Why Marketers Can't Afford to Ignore Tumblr

From the outside, it can be difficult to understand how a social network works. Tumblr can be particularly confusing because of its esoteric community, its internal language and its GIF-based madness and humor. But it's becoming a bad idea for businesses to avoid the maturing network.

Based on the the official statistics, Tumblr has 163.9 million users - 41.25 million of which are in the U.S. Thirty-nine percent of users are under the age of 25, and Tumblr grew an astounding 900 percent between June 2012 and 2013.

Despite its impressive user base, only 31 of the top 100 global brands use the service, according to blogger Amanda Walgrove. 'Basically, become the leader of your brand's fandom,' she advised. 'Make it impossible for consumers to scroll past your post without reblogging. And don't be afraid to give your audience power.' Or you could take the easy route, buy sponsored posts and see an average of 10,000 reblogs per post.

The data scientists at Yahoo have also been working to understand Tumblr better. They found deep intertwining between blogs, with reciprocal follows at almost 30 percent, compared to the rate of three percent for traditional blogs. The average degree of separation between any two users was only 4.7 steps. Tumblr content spreads even faster than Twitter content, according to the research.

'Compared with Twitter, Tumblr is more vibrant and faster in terms of reblog and interactions,' researchers wrote. And while recency of posting is important, it's not vital, according to Walgrove. 'Of all Tumblr reblogs, 29 percent were from posts that were at least 30 days old. Compare that to Twitter, where tweets more than a couple hours old are often lost in the social media ether,' she says, citing Simply Measured Analytics.

Indeed, Tumblr users are a young, highly engaged community that loves fashion, GIFs, movies and television. The service hosts a prime audience that isn't afraid of sponsored posts, or in-stream advertising. Not only are they not afraid, but they're excited to share when the advertising is tailored for their platform.

Image credit: FauxShot