With so much interest in social media marketing these days, I think it’s useful for businesses to know about all the various channels available to them. The other day I introduced you to StumbleUpon and told you how you can use it to effectively market your website to a potentially new set of visitors. Today, we’ll take a look at Tumblr.

Like Pinterest, which we’ve looked at previously, Tumblr is a hugely popular social media outlet. With 15 billion monthly page views in January of this year alone, and with its ease of setup and use, there are many good reasons to consider getting into the Tumblr game.

So what is Tumblr? Tumblr is an online blogging platform, and it has pros and cons with respect to other blogging platforms you may be familiar with, such as WordPress. On the pro side, it is much quicker and easier to set up than WordPress. Simply go to the Tumblr site, enter a few bits of information, select your category and blog name, and get started. On the con side, those of you used to virtually unlimited WordPress themes may find yourselves disappointed by the reduced flexibility of formatting and features you find with Tumblr. While there are enhancements and tweaks that a skilled user can make to a Tumblr blog—such as widgets and sidebars—you can’t build a blog from scratch as you can with WordPress.

Still, more than 63 million bloggers can’t be wrong in thinking that Tumblr offers ample room for creative self-expression.

Once you’ve got your blog established, it’s time to customise it. Choose a theme and a colour palette, select a font, and upload your header and picture or logo. Once you’ve completed those steps, fill out your “about me” section and you’re ready to start tumbling.

Tumblr has really revolutionised blogging by making it so very easy. The Tumblr dashboard gives you seven different content options—text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio, and video. You’ll find that photo posts do especially well on Tumblr, so if you can translate your message via an image, so much the better.

Always make sure you tag you post to make it easy for people to discover. Tumblr lets you publish immediately or schedule your posts for another time, which can be very useful if you’ve set aside time each week to put together a bunch of blog posts that you want to space out over several days. And there is a handy checkbox on the screen that enables you to automatically send your posts to your Twitter feed.

Tumblr is a business-friendly medium. Unlike StumbleUpon, Tumblr actually encourages business involvement. But be mindful of Tumblr’s guidelines against spamming, running unauthorized contests, and other unlawful uses. Use your better judgment and you’ll be alright.

Do you have experience with Tumblr? Feel free to leave a comment below letting us know what you think of this exciting social media channel.

Thanks!

Sean

Sean McPheat

Managing Director

The Internet Marketing Academy

http://www.internetmarketingacademy.com

(Image by Chad Arizona)