Nextness 101. Why you (and your brand) should be on Tumblr.

Nextness 101 is part of a regular series of posts where we summarise concepts and innovations that are creating buzz in advertising and communications. This week: Tumblr. Yes, you should be on it!

Simplicity + creativity + lovely people = Tumblr.

Tumblr is a blogging platform, and a very nice one too. It lets you quickly and easily set up a blog, customise the look of it with its own URL and a range of themes, and post anything at all: images, video, text, quotes and audio.

But easily setting up a beautiful blog is only half of what Tumblr offers.

The other half is its community: millions of Tumblrs from around the world that you can Follow, and – similar to how your Twitter feed works – see their updates on your Dashboard. You can express your appreciation of someone’s post by clicking a heart icon to Like it. You can share a piece of content you love by Reblogging it onto your own blog, a feature which, long before a retweet button, helped great content go viral in minutes.

Unlike its blogging platform competitors WordPress and Blogger, there is absolutely no pressure on users to post in depth content. Just click, make sure you make it clear where the material came from, and go. Of course, this doesn’t stop people from crafting high quality posts. It just means you don’t have to. If you’ve never blogged before or don’t know what you’d talk about everyday, Tumblr is the best place to start.

And unlike Twitter, it’s highly visual. Embedded video and images make Tumblr a feast for your eyes.

Why you should be on Tumblr.

1. See culture unfold.

Sometimes it feels as advertisers and communicators focus too much on pre-digested culture: reading trend reports instead instead of picking what’s next from observation; collecting stats about the power of social media rather than loving it themselves; studying industry blogs or watching award show reels to see what’s hot. The problem is, you’re just watching the watchers. Occasionally useful, but ultimately it’s all second hand.

But when you’re on Tumblr, you see raw culture getting made. Clothes, books, art, products, people, photography styles, acronyms, slang, and memes: the most creative people in the world are on Tumblr posting what they love, what inspires them and what makes them laugh. Why not cut out the middle man and get it straight from their mouths?

2. Build your visual sense.

Twitter gives you a wonderful overview of the ideas and issues that are spreading through your network. But it can be a bald summary without images. Tumblr, with its ability to embed high-res images, photosets, gifs and videos, sparks your visual creativity. It prompts you to learn new creative skills yourself (food photography, say, or lomography, or tilt-shift techniques). And in surveying the stream of images every day, you develop a strong sense of taste: what makes one image fresh, another poor or hackneyed.

3. Curate your inspiration.

Tumblr acts a perfect online scrapbook to house your inspiration where once you’d use a moodboard or a Moleskine. If you’re worried that making your private inspirations public would destroy your mojo, think again.

We like to quote Tomorrow Museum’s Joanne McNeil about creatives who use Tumblr:

Revealing influences is the confidence of a true creative person: you can see where the ideas come from, because even with the same ingredients I know you can’t bake what I’m about to with it.

4. Follow inspiring people.

• Visual creatives: Maximum Radical / Pablo Marques / Anna Rose Kerr / Joanne McNeil / Nevver / F**** yeah, ads / Yokoo / Things Magazine / Tulle Tulle / Corwood / Hrrrthrrr / Semisetadrift / The Beastie Boys / Lady Gaga / Textbook / 50 watts / Here’s some awesome / Curator of curiosities.
• Writers: Tess Lynch / Molls / Jean Hannah Edelstein / Rachel Hills / Britticisms / Natasha Vargas-Cooper / Alex Balk / Austin Kleon / Arianna Stern / Mills Baker.
• Planners: Thought you should see this / Curiosity Counts / Mike Arauz / Alex Campbell / Amanda Mooney / Bud Caddell.
• Memes and hilarity: Rocketboom / Unhappy Hipsters / Clients from hell.
• Media: New Yorker / N+1 / GOOD / Guardian / The Economist / The Atlantic / NPR / Life.
• Brands: Iceland (the country – so cute!) / Myer / EMI / IBM.

Are we taking our own advice?

Yes! Nextness has a Tumblr. We’re using it to collect inspiration for our regular visual diary feature.

Let’s get down to business.

So those are the all the happy, positive, inspirational reasons you should be on Tumblr. Now let’s talk about the strategic ones. Even people who have a successful blog on Blogger or WordPress now have a presence on Tumblr. Tavi has Tulle Tulle; Miss Moss has no less than four Tumblrs! It’s for the four reasons above and one other important one: there is no better platform for circulating content and building your traffic than Tumblr.

• There are more than 22 million Tumblr blogs, and its network gets 8.7 billion pageviews a month, globally.
• With the Reblog feature, your content can be shared in seconds.
• With one click, people can follow your Tumblr and never miss another post.

Should brands be on Tumblr?

It’s bizarre that more aren’t.

• It’s a great platform to share the diverse snippets of content that all brands create these days but can’t always find a natural home on a brand website – at least not quickly.
• It’s perfect to curate and showcase the inspirations, values, mood and lifestyle behind your brand.
• Tumblr is a friendly, welcoming environment which rewards creativity and quality, where ever it comes from – including brands.

Why not join right now? And if you are on Tumblr, feel free to leave your URL in the comments so we can follow you.