Mandy Kilinskis is a member of the Content & Social Team for Quality Logo Products. She spends her days running the company social media accounts, crafting content for their blog, and thinking of synonymous for “majestic.” You can tweet her @bigonbranding.
Have you considered starting a Tumblr account for your business? It’s definitely one of the most popular new networks for marketers, but that doesn’t mean that it’s right for your brand.
So before you sink a lot of time and resources into creating and maintaining another account, make sure you ask yourself these five questions.
1. Do my products/services appeal to Tumblr’s demographic?
Short answer: probably, depending on your presentation.
Long answer: 50% of Tumblr users are under the age of 35 and 53.5% of visitors are female. Tumblr also tends to skew geeky, LGBT-friendly, and towards musicians. So if you’re selling nail polish based on comic book characters, your audience is already there. The rest of us have to work a little harder to reach users.
Companies who sell comprehensive retirement packages probably won’t have much luck on Tumblr, but you also never know who is browsing your content. You can spice up “boring” brands by using great visuals, interesting facts, and utilizing popular memes.
2. Do I have the time to commit to running a Tumblr account?
There’s no way to get around it: Tumblr takes time. First you need to take some time to familiarize yourself with the network and what kind of content seems to do well on Tumblr.
Then you need you spend some time tweaking your theme so your presentation is visually appealing, interesting, and unique.
After that you’ll need to create and find content to share with your audience. You can schedule your posts in advance but it’s still going to take time to create or queue those posts. The most successful Tumblr accounts post at least once per day.
For example, we post on the QLP Tumblr about 3 times per day and it takes our social team a total of 5 hours per week to create content, schedule posts, and moderate asks and followers.
Tumblr’s hashtags and search feature makes it a great platform for content discovery, so if you have the time to dedicate the rewards can be great. But you have to make sure you can put up the time first.
3. Are you ready to get a little casual?
The Tumblr audience is well-aware when they are being overtly marketed to, and they don’t really care for it. So your content needs to inform, entertain, or both.
Tumblr is the perfect social network for you and your employees to express your lighthearted and funny sides. It’s a great place for candid office shots and shenanigans. Or making absolutely bizarre gifs.
Serious has its place on Tumblr, but it’ll be a little harder for you to get traction and followers.
4. Do I have/can I create original content to share?
According to a study from Simply Measured, original content drives 89% of engagement for the top brands on Tumblr. That means that while reblogging other pieces of content is an excellent way build your community and reach out to other users it’s not going to be enough to attract many new followers.
Original content can be anything: links back to your blog posts, pictures of your employees, repurposing images from blogs or Facebook. What’s important is that you are uploading this content yourself and tagging it so Tumblr users can find it.
5. Have I created a firm strategy?
Like all social media marketing, you can’t blindly guess at what will work on your Tumblr account. Create a strategy of what kinds of content you want to share and how often you will share (don’t forgot to include reblogging other content in that strategy) and then stick to it!
Then observe how your content performs. Don’t get discouraged because 29% of reblogs happen after 30 days. But note what does well and test new content to see how it performs. For example, some of your text content might not do well, but spending 20 minutes to create a graphic might glean more reblogs and likes.
You can also ask your audience what content they would like to see more or less of on your blog by posing a question and keeping your ask box open.
Did you answer yes to all of these questions? Then it looks like your brand will be right at home on Tumblr!
Have you considered starting a Tumblr for your business? Any other questions people should ask themselves first?
