Customer Experience

By adaptive - September 4th, 2013

Often seen as one of the following pack across the social media landscape, Tumblr is though, beginning to be coveted by corporations and their brands.

Founded in 2007, Tumblr now sports over 90 million daily posts with Independent stating: “Tumblr has changed the art of collecting by offering its users an easy way to curate their interests.”

Having a presence online for several years, Tumblr has been quietly building its user base. Since the purchase of the platform by Yahoo! and the increases in ad opportunities, corporations have been taking a second look at this social media network. New research from Simply Measured indicates that now might be the time to place Tumblr within your corporation’s marketing mix.

The survey considered 100 brands and found that a third actually have a presence on the network, with over a quarter posting regularly to their profiles. Simply Measured explain: “While Facebook and Twitter remain the dominant forces in social media, Tumblr and other networks are now turning the heads of major brands, with 31% of the Interbrand Top 100 Brands have created Tumblr accounts. This number seems to have held steady since our first sample in May, but as ad offerings become more prominent and brands begin to understand the power of Tumblr’s content distribution, we anticipate adoption to grow.

“Of those 31 brands, 27 also have Pinterest or Instagram accounts. This suggests that many brands are using Tumblr complimentary to other networks, or at the very least that they are experimenting with each of these networks to share visual content. This diversification is a new phenomenon among brands; in the past, large brands have focused on pouring resources into a specific network or two. These are using Tumblr in conjunction with a variety of other networks, including their well-established presences on Facebook and Twitter.”

When brand-posting activity is considered parallels with early adopters of social media networks such as Instagram can be seen. The levels of activity don’t match those of Pinterest for instance, but do clearly indicate that the brands that have committed to Tumblr have backed this up with regular posting, which their followers appreciate. Often, it’s the subtle expansion of a brand across a social media network that is more effective in the long term than high profile campaigns on Facebook for instance.

One phenomenon that corporations should pay attention to is ‘reblogs’. A reblogs is a blog post shared on a page that were originally created by another user and posted on another page. This activity is similar to retweeting, but the evidence presented by Simply Measured indicates that reblogs are more effective and have a longer persistence than a typical retweet.

Simply Measured point to MTV as a good example: “The media giant blogs an average of three times a day on Tumblr. During our 30 day-sample, MTV received over 62,000 reblogs, but almost half of those reblogs were on Tumblr blogs posted prior to the report period.” The reblogging of content up to a month after it has been posted is unseen on other social media platforms that have a very low half-life with the content posted across their networks.

Reblogs take place in a variety of ways. Simply Measured state: “69% of brand posts are original content, meaning that they’re being posted to Tumblr for the first time by the brand. The remaining 31% of brand posts are reblogs of other user posts on Tumblr.”

For brands and their corporate stewards, Tumblr may have been placed in the same category as Google+ However, for some brands this network clearly offers them high engagement rates. Tumblr may be able to raise its general profile in the marketplace to the point where it is noticed by brands, but at the moment it appears to be one of the best kept secrets across the social media landscape. Corporations should investigate what Tumblr could offer them, as they may be surprised at the engagement metrics that they see.