Tumblr has been in the news a lot lately. Last month the blogging platform became a top 50 site with over 6.6 million users and 1.5 billion page views a month. Mark Coatney, former senior editor at Newsweek recently announced his move to Tumblr, where he'll be working to position Tumblr as a platform for journalists and readers to meet.
Coatney is credited with building Newsweek's Tumblr presence, utilizing Tumblr as a new social media platform to interact with readers. Newsweek's Tumblr sent about 1,000 readers a day to the magazine's website, while Newsweek's Twitter feed and Facebook page sent 200,000 to 300,000 monthly. Coatney said that the engagement of the Tumblr community is more valuable than the number of followers, "Newsweek has 100x the numbers of followers on Twitter as it does on Tumblr, but was getting 10x more engagement from those Tumblr followers. That's a significant number, I think."
NY Mag argued that the success of Newsweek's Tumblr presence was due in part to Coatney's conversational style and furthermore, a Tumblr couldn't be managed by "fresh-faced interns," that old-media publications wouldn't pay.
A handful of traditional media outlets have since hopped on the bandwagon, signing up for Tumblr with hopes of getting social with the Tumblr community. Tumblr could become a valuable resource for traditional companies and media outlets trying to garnish relationships with a younger audience.
To look for examples of how to best use Tumblr, perhaps attention should be shifted to the effortless content creators of the Tumblrverse; news breakers (such as Anthony De Rosa) and life casters (like Delbert Shoopman and Molly McAleer), who have created dynamic online personalities. Not to be confused with bloggers and long format journalism - these Tumblr users are original content creators. They are conscious of the importance of original photo and video content to create conversation starters; and are also aware of the who's who of the web and understand the nuances of the Tumblr community.
Here are some beginner resources and ideas of how to start using Tumblr as a platform: