Tumblr: It’s More Than Just A Place for Millennials

When Yahoo acquired Tumblr in 2013, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made a pretty big promise:

“We promise not to screw it up.”

A lofty goal, but so far, Mayer has kept her promise. No one expects Tumblr to become the next Facebook or Twitter, which is one reason its users stay loyal.

So, what exactly is Tumblr and how popular is it? Wikipedia provides the following facts about the platform:

• Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website founded by David Karp.
• The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog.
• As of March 3, 2014, Tumblr hosts over 174.2 million blogs.
• In April 2013 the website received more than 13 billion global page views.
• As of March 3, 2014, over 110.2 million posts were created on the site each day.
• The service is most popular with the teen and college-aged user segments with half of Tumblr’s visitor base being under the age of 25.

Interestingly enough, almost half of Tumblr users are “young,” with approximately 46% of them falling between the ages of 16 and 24. These numbers make it appear that Millennials, a term for the generation of people born approximately between the early 1980’s and early 2000’s, own this platform. The Millennials mostly turn to Tumblr for self expression through their blogging and sharing. But remember, they only make up about half the Tumblr population.

Who makes up the other half? Brands make up a part of that other half, and they find Tumblr is quite ripe with opportunity. Of course, a good portion of the advertising is geared towards the younger crowd, but many brands create and share content for all ages – not just the Millennials. More and more businesses are using Tumblr for both brand awareness and marketing, some with more success than they ever anticipated.

Tumblr encourages visual marketing, and brands using the platform are pulling out all the stops. They are creating the most vivid and creative visual content they can to engage their followers, and many are doing so very well. The visual branding (or re-branding, in some cases) has even turned some brands’ reputations around completely. People may not have thought companies such as  Holiday Inn, Bisquick, and General Electric could ever be “cool.” However, they are now considered “hip,” as a result of their clever Tumblr activities.

So, do you use Tumblr, either for business or personal posts? Do you think it’s just a playground for Millennials or a place where brands can express themselves, too? I would love to hear your thoughts – please feel free to leave a comment below.