Following on from our ‘5 Website Trends to look for in 2016…’ blog, you may have noticed that we predicted big things for micro blogging platform Tumblr without really offering much of an explanation. Well inside our blog, we will offer an insight into Tumblr and explain how small businesses are using the social media platform to help grow their business.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Tumblr, in many ways Tumblr is almost like Twitter and Pinterest combined where users can choose to follow specific tags, topics and blog posts. So you are probably questioning what makes it different from any other social media platform right?!? Well it’s because of the SEO benefits that come along with it. To put it simply, each blog post is considered public which means they will be indexed by search engines meaning content linked to your business is far more likely to be found.
What is Tumblr?
Founded in February 2007 in New York, USA, Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform and social networking website founded by David Karp. Allowing users to post various multimedia and other forms of content to short-form blog, Tumblr has made it really, really simple and easy for users to make a blog and post and put whatever they want on it. Anything from stories, photo’s, GIFs, TV Shows, Links, Quips, Jokes, Spotify tracks, mp3, video’s fashion or ant, Tumblr is made up for millions of different blogs filled with pretty much every type of visual media.
Following its acquisition by Yahoo! in 2013 for approximately $1.1 Billion in summer 2013, as of January 2016, Tumblr now has over 555 million monthly visitors and hosts over 272.4 million blogs with a further 127 billion posts.
How Tumblr can help grow your small business?
Be creative with your Tumblr theme
Off the bat, what sets Tumblr apart from any other micro-blogging or social media website is the total freedom to personalise what your Tumblr page and Tumblr blogs look like. This means Tumblr provides you with the opportunity to be creative and really showcase and represent your brand which is something you sadly can’t do with a Facebook timeline or LinkedIn post.
Although the benefit of being a Cheshire web-design agency means we can design our own Tumblr themes, small business owners should feel encouraged to make each blog visually stunning by selecting from thousands of free or paid-for themes to really showcase and deliver your business services and products with each post.
Tag posts with relevant topics
Although users cannot search for specific Tumblr users or brands using the search functionality, you can however search for content based on content tags and categories that have been assigned to each Tumble blog you post. Therefore it has become extremely important that you post blogs that contain relevant tags and categories that users who may have an interest in your business, services or products will easily be able to find to gain maximum brand exposure.
For example, let’s say you are a local butchers that sells homemade pies, you can simply write a post about homemade Cornish pasties and tag that particular post with ‘Homemade Cornish Pasties’, ‘Homemade Pastry’, ‘Puff Pastry’ ‘Beef Pasties’, ‘Cornish Pasty Cooking Time’.
Another neat feature Tumblr offers is the ‘Track’ button on any tag page. Let’s say for example you search ‘Cheshire Web Design’ – If you click on ‘Track’, all future updates associated with that particular tag will then appear on your dashboard. Using this process, users can work out which tags will help your small business achieve most exposure and gage what kind of content is popular within your target audience.
Post Scheduling
Speaking as a Cheshire web development agency, we understand that clients from small businesses can struggle for time to sit down and write a weekly, monthly or quarterly blog. We understand you are busy and you may not have the resource so this is where post scheduling will really benefit you!
Following in the footsteps of WordPress, Tumblr actually offer a really cool feature that allows you to schedule when your blogs are posted. Let’s say you sit down and right 3 or 4 blogs, you may not necessarily want to post them all in one go. With post scheduling, simply select the future time and date and Tumblr will do the rest for you. Like WordPress, when on the dashboard, simply navigate to your blog name. Next to your profile name there will be a small arrow which will allow you to choose which blog you will post and alter.
Build up a Network
For small businesses starting out on Tumblr, the social media platform activity encourages you to repost re-blog and share other users content so it doesn’t even have to be original to help you get started and help grow your community. All Tumblr users are following other blogs, liking posts and sharing it with their followers so if you follow the same suite, not only will users who follow you reciprocate the favour, they will also attract a new community and get more eyeballs on your content.
Tumblr have also introduced a ‘Re-Blog’ button to further encourage content sharing. If you think how the ‘Retweet’ button works with twitter, your content can easily spread across other networks to reach a whole new audience and quickly build a loyal network.
Tumblr Verdict
In all honesty, Tumblr is a very simple, yet unusual social media platform that not all small businesses owner’s may not necessarily need or understand but is a very simple and effective way of growing a network. Setting aside its simplicity and ease of use, make sure you know what Tumblr does and how it can benefit your business through the right channels.