Advertising on Tumblr. The right way.
We are currently living in crazy times. Every single 48 hours more information is generated online than every piece created before 2003. Unsurprisingly companies small and large are trying to capitalize on this. First it was SEO and now it’s “Social Media”. The main places to conduct this is usually on the most popular websites, like Facebook and Twitter. And because of it’s explosive growth people are now coming up with clever ideas on how to tackle Pinterest.
Strangely however, on one of the sites with the most active and dedicated community there hasn’t been much action from companies. The community of which I’m speaking of Tumblr. Luckily enough this has strengthened Tumblr’s community. However I do think there are ways to utilize Tumblr to it’s full extent without ruining the user’s experience.
So far I’ve only seen 2 groups use this technique and I think we might be seeing more of it soon. What I’m speaking of is organizations commissioning top-of-the-line premium quality tumblr themes, releasing them for free, but have a smaller teaser to their own products somewhere in there themes.
Like I said, I know of 2 people who have tried doing this. One has outright failed miserably while the other has seen success. The 2 people of which I speak of are, Mixpanel and Leverage. One a websites analytics service and the other a tv show on TNT. If you couldn’t guess already, Leverage failed. Here’s why.
TNT’s Tumblr theme for Leverage scored a let down of 71 downloads at the time this post was written. The failure of this theme is really simple and breaks down to just 2 different things.
1) They got greedy. They just asked for too much from users by making their presence conspicuous. If you are planning on creating a theme on tumblr for your company, DO NOT get greedy, be subtle.
2) As bad as the first point was, this is probably the main reason they failed. It’s ugly. Users can tolerate you plugging your company name because you gave them a free theme, but what they cannot stand is an ugly theme. If your going to do it, do it right.
Now that you sort of have an idea of what not to do let’s look at the success story.
Mixpanel, an analytics service from San Francisco made 2 really gorgeous themes with little room for themselves. Theme: Showroom , Theme: Dimension .
At the time this was written both themes are garnered a total of 131414 installs! Obviously there is no way for me to know what type of effect this had on there business, however there is no telling how many impressions that equated to.
Besides thinking about the end user and what type of the blog they themselves would want they removed themselves from the picture. Instead of shoving their message into the face of the users they simply credited themselves with the creation of the theme in a few places.
The simplicity of sharing is what makes Tumblr so powerful. If you make something with the user in mind they will not hesitate to click “Install Theme”. People on tumblr follow other people they relate to. If someone they relate to is in a sense recommending a theme just by using it, then they are more likely to use it themselves and that is how it spreads.
No matter how technology develops or changes one thing will always be true, mutualism will always be the best strategy. Successful social media is conforming to what the users already like, and not trying to force them to adapt to your preferred environment. It’s about blending into the rhythm the user is already in.
Leave Note / Reblog
advertising tumblr advertising on tumblr social media the right way businesses on tumblr utilize tumblr
