This article is part of a series that explores the business benefits of the social media platform Tumblr, and how it can help your online marketing efforts. (Read part one and part two of the series.)
Writing Content About Your Company
Even if you have a good understanding of the many different types of available Tumblr posts, there are still a number of ways to actually use Tumblr's tools to interact with your audience.
Showcase Your Product Benefits
The multi-photo album posts that Tumblr offers is a great way to give viewers multiple visual perspectives on the product itself. This is useful for showcasing new products or putting older products in a new light. Of course, there are different methods to achieve this dependent on your industry.
For shows and movies using a multi-photo album full of high resolution photos can be a great way to tease a new trailer for one of their games. With a link back to the YouTube page, viewers who are interested in the content will likely go watch the full trailer on YouTube so that they can have sound as well.
Alternatively, the entire trailer can be embedded on the post, but there is a chance that people who are quickly skimming their dashboard can miss this information.
One such post for the hit TV series "Game of Thrones"
Reblogging user created content is also a great way to interact with your community. If you are a music artist and someone created a remix of one of your songs, reblog it! By drawing attention to a remix of your own work, you are indirectly drawing attention to yourself as well.
Reblogs and Giveaways
The simplest way to have a sweepstakes style contest on Tumblr is to do a Giveaway. In this type of contest, users are encouraged to reblog your post for a chance to enter a random draw for a prize. As the reblog system is incredibly simple, there are very low barriers to entry for participants, and these contests can quickly expand in popularity.
The rules section of a reblog-style contest
However, as the involvement per user is low, what may end up happening is that people reblog many different contests without very much thought, so the chance that any of them will remember your contest afterwards is slim at best.
One way to increase how memorable your contest is to tie the prize back to your brand or your company.
No information about the participants other than their username are recorded as well, so building a customer database will be difficult. Still, running weekly giveaways for small, yet fashionable items can lead to greater exposure over time.
Integrate with Other Social Media Sites
If your company has any promotions running on other social media sites, cross-promote them with your Tumblr page. By doing a sweepstakes on Facebook and linking Tumblr users back to that sweepstakes, your business can overcome the downsides of reblog-based contests as mentioned above. As a result, users will feel a higher amount of involvement and their contact information will be recorded.
A Dash of Flair links their Facebook Promotion to their Tumblr Page
In particular, video, photo, and photo caption contests that are shared on Tumblr can greatly increase the spread of the contest. Furthermore, any entries that come in from any social media site can be shared on Tumblr as well.