by on June 4, 2013 Leave a Comment

Tumblr Expands Sponsored Posts to Desktop Experience

By Savannah McClelland

Ten days after Tumblr’s acquisition by Yahoo, it has begun rolling out sponsored posts to users’ desktop Tumblr feeds (AKA dashboards). The roll-out is taking place approximately one month after Tumblr’s introduction of native advertising for mobile users.

The ad units appear the same way that a regular Tumblr post would, except that they are distinguished by a dollar sign icon in the top right corner. Users can interact with the sponsored posts the same way they would regular content; by reblogging and favoriting the posts. Thus far, seven advertisers appear to be participating in the initial offering: Ford, Viacom, Universal Pictures, Capital One, Purina, Denny’s and AT&T.

Tumblr has been quick to reassure users that the ads will not be invasive; as with the mobile launch, users will see a maximum of four sponsored posts a day on their desktop feeds. While advertisers have long been interested in the social blogging platform, the lack of analytics and targeting capabilities, along with the inability to pay for self-service ads except with a credit card, have previously hobbled efforts at advertising.

Tumblr is expected to generate a modest $15 million in ad revenue this year as part of the company’s push to achieve profitability. David Karp, Tumblr CEO, has previously said that he wants to ensure that advertising on the channel is done intelligently, with content as the emphasis rather than gimmicks. He has stressed that if companies want to advertise on Tumblr, their sponsored posts should be engaging and interesting enough for users to interact with.

From the way that Tumblr is rolling these capabilities out, it would appear that—with its base of about 300 million monthly users, many of whom are young—the blogging site could be the next major requirement for companies looking to promote their products and services online.

Filed Under: Social Media, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,
by on May 6, 2013 Leave a Comment

Tumblr Unveils Mobile Ads

By Savannah McClelland

Last month we shared Tumblr’s announcement that they would be incorporating ads into the Tumblr mobile app, and then Tumblr unveiled the result of their work. The Tumblr mobile ads are native, as opposed to banner ads—meaning that they are little more than basic posts marked with an animated dollar sign, which readers can “like” and “reblog.” According to a statement from Tumblr, users will not receive more than four sponsored posts per day.

The move comes as part of Tumblr’s overall strategy to become profitable this year—the mobile advertising market is forecast to increase 65% to $2.1 billion in the United States this year. Importantly for the company, Tumblr’s mobile viewership is growing even more quickly. David Karp, Tumblr CEO said in an interview back in February that he expected mobile traffic to overtake PC traffic by early 2014.

Six partners are included in the mobile ad launch, including ABC Entertainment, GE, Pepsi and Warner Bros. GE will be featuring cinemagraphs of their jet engines and locomotives, while Warner Bros. plans to use the new venue to promote their upcoming summer films The Great Gatsby and The Hangover Part III.

In the February interview, Karp said that he did not think that Tumblr would have a harder time monetizing its mobile traffic. Karp explained, “On Tumblr there are no special brand pages, there are no Sponsored Stories. There are blogs and there are posts. So as long as there are those elements and our mobile apps are getting better and better at displaying those atomic elements… We should be able to inject advertisements there in a way that’s really not disruptive and not interruptive.”

With the growing focus on mobile advertising, this move will likely help Tumblr to achieve profitability this year, a goal that the company has repeatedly focused on in press events and announcements. The six-year-old company is hungry to prove that it is a viable business, and this among the other changes that have come in the last three months demonstrate just that.

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by on March 11, 2013 Leave a Comment

Tumblr Introducing Mobile Ads

By Savannah McClelland

A little more than a year after Tumblr began allowing users to pay to promote their content on the network, the blogging company is bringing those ads to mobile.

In an interview with Bloomberg magazine, Vice President of Product Derek Gottfrid said that companies will be able to promote their blogs as well as individual posts on Tumblr’s apps for iOS and Android within the first half of the year. Lee Brown, head of sales, has said that the average advertising purchase on Tumblr is now “just under six figures.”

Tumblr tells advertisers to create campaigns that will spread like its other content; for example, Coca-Cola Co. ran a series of photos that highlighted simple art, instead of blatantly promoting the soft drink, under its “Open Happiness” theme. Companies won’t be able to buy display space or keywords in the ways they are accustomed to, but instead brands will pay to get their blogs seen by more people. Impact can be measured by how many viewers shared or “hearted” the post.

Using this nontraditional approach, Tumblr has been able to sell promoted posts to companies including Target Corp., Adidas, Lions Gate Entertainment, and Christian Dior. Lee Brown commented, “Marketers have become accustomed to buying scale as opposed to earning it. We’re not really selling ads, we’re promoting their content.”

The timing of this development is good; last month, Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp said that he expects mobile traffic will overtake desktop traffic by early next year at the latest. The number of people using Tumblr’s mobile product has quadrupled in the past six months, which makes the project more urgent. Research firm Gartner expects worldwide mobile advertising revenue to reach $11.4 billion this year—up from $9.8 billion in 2012.

