Rumbln with Tumblr

Micro-blogging is here today. And it’s going to be here tomorrow.

Twitter is well into the escalation phase of its life cycle. The users who got involved in the adoption phase now have the greatest sphere of influence. The early Tweeters got the worm.

Tumblr is a micro-blogging site with a rich set of features that can really amp up your content distribution. It is now in the adoption stage of the Tippingpoint Labs Life Cycle Analysis. That means this is the right time to wrestle with and establish a presence there. The early Tumblrs will win the rumbl.

I’m not suggesting you abandon Twitter. What I am suggesting is that you should be spending just as much time on Tumblr, where the reach is less diluted and the interaction possibilities are much richer. Get on Tumblr, experiment, and learn how it can work for you.

You may hear people saying Tumblr is a waste of time, but you should just spend ten minutes a day on it. I guarantee you will see its value.

Get in the Ring

Tumblr succeeds at bringing together multiple, disparate media into one place while still achieving a sense of unity. It’s an expectation of the community that text, video, audio, photo, links, chats or dialogue you’ve overheard will all make sense on the same page.

Creating valuable content on Tumblr, while easy, still takes thought. You have to tell your story through many lenses. It is the inventiveness of the views that will foster engagement.

You can also aggregate content in Tumblr, importing video, links, and RSS feeds automatically into your Tumblelog. This can streamline your content generation, but it is important also to ensure that what you are importing can be easily recontextualized.

Automatically importing all Twitter posts as blog entries is a rookie mistake, but having each video you upload show up directly from YouTube could work really well and increase your reach. You can add new context to your own content or to other relevant content.

Recontextualize without Exercise

Sharing and creating content on Tumblr is simple but powerful. Here’s a quick guide to some of the more interesting ways you can publish:

• Use the Firefox Tumblr Post add-on to drag and drop any kind of content right to your Tumblelog. With this tool, you don’t even have to set aside an extra 10 minutes for Tumblr. You can just do whatever you do on the web, and when you find something that is relevant to your audience, just drag and drop and they’ll see it. [Watch the User Guide below.]
• Call your Tumblr page from your phone and it will automatically post your audio. If Twitter allows short messages from key players, how great could a short phone message work?
• Email your content directly to your page. Want to share a bit of customer e-mail feedback with your audience? Just paste it into an email.
• Post a video right into your page or embed from another channel. If you’ve been posting great video, but visibility has been low, gain a new audience.

Reblog Exponentially

Perhaps the most powerful type of engagement on Tumblr is through the reblog button on each followed post on your dashboard. When users are moved, intrigued, interested, or tickled, they may repost the feed on their own page. They may also heart your content, giving their approval.

Our recent blog Twitter is Done. Tumblr is Next. got some great viral traction on Tumblr. Many users reblogged or hearted this article from its link on Tumblr. In addition, many users further reblogged or hearted the reblogs. And on and on.

Plus, through the Tumblr interface, we were able to track these interactions. So in the days after you post content, check back in with it. See what kind of content gets reblogged or hearted and make more content like that.

Tumblr offers a useful venue for content to be shared and replicated virally. You can keep track of the action, reach out, and interact further with the people you’ve engaged. This will increase your reach, your relationships, and help you understand what kind of content is valuable on Tumblr.

Takeaway

Ten minutes a day on Tumblr. Experiment and find your new context. It won’t hurt you.

Question to You

What’s keeping you from Tumblr? Or what successes have you had on Tumblr?

About the author

Jim Cosco -

Jim Cosco founded Tippingpoint Labs in 2002 in an effort to pursue the creation and distribution of high-quality content for the purposes of marketing and advertising. Jim’s experience as an executive producer, producer, director, and writer for television programming ranging from local public affairs and national news to reality television, enables him to create compelling stories designed to trigger powerful, emotional responses from his audience. No matter the medium, Jim’s passion for story-telling remains the common thread in all of his projects and is always the founding principle in driving his team to deliver high-quality, relevant content at every turn.

Jim relies heavily on his journalistic routes to create transparent, honest, and open content that helps build trust and nurtures meaningful brand relationships over the long term.

Since the early nineties Jim has devised and executed projects for clients like MTV, Fox News Channel, ABC, Putnam Investments, and Tufts University.  He has directed television shows and independent features, written screenplays and television treatments, and created content for marketing campaigns and product launches.