Tumblr will soon be offering the creative talents of its users to brands and advertisers, Mashable, VentureBeat and others have reported. In a meeting with reporters, David Hayes, Tumblr's head of creative strategy, announced that Tumblr has been in the process of recruiting artists to its new Creatrs collective, and will be selling their services to brands for advertising and media campaigns that will run on the blog network and beyond it.
As VentureBeat reported, this is part of a push to increase the value of Tumblr within parent company Yahoo which, under CEO Marissa Mayer, is seeking to reestablish itself as a top-tier Internet company. Tumblr, which was acquired by Yahoo in May 2013, is one of Mayer's signature deals.
Tumblr currently hosts 220 million blogs, and as long as Mayer is at the helm, it's safe to assume that Yahoo will tend to the growth of the network. With that in mind, here are seven reasons why PR pros and marketers should care about Tumblr, courtesy of Paul M. Rand, president and CEO of Zócalo Group.
- Tumblr is a microblogging site with no creative limits.
- What makes Tumblr different from other social networks is that users can choose to post text, photos, quotes, links, chats, audio, video or ever-popular animated GIFs. It’s all displayed in a simple feed that’s not controlled by an algorithm, so it’s purely chronological.
- Comments are off by default, so most users reblog and then add a note to comment on a piece of content.
- People tend to use Tumblr to congregate around interests rather than around their real-life social circles, as they would on Facebook, or news and celebrities, as they would on Twitter.
- Tumblr provides a place to showcase parts of your brand that might not fit on a .com. The network rewards creativity and provides a place to showcase some more off-beat aspects your brand's personality.
- Unlike Pinterest, Tumblr draws almost equal numbers of female (51 percent) and male (49 percent) audiences, and it skews young (41 percent of Tumblr are 18-34).
- Brands are discussed more positively on Tumblr than on most other social networks. According to Tumblr, 95 percent of users who follow brands on the site would recommend them to others.
Follow Steve Goldstein on Twitter: @SGoldsteinAI