Does your Brand need a Tumblr Page?
One of the most confusing concepts in the world for SMEs is Tumblr. Brands are told from the start of a web strategy that they need to blog and create content worth sharing, but Tumblr is rarely mentioned by the agency working for them or that brands head of marketing. The reason for this is simple – most marketers are not sure themselves about whether the brand under their control needs a Tumblr page.
To figure out whether your brand would benefit from a Tumblr page, it‘s important to consider what makes Tumblr different, and to review successful examples of Tumblr pages. This way, you can get clued up on Tumblr as a concept, the unique features of the service, and assess whether your competitors are already there.
If they are, you will need to seriously consider the pros and cons of signing up. After all, if a competitor on Tumblr has hundreds or thousands of organic followers, those are YOUR customers too… they just need a little love from your end.
So, what makes Tumblr different?
Let‘s clear one misconception about Tumblr up – Tumblr is not a WordPress. Tumblr users are a kind of hybrid between Instagram and Vine users and freelance bloggers. In other words, whilst the concept of Tumblr is to publish content, there is a greater emphasis on sharing and discovering visual content.
As you probably know, this concept is wildly different to that of a corporate blog.
Tumblr is used by brands to show a personal, lighter side of the brand that builds a more meaningful relationship with customers. It is, in many ways, a release for brands, and the platform rewards those brands that let themselves go.
What are the success stories?
Following on from the above, it is critical that prior to investing in Tumblr you already have a strong brand identity established. Why? Simply, Tumblr is a platform to build a community of loyal followers, and this cannot be achieved without a strong identity. Without a strong identity, your distribution and sharing of content will not target the right people.
Your Tumblr strategy will fail.
With that in mind, the biggest success stories are from brands which already had a strong identity. A prime example of a brand rocking Tumblr is Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola use their Tumblr page to share branded content that portrays their brand in a more personal way. It shows a lighter side to a brand which is at heart very corporate.
For e-commerce folk out there, consider BikDot, created by Dan Coe. A few years ago Dan Coe was the CEO of a marketing company that offered a Tumblr e-commerce solution to customers. He integrated sales with Tumblr and his service became such a hit, that he rebranded his business to BikDot, and created the very first native e-commerce platform on Tumblr.
In almost all cases of success on Tumblr, the brand in question has a product that‘s tangible. Coca-Cola‘s is their world-famous soft drink and Dan Coe‘s was a web solution that was visual and extremely interactive. If your brand offers something tangible that people want to buy, Tumblr could be your next success story… the trick is to figure out whether your product or service has a place on a service that has a great emphasis on sharing and discovering visual content.
Takeaway
There isn‘t an industry on the planet that doesn‘t have a brand operating in it on Tumblr. The question is whether your potential customers are there. There‘s no point investing in a service that isn‘t going to give you some form of ROI. So, before you set up a Tumblr page and spend time branding it, do your research. There are lots of people on Tumblr but if hardly any of those are your potential customers, your money and time might be better invested elsewhere.