Having run internal tests, Tumblr is now seeking launch partners for the new products. According to Lee Brown, The advertising should help the six-year-old blog site, which has a monthly audience of 170 million, to turn a profit for the first time this year.

 

Filed Under: Mobile Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
by on February 25, 2013 Leave a Comment

Why Your Company Should Be Blogging

By Savannah McClelland

According to recent surveys, if your company is not blogging, you’re in the minority. From 2009 to 2011, the percentage of businesses with a blog grew from 48% to 65%. In addition to giving your company website higher standing with search engines, blogging accomplishes a lot of good for your brand—and your sales.

One of the most important things that blogging does for your company is to give it a voice, a personality. A great example of this is HubSpot; the company allows every single employee to produce content for the company blog. This makes it less onerous for the blog to be maintained (they easily get 3-5 articles a day), and it gives a sense of the actual, real people that work there. By giving your company a personality, you make your company more credible, more human—and customers respond. A recent survey by HubSpot showed that 60% of businesses who blog acquire more customers.

A blog is also an excellent way to continue building a relationship with your customers. We’ve already told you why companies should maintain a presence in social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest; blogging is another critical tool. The content that your company posts on your blog will become material for social media marketing, and vice versa. If you enable comments on your company blog, you can see how customers are feeling, and it gives you another channel to address any gaps in service or issues that arise. It also gives you a forum to tell your customers about new products or services.

Blogging also establishes you as an expert in your field. If you’re updating a few times a week with information about the industry and relevant current events, in addition to promoting sales and new inventory, your blog positions you as an authority. The more content you have on your blog, the more customers can see that your business is passionate—and the more they can see that you really know your stuff. A fringe benefit to this is that, by keeping on top of current events in your field by necessity, you’re going to be sharper in any sales situation. You’re improving your ability to explain and inform, which makes for a better sale.

Finally, blogging is cost-effective. There are numerous free blog websites out there, and incorporating a blog into an existing website is typically not a very difficult or costly thing to do. Every post you make on the blog is a long-term asset that builds brand awareness and promotes your company—and once you have the blog established, the cost of keeping it up is practically nonexistent.

These are just some of the reasons why every company should be maintaining a blog, of course; there are many more benefits that blogging gives your company. If your company wants to get started blogging, but you aren’t sure how, get in touch with a professional to make sure you start off the right way. In next to no time writing content for your company will become second nature.

 

Filed Under: Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,
by on September 19, 2012 Leave a Comment

Tumblr is Gaining Speed

In the past year, Tumblr traffic is up nearly 200 percent reaching almost 26.9 million unique visitors in July.  Although, Tumblr is one of the leading driving social elements out there, search traffic has boomed over the past year topping 24 million search visitors in July.   Tumblr blogs are ranking extremely high on search page results for brands and celebrities.

The micro blog is now hosting over 1 million blogs and counting.  Tumblr has one of the easiest platforms to keep photos, conversations and links recorded in a timeline.  Tumblr allows the user to “re-blog” or share anything with extreme ease.  Like any other social network, it is all about popularity and in the Tumblr world it’s called “Tumblarity”.    Tumblarity is calculated on a mixture of what you post, how much others have liked it, shared it, and how many people follow your Tumblr blog.  One can follow other Tumblr’s based on subject matter, common interest or mutual friends.  Tumblr is built on the mentality of “the simpler the better”, they are trying to stay away from looking cluttered with all kinds of links scattered like a traditional blog.

Tumblr is extremely SEO friendly making it easy to edit title/meta tags and title/atl tags for your links/pictures.  Big brands are eager to use Tumblr as another way to distribute their content and generate large followings.  Brands are posting assortments of images creating a more cultivating experience for visitors.

Filed Under: BMI Elite Blog Tagged With: , , , , , ,
by on July 16, 2012 Leave a Comment

Promoting Your Blog

By Austin Lovvorn

Blogging is one of the most crucial aspects of generating leads online.  Being able to promote your blog through social media and other realms will also increase the ability to generate leads.  It almost seems like common sense- the more exposure, the larger audience base your blog will attract.  The analysts over at HubSpot have found another effective way to create lead generation through blogs.  Auto publishing your blog through social media networks actually increases your leads by 50%.  They also found that companies who used social media as a publishing tool to schedule their social media posts found to have three times as many leads than a company who didn’t.

So what tips can a company use to get the most effectiveness through social media blog promotion?  First, your blog titles should be the first part to be analyzed to ensure search engine optimization.  The title needs to be relevant to the content of the blog and your keywords should be strategically placed throughout the blog.  Using this strategy effectively, could ultimately help your blog be grabbed by the search engines algorithm created an unusual early high rank.

Within the content should be information for your reader to want to share to their audience.  Being able to optimize your blog to be sharable will increase its value extremely.  Also, providing the blogs audience with other social sharing buttons will help it spread as well.  Using a platform that automatically schedules blog posts on social media is extreme advantage that will set it above the rest.  Being able to establish a good time to post blogs to your social media networks will only be optimized through trial and error.  Figuring out which times create the most engagement on your social networking will optimize your blog effectively.

 

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