Tumblr, the microblogging and sharing website created in 2007 by David Karp and owned by Yahoo! Inc., is what many Internet savvy users consider the underbelly of social media. We go there to learn something, we go there to be inspired, we go there to connect, but it is not the first place businesses go to establish or further social media presence.

In fact, Tumblr is often forgotten or opted out of completely in social media strategy.  However, the current goal of many businesses is to differentiate their brand among competition and Tumblr might serve as the next place to not only extend a campaign, but also find inspiration for fresh company blog content to engage with an audience.

As of January 2015, Tumblr supports more than 216 million blogs with a growing corporate/business sphere. That is a huge reach opportunity for executed social media strategy.  Rather than lamenting over Tumblr as a missed opportunity, consider why starting and maintaining a corporate Tumblr account as a component of social media strategy stands to benefit your brand.

1. It’s FREE!
Blogs, deemed tumblrogs by users, are free to create and maintain.  The benefit of connecting over a free social media service outweighs cost because there is no cost to consider or compare to.

2. Backlinking
Backlinking serves as indications for SEO (search engine optimization). It lets strategists know who is viewing a page or post, as well as giving value to how much impact that post makes through exposure.

Backlinking feeds into the idea that Tumblr serves as a content testing ground, which is significant if you want to spend marketing dollars effectively on other social media.  Starting on Tumblr is a way to gauge reactions to new content like articles, memes, photos, and gif sets.

3. Expand on idea of converged media
A blog allows for the generation of content as well as linking to other big traffic social media accounts. Additionally, it is also another great way to connect and feature users by sharing their posts, monitoring their tags, actually tagging them, or featuring consumers using products. Tumblr is a way to achieve a quirkier form of connection with your audience, adding another dimension to interaction.  Interaction in turn furthers company-consumer relationships and brand recognition.

4. Be Inspired!
On Tumblr, nothing is too crazy to work or too strange to not make an impact. The best posts can happen at any time of day and great content gains momentum almost instantaneously.  Tumblr is a resource, not an expense!

Something important to keep in mind is that Tumblr is not necessarily a platform you should look to if the goal of social media strategy is to drastically boost sales.  Numbers can still be tracked by online point-of-sale metrics, but the true value of Tumblr is creating brand awareness in a potentially unaware community, as well as developing engagement with existing consumers.  With the potential to increase your social currency and presence, Tumblr is the no-longer-forgotten platform to be incorporated into your next social media strategy campaign.

Here are a few of our office favorite Tumblr pages:

•      Popsonnet puts a fresh spin on classic literature
•      Literary Starbucks imagines the coffee orders of iconic literary figures
•      Design before computers is featured in History Is Mine
•      And, of course, the ultimate self-branding queen, Taylor Swift

Photo Credit: 2nix Studio / Shutterstock.com

What can a business say about social media? Some consider social media a tool with tremendous opportunity to reach consumers, while others are not even sure how to approach social media strategy. Regardless, businesses agree that social media is as much of a mystery as it is a necessity.  There is no specific algorithm to being successful, and there is no post guaranteed to keep a brand relevant.  Success varies with content generated and shared, but is highly dependent upon reactions and engagement from consumers.

According to Fortune, within the next five years businesses are projected to allocate upwards of 25% of a marketing budget to social media strategy and content generation. Currently, about 9% of budgets are dedicated to social media.  The trick, both for the present and the future, is finding where these dollars are making a difference.  Upon evaluation, many company marketers struggle to see and articulate where their social media dollars made an impact.

That is not to say their efforts failed.  The results, or lack thereof, are interpreted as reflections of how quickly social media progresses.  To an extent, social media changes hour-by-hour, and it becomes the challenge of the company to match speed.  So, all this being said, how do businesses stand to work with, rather than struggle against, the breakneck speed of social media as it changes in 2015?

1)   Focus on optimization – Social media is not just a constant output of new information, it’s about the value of information and the ability to retain consumer attention and loyalty.  Rather than spending money on continually producing new campaigns, companies are looking to using metrics, which allows for efficient analysis of social media efforts. Sites like VidYard, SocialRank Index, Google Analytics, and Nimble monitor the impact of social media over the course of time, as well as offer comparisons to competition.

2)   Focus on personalization – Catering to the specific needs of consumers is paramount to utilizing social media in 2015, as targeting audiences through larger traditional media, such as TV, is no longer an efficient use of resources. Ads specific to consumers’ personal search history or purchase habits already pop up on popular social media, like Facebook, but the new wave of strategy deals with personalization across devices.  New advertising and social media obstacles include transferring advertisements from tablet to computer, as well as effectively using real time customer data to make the sale.

3)   Focus on mobile compatibility – Once considered the second stage of advertising, mobile as a platform is predicted to come into its own in 2015.  It is no secret that society is moving to mobile, with people on or using their phone almost every hour of the day. What does that mean for advertising? Independent strategies for independent devices, each with their own unique merit.  Easy-to-navigate interfaces and interactive content will define who stands out in the mobile realm.

While strategies may differ, there is no mistaking the domination of social media as a main component in marketing for the year ahead.  With the ability to reach an almost unlimited number of people, the flexibility to execute multimedia campaigns, and the capacity to be analyzed for effectiveness, social media remains a rapidly growing powerhouse in business strategy.