) Build a Brand Persona
Tumblr is a breeding ground for all things viral. Because of this, building a relatable brand persona and identity can be easily done. Decide on a brand identity early on in your strategy and build your page around that. Do you want to be funny? Or maybe be helpful? Having a niche could give your site the edge.
Food company Whole Foods are a great example of a brand who did just this. They created an online magazine, “Dark Rye” that features short-form content that reinforce a health-conscious living style. Everything from tips to cook corn, to quotes on community and creativity. Whole Foods manage to avoid a hard sell whilst still building a definite persona centred around their brands values.
2.) Be Helpful
Tumblr provides a great way to build recognition as an expert within your field. Be helpful, offer advice and tutorials and develop your niche. Dynamic Auto Mobile Mechanic is a great example of a company that you would not think would be using Tumblr. However they give their audience instructions on topics such as how to upgrade their cars and how to get better gas mileage.
3.) Be Visual
Probably the first thing you’ll notice about Tumblr is how image-focused it is. In fact, half the content on the site are pictures and uploading your own visual content is actively encouraged. Again, refer back to your desired persona (step one) and have a think what kind of images fit that. For example, posting “behind the scenes” photos of upcoming products or highlighting a newly released product are a great way to get your followers excited and allow them to share your content with their network.
A brand who do great things with thier tumblr are Net-a-Porter. On their Tumblr page, they publish outtakes from their photo spreads in The Edit, giving a feeling of exclusivity to their followers.
4.) Incorporate Video
If your brand use video, then Tumblr should definitely be in your marketing strategy. In Adobe’s Q4 2013 Video Benchmark report, it was revealed that social network Tumblr is responsible for referring more average video starts than YouTube, Twitter and Reddit. Equally, Tumblr is producing nearly identical video view rates as Facebook, with over 1/3rd of referred visits producing a video start. Even more impressive is that 56% of the visits referred from Tumblr resulted in a view.
5.) Interact, Share & Be Social
Above all, Tumblr is still, primarily, a social media state. Follow and interact with lots of relevant Tumblr pages and begin to post your own content.
Follower counts aren’t displayed on Tumblr and you can follow any number of people or brands immediately without appearing spammy. Once you gain some exposure and establish a positive reputation, your follower count will increase organically. Reblog, comment on or like posts from the blogs you follow & share relevant posts that fit in with your business. This will help to build your audience, acquire new followers and enhance your brand image by bringing exposure to your company profile.
Madeleine Hammond is a marketing executive at Skeleton Productions – one of the UK’s leading video production companies.
Thumbnail Image: http://tinyurl.com/osukrn4
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