Beyond Facebook and Twitter: Tumblr

(Guest post by Account Supervisor & Social Media Maven Leslie Dagg.)

By now, you probably have some experience with the business-to-business marketing application of the more popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. So with this post, we wanted to focus on another social media site offering business-to-business marketing value that you may not know much about:

Tumblr.

Tumblr (http://www.tumblr.com) is a mini-blogging site that combines the follower/following concept of Twitter with the multimedia-sharing capability of Facebook or Flickr, along with traditional blogging formats and tools.

Here, you can create a free customized profile / blog (“tumblelog”) for your company to share text, quotes, photos, videos and audio clips with your community. Blogs can be public or private (password-protected). You can allow your followers to submit content, or you can reblog (think retweet) posts from blogs you follow.

 Long story short, Tumblr is:

• Twitter beyond the character limit,
• Facebook beyond status updates and links,
• Flickr beyond just pictures and videos, and
• A blog beyond paragraphs of text.

 Should you be using Tumblr?

Just as with all social media tools, Tumblr is not a “one size fits all” solution for all businesses; it’s something to consider adding to your marketing arsenal if it matches up with your organization’s situation and goals.

Tumblr is made for multimedia, so it’s most suitable for companies that have a great deal of photographic, video and/or audio material to share. For example, an automaker might user Tumblr for a new vehicle introduction, or a design firm might showcase its latest graphic work. 

Tumblr also works well as a platform requiring multiple authors, so if you have a number of different people collaborating and contributing content, creating a Tumblr page might be something to consider. If you haven’t already, Tumblr’s worth checking out.

Have you had any experience with Tumblr? How might you employ Tumblr in your B2B marketing efforts? What other new social media sites are you interested in for B2B marketing?