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As the Internet continues to march forward in terms of capabilities and usage, it’s becoming a tightly interconnected ecosystem that’s both self-serving and socially-proficient. As it continues to mature, standards, tools, and services have come out of the woodwork to leverage on its capabilities, steering its path to benefit their businesses, and to enhance its functionalities online.

Naturally, we’ve seen many social networking sites, their API-powered third party tools and many communications platforms cropping up almost every few weeks. Many more are expected to seep into mass consciousness. Among the latest crop of social media-driven services following the same beat of the Web 2.0 drum is Tumblr, a blogging platform many brands nowadays are turning to for augmenting their online presence and marketing efforts.


Tumbl…what?

In case you’ve been living under a rock these past few years, Tumblr is yet another Web 2.0 site with a dropped E. It seems to be the bastard child of a full-functioning blogging services and microblogging platforms, so to speak. As such, users can upload short status updates, full-length blog posts, links and excerpts from chat sessions, as well as multimedia elements like photos, audios and videos.

With rich features and a completely straightforward blogging and one-click reblogging capabilities, it has attracted a huge user base to its fold, mostly from the Generation Y of Web users and content developers. You also have brands online utilizing it to share news and updates about their products and services, and to better reach their markets. And then you also have Obama; being the tech savviest President, his camp used Tumblr during his inauguration to document the historical milestone through crowdsourced content.


Is It Apt for Your Strategy?

As with all marketing strategies, deciding whether your brand should integrate Tumblr into your campaign should be determined by several factors. Of course, online marketers should take into consideration the established identity of their brands, how suitable the microblog is with the existing products and services, and the presence of their core demographic, among many others.

On the other hand, given the huge user base Tumblr currently has, jumping into it can also be no-brainer. Since its launch in 2007, it has become one of the most popular sites online, even reaching a billion pageviews earlier this year, with approximately 15,000 new users signing up everyday publishing two million posts per day or 15 new posts and five reblogs every second. This is nothing short of impressive, clearly pointing out possibilities of high visibility for any brand and quick link spreading to viral proportions. These beg the question: why not Tumblr?


How User-Friendly Is It?

Its straightforward usage is definitely what hooked many to jump onboard the Tumblr train. For starters, it’s very easy to set up, though you’ll probably spend time customizing its appearance to match your existing branding efforts. Here you have a good list of available templates and on-page elements to choose from and modify. Either that or if you have HTML skills, you can code the site for better personalization.

Once set up, you can simply go to the site to craft your posts, or if you’re on the go, there’s a Tumblr app for the iPhone, Blackberry and Android you can use. Aside from these, you can post your entries via e-mail, or you can even call a number to record an audio post.

Moreover, you can configure Tumblr to cross-post your every entry to your other blogs on Blogger, WordPress and LiveJournal, to social media sites like Delicious, Digg, or to video sites Vimeo and YouTube. Naturally, you can also share your posts on Facebook and Twitter, or you can do RSS redirects via FeedBurner.

Tags: Blogging, blogs, content creation, Microblogging, online marketing, social media marketing, Tumblr