The blogging platform Tumblr gained notoriety for its quirky community and customizable design. It has exploded in popularity in the last few years, becoming a hub (especially among young users) for pop culture, imagery, music, and humor. Many brands resisted joining the platform, thinking it was too trendy.
Should your brand get on Tumblr? We think so. Tumblr is:
1. A place for your personality to shine. Tumblr has a very laid-back vibe. Many of the posts are witty and lighthearted, allowing brands to be playful with customers. If you’re having trouble connecting and conversing with users, Tumblr could be a great solution for your business.
2. A home for multimedia. Tumblr has loads of options for the medium you use to share info. You can express yourself with photos, videos, gifs, quotes, articles, links, and even surveys (we recommend wedgies.com’s widgets). Tumblr recently introduced a gif creator that you can use with your webcam. (Warning: this is about to explode in popularity. Gif selfies anyone?)
3. The community. Tumblr has a community of passionate, loyal, and very intelligent users. It’s easy to be intimidated by them, but once their affections are earned, they can be champions of your brand. Tumblr users appreciate wittiness and visual posts. They also flock to brands that interact and reblog their followers, just like on Twitter. (A reblog is like a retweet, but you aren’t limited to 140 characters). The Tumblr “ask” feature allows you to receive questions from users (but you can also choose to not respond and no one will see the question– great to avoid Internet trolls).
4. Visibility. Tumblr incorporates tagging and blog categorization to help users find the subjects they’re interested in. Many blogs garner so much attention online that they have even led to book deals. Have you ever heard of the book “Stuff White People Like”? How about “Humans of New York”? These both started as Tumblrs.
5. Customization. There are thousands of blog themes to choose from that can be easily altered to create your own unique profile. It’s also simple to start a Tumblr blog theme from scratch. There are interactive layouts, layouts that look like zines, image only themes, and pretty much every other style you can dream of. Tumblr also allows group blogs, so you can have several admins that can post to and customize your page.
6. Mobile Friendly. Recently Tumblr rolled out a “mobile layout” feature that allows you to customize your mobile appearance. This is huge for the Tumblr app since it’s such a visual platform. Now you can change the colors, header, and fonts of your mobile site- further syncing your brand. With the giant jump in mobile usage in 2014, this is an important benefit of blogging on Tumblr.
7. Reach a new audience. The user demographic of Tumblr is mainly very tech-saavy and creative. Blogging on Tumblr allows brands to reach a new group of followers that may not be as active on other platforms. The varying media possibilities within Tumblr appeals to this group of users more than the corporate posts of LinkedIn and Twitter do.
This post originally appeared on Didit.com.