Why Your Small Business Should Consider Tumblr

There are lots of decisions to make when running a small business, and choosing what blogging platform to use is an important part of marketing and public relation strategies. While there are many possibilities, two of the most popular are WordPress and Tumblr, but which is best for your small business? Most blogs that answer this question present a "pros and cons" type comparison list. However, when stacking the two platforms up against one another WordPress will, almost without a doubt, be the more attractive blogging platform. When downloaded, it has significantly more customizable features, a large community, and good SEO optimization tools. On top of this, it also has the option to host your blog on WordPress for free or to pay to use WordPress on your own domain. In short, if you're a small business veering on a medium sized business, I'll save you the time: You should be looking at WordPress. However, if your small business is short on either time or technical savvy staff, or if you will be doing most of the blogging yourself, Tumblr can be an excellent option. David Karp founded Tumbler in 2007, and as of January 7, 2011 Tumblr hosts more than 2 billion blog posts with almost 12 million blogs. Moreover, just last week, it added Explore pages - a new feature which allows users to follow and find blogs by topic. But, is it any good for business? Tumblr's interface is designed for fast and easy blogging. If you want to get messages out - including images, video, audio, and links - quickly, then Tumblr is designed to support you. While it's not as feature intensive as WordPress, it is the lack of features which helps to keep it simple. It really is as easy as signing up and getting started. It also has a large array of stylish themes, good 3rd party tools, and using your own domain on Tumblr is free. That said, "keep it simple stupid" isn't without its downsides. Tumblr isn't designed for comments (which may work in your favour) and certainly limits the ability to generate discussion on the blog. It also has no direct RSS feed, and the site experiences more downtime than WordPress does. But none of this might matter to you. Tumblr is, perhaps, best used for businesses as an introduction to blogging and social media. Technology can be intimidating for new users, and once you start meddling in social media, there's lots to learn. Just because you start blogging on Tumblr doesn't mean you need to stay there forever. See it is a growth opportunity that lets you adjust to the medium with no strings attached. As with any business venture, the key is to have a good, honest, understanding of the specific needs and abilities of your company. If you're even a medium sized company, WordPress is probably worth the time and effort. But, not everyone wants, or is ready, to handle multiple features. If you really are a small company or a personal company, then Tumblr is a worth considering.

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Why Your Small Business Should Consider Tumblr

Kelsey Blair

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Kelsey Blair