Two of social media’s highly visual networks offer brands a platform for sharing eye-catching content and to capitalize on social discovery through hashtags, keywords, and top-of-mind awareness. Both Instagram and Tumblr are effective brand-building tools, especially for the next generation of millennial consumers, yet fundamentally different in their use and purpose.
Instagram is the primarily mobile-only, photo-sharing app where brands can post and add filters to their photos with short captions and a heavy use of hashtags for greater findability. George Seybold, Founder of Talloo, www.talloo.com, a local business network, says, “Hashtags drive rediscovery and stretch the value. Ten hashtags on Instagram is acceptable, but not on Facebook.” Sharing to multiple other social platforms, including parent-company Facebook, is very easy from within Instagram.
Tumblr, at its core, is a microblogging platform. You may be most familiar with the term microblogging from the time that Twitter came onto the scene. Tumblr, on the other hand, is an unregulated platform, which can have pros and cons, yet gives you more flexibility in what you post and how you post it. On Tumblr, you can post text, photos, quotes, links, audio clips, and videos, as well as comment, share, edit, and re-blog other users’ blogs onto your own page.
What Makes Them Unique?
Photos, GIFs, a good dose of humor, so long as it fits with your brand, and short posts or blogs are most popular on Tumblr. However, it should be noted that long-form blogs can also be posted. The use of relevant tags on your Tumblr posts is very important and will help more than just your followers find your content and extend your reach. Most notably, you have the option of paying to promote your entire blog rather than one post at a time like on other social networks.
As part of the Facebook behemoth, Instagram users now enjoy being treated as a targeting placement option from within the Facebook ad platform. This makes social advertising that much easier for marketers to manage and optimize their campaigns. Instagram remains popular for its photo sharing and editing capabilities. It is to photos what Twitter is to short text-based updates.
Should You Use Them For Business?
For me, having either Instagram or Tumblr in your marketing toolkit highly depends upon whether you are doing a good job of using other, more-diverse social media platforms (such as Facebook or Twitter) as part of your marketing success strategy.
Success on Tumblr is primarily brought on by creating and posting original content and building brand loyalty in younger demographics, specifically those younger than 34 which, if not already on your radar, should be as your radiology services become more relevant in their lives. It is free, unless you engage in paid advertising, and a good tool for spreading awareness of your brand. Further, unlike Facebook, Tumblr content gets indexed by search engines and can increase your search visibility.
Similarly, Instagram users skew younger and female. The platform allows you to give a quick behind-the-scenes view of your company where you can showcase employees, services, and short videos. From a use or marketing standpoint, Seybold says “Instagram is like Houzz or Pinterest, where users go to browse images for ideas, which prompts a purchase or service inquiry. This might be a bit tougher sell for use within radiology, but one appropriate use case could be wellness marketing, as long as a practice is very soft in the approach.”
Can you Track Effectiveness?
Yes. Tumblr’s analytics platform is Google Analytics where you can monitor and analyze traffic to your Tumblr blog. If you’re already blogging as part of your existing marketing and search strategy, Tumblr could be a natural extension for greater effectiveness.
Certainly, not a surprise, owned by Facebook, Instagram’s analytics are very similar to Facebook Insights where you can get valuable data about who your followers are, when they are online, and how many people viewed your posts.
Is There a Downside?
If there is a downside to adding on additional social media networks, it is likely the increased tap of your time and resources. You will need to ensure you can commit enough time to be consistent with either of these apps to be truly effective.
In general, Instagram’s downfalls are that it has fairly limited capabilities and, for business, there is an emphasis on the ability to produce high quality photos. A risk to using Tumblr includes the possibility of coming across inappropriate content as the platform is not regulated and does allow for posting adult content.
Both of these platforms can be an ingredient in a larger recipe. Used as a social hub, they are an extension of your content and help to build upon social media efforts on other channels. Businesses need to clearly think through why they should participate with these networks and what is the potential gain. Think through your goals, how you will engage customers, and how you will measure results.
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