Why 2013 Is The Year You Need To Get Serious About Tumblr

Guest post written by Hayes Davis

Hayes Davis is founder and CEO of Union Metrics, which provides Twitter and Tumblr analytics tools.

Hayes Davis

Social media is undeniably crucial to branding and marketing efforts, but in a multi-network world every marketer has to carefully decide to where to spend her resources. The thinking usually goes, “I know I need Twitter and Facebook, but should I also post behind-the-scenes photos to Instagram or try to inspire on Pinterest? Oh, and what in the world is Snapchat?”

I’m here to make the case that the social network to watch this year is Tumblr. Until recently, many brands have dismissed Tumblr as a place for kids to post cat GIFs, with little opportunity as a platform to effectively reach their customers. In 2013, we’ll see this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Consumers in the critical 18-34 year old demographic are hooked on Tumblr, with the average visitor spending 1.5 hours per month on the site. Today, Tumblr hosts 90 million blogs that generate more than 89 million new posts every day. This astronomical growth helped the site soar into lists of the top 10 most popular websites in the U.S. at the end of last year and is attracting significant interest from brands ranging from fashion to finance.

Marketers can no longer afford to ignore Tumblr, and those not engaging or at least listening to what their customers have to say on the platform have a huge blind spot in their marketing program. So, what makes Tumblr so unique?

Brands as Publishers

Tumblr is a unique combination of publishing platform and dynamic social network. With that mix, brands have the opportunity to become storytellers and content curators that provide compelling, contextually relevant content to a large and engaged group of users. Savvy brands understand that the best way to make an impact on an advertising-saturated audience is to go beyond just shouting slogans to tell stories and create useful content. Tumblr’s publishing platform is perfectly suited for this.

Tumblr is a highly visual experience, so brands can appeal to us on a visceral level through stunning images or animated GIFs that capture brief, emotional moments. This kind of visual storytelling has been missing from digital advertising, but is what we’ve come to expect from the best TV ads. Tumblr makes that kind of brand experience finally possible online.

Brands like Coca-Cola, Adidas and Whole Foods are getting it right, because they treat their Tumblr presence as an extension of their brand, allowing them to communicate the essence of who they are, all while driving social amplification and high levels of engagement.

Content Equity

It wasn’t long ago that brands were obsessed with blogging because it gave them long-lived content to attract visitors over months and years. As brands have focused content creation on more closed networks like Twitter and Facebook, much of that long term value has been lost. Tweets and Facebook posts typically aren’t indexed in search engines and quickly become old news as they get pushed to the bottom of feeds. In fact, a typical Facebook post gets 18 hours of engagement, while a Tweet only gets about 18 minutes.

Posts on Tumblr don’t suffer from dulled amplification at the hands of inexplicable algorithms like Facebook’s Edgerank, nor do they perish shortly after posting as is often the case on Twitter. This is due to both social amplification and good old-fashioned SEO.

Social amplification and tag-based discovery are core to the Tumblr platform, giving content staying power, with many posts receiving reblogs and likes days, weeks and even months after the original post. A good example of this is a photo post from comedy website Funny Or Die – “21 More of the Best YouTube Comments” – that generated more 14,000 notes over several weeks, with only 3,500 of those notes occurring in the first 24 hours.

Since Tumblr sites are actually public websites and Tumblr posts are true blog posts, they’re indexed on search engines. This means a brand’s content can reach well beyond its Tumblr followers to any interested person searching the web.

Tapping into Micro Communities

Facebook connects people with friends and family. Twitter shows everyone what’s happening right now. LinkedIn helps people engage with colleagues and professional acquaintances. Tumblr harnesses the enthusiasm around a particular topic and coalesces into a community.

For brands, this simplifies the process of audience segmentation, because Tumblr provides a built-in audience that has already opted into following specific tags and topics. In turn, brands can post highly targeted content with interest-related tags, and easily reach communities of fans.

For example, Yale University wanted to connect with people interested in science and health, so they introduced a Tumblr campaign to coincide with the Big Food exhibit at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Based on data from the exhibit, they created two infographics – “How much sugar does your drink contain?” and“How much is 1 portion?” – for National Food Day. They posted both to their Tumblr account and included tags like food and nutrition to target the appropriate interest groups. With this highly targeted content, the university increased followers to its Tumblr by 142 percent and generated 1,200 notes across the two posts. It was also able to break through to health and fitness based communities.