Kristi Colvin

First of all, I want to provide three definitions that may be helpful in explaining the allure of Tumblr in certain circumstances.

Micro-blogging
Twitter is dominating the world of micro-blogging - it was reported today they have “roared past 14 million US users.” The point to keep in mind with Twitter, Friendfeed, identi.ca, etc. is the “micro” - updates are specifically limited to a certain number of characters, more akin to a text message than a formal blog article. 

Tumblelogging
In 2005, Jason Kottke accurately describes what I experience here a lot when he says “A tumblelog is a quick and dirty stream of consciousness.”

Blogging
Blogging can be as simple as setting up a Typepad or Blogger account, or as dedicated as hosting the Wordpress or Movable Type software on your own server, so you can completely customize the site to do exactly what you want. From “pro-blogs” who see thousands of visitors and post news and articles daily, to a simple online journal about weight loss or family updates, the method of designing a web site within the confines of a CMS environment has become very standard these days. 

To be clear, I don’t really consider Tumblr an alternative to Wordpress. It can be, but I’d rather focus on the best tool for the people who will be using it. There are people for whom I’d recommend Typepad, those for whom Blogger works, and certainly a slew of uses for Wordpress… it is capable of powering everything from simple blogs to large or complex interactive sites like directories and online purchasing. We Heart Wordpress too and use this CMS platform for most client sites, right now.

But for some people, the overhead is too much. Yes, it’s customizable, modular and though not exactly a web designer’s dream, unless you love monkeying with CSS and PHP, it is built to allow people who are not web designers to modify their own sites and add content. Tumblr also allows people to add their own content, but it is easier, faster, less cumbersome and there is less of a learning curve because of the way the interface is designed to aid users.

Tumblr meets one of my primary criteria for a social platform: it is brandable. You can modify a free theme (if able, or have someone do it) or create a custom theme such I as I have done for this site. Anyone trying to create a personal brand for themselves needs to factor that in when assessing the time you spend at various social sites and how you use them. Are Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Friendfeed, etc. defining your brand for you, or are they an extension of what you have designed? For people, companies and causes I always want to help them define something visual that can be associated with them in someone’s memory. Tumblr’s brandability + extreme ease of use makes it a good choice if recognition & branding are required. Tumblr also works well for people who need blogging to be simple and easy.

Some use cases:

Gary Vaynerchuk uses Tumblr as a central station for PR for himself. He is involved in several ventures and his Tumblr was designed to accommodate everything from his Wine Library videos to TV appearances, as well as providing folks the ability to connect with him in the various social places where he plays. (We have a similar PR hub Tumblr in production for Olivier Blanchard of BrandBuilder Marketing.)

It’s All About the Bacon is a niche site focused on everyone’s favorite food (or so it seems on the bacon-obsessed Twitter.) I’m sure there are more than a few bacon lovers out there that visit this site on a daily basis!

Social Media ROI is a Tumblr we have in production for Olivier Blanchard, a brand strategist and consultant. This is a topic-focused site that will help him keep his blog posts and videos on this subject in one spot, as he is writing a book on this. This Tumblr may turn into the book promotion site as he gets closer to publishing it.

We Heart Studios service sites are all Tumblr’s. We have pages, navigation, footer links, contact forms and all the amenities you would expect from a CMS-enabled site. We publish articles and share links from around the web on the subject of each site (Twitter, Tumblr, Wordpress, Ecommerce, Branding & WebApps) and we can reblog the article if we want to from our main Tumblr blog, which automatically sends it to the @WeHeart Twitter account. Our team members can all post articles to the Tumblr’s from the website or via email or from their phones. When we say We LOVE Tumblr, we really mean it. ;-)

Using Tumblr as a personal branding site, or PR hub, allows you to connect to your audience in small snippets, rather than only if you take the time to compose a well-written blog post or tape that video blog! For myself, that has been critical. I have two blogs, and yet sometimes feel the need to write on subjects other than what they cover. I feel more “free” to do this on my personal Tumblr, because the expectation here is that it is all about “me.” So whether I post a picture of some fabulous shoes, or discuss at length a serious customer service issue, the context is “me” so it all works.

Tumblr also allows you elegantly to follow/be-friend people sort of like Twitter or Facebook, and then easily re-post the cool things they discover on your own blog. My blog has the Twitter api hooked up so that my most recent tweet is showing, and I also send most of my Tumblr posts to Twitter, so now my Tumblr friends have just grown their audience considerably when I re-blog something they posted.

The “following” aspect of Tumblr makes it ripe for true community gathering. One of the things we want to encourage communities to do is create their own Tumblr sites. Imagine one giant party of everyone related to your favorite cause, all sharing links, text, photos and video with each other! Churches, children’s groups, professional networking organizations, athletic friends and more can create their own “community within a community” here on Tumblr.

I’d love to hear comments in the section below.

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