With more than 115,000 subscribers, Corcoran’s “10 a.m. Special” Tumblr page won out among last week’s #madREskillz entries.
To learn more about the blogging platform, we asked Corcoran’s director of interactive product and marketing, Matthew Shadbolt, to share his thoughts on Tumblr’s marketing potential and its recent purchase by Yahoo.
Q: Have you found Tumblr to be an effective marketing tool? What are its advantages and disadvantages? How does it compare to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn?
A: Yes, Tumblr has been incredibly effective for us. It’s our largest social media platform in terms of subscribers, with more than 115,000 — much bigger than our presence on Facebook. We receive hundreds of organic interactions each day, and are currently growing at about 500 new subscribers per day.
We’ve found its simplicity, mobile optimization, ease of use, and connection to a different type of New York audience to be tremendous advantages for us, although we do only one thing on the platform: We post the most incredible Corcoran listing we can find. We recently added an ‘Explore’ feature to each post, which reflects Corcoran’s core brand premise of going beyond the four walls of each property we represent. It allows us to be very nimble with our content marketing.
We find Tumblr a very effective platform for experimenting with new types of content. It was the forerunner of what later became our iPad app.
Tumblr also allows us to refine our approach to how and where we share our listings, which photos perform most effectively, and what types of properties resonate best with users moving between our interactive platforms. We’ve integrated what we do on Tumblr into everything else we do online.
Q: Do you think that it’s underutilized and may offer a way for more agents to reach millennials?
Yes, I think Tumblr offers incredible opportunities for brands to connect with communities online in new and exciting ways. We’re big fans of Tumblr at Corcoran.
Q: Do you think its acquisition by Yahoo could raise awareness of the site — perhaps validate it in a way — and spur more agents and brokers to experiment with it?
There’s a lot of speculation as to the implications of the acquisition. Most of it is simply conjecture at this point. I’ve been excited by how brands have used Tumblr so far, and curious to see how Yahoo can help support more brands’ use of the platform. While I think the platforms are different things, I’ve often seen Tumblr used as an alternative to WordPress.
Q: Do you think its acquisition could open up advertising opportunities to real estate agents and brokers — given that Yahoo intends to focus on monetizing it?
Yahoo’s use of Tumblr will evolve over time, just as Tumblr itself has. The nature of what “advertising opportunities” means online is also a fast-moving target right now, and as more brands begin to experiment with native advertising, I think Tumblr offers some unique marketing opportunities. They also have a very robust analytics product, which can often be a blind spot for social marketers. What we do with Tumblr is advertising, just not in the “traditional” sense of display ads.
Q: Any other implications of Tumblr’s purchase, or thoughts you have on Tumblr as a real estate marketing resource?
Tumblr is great to browse historically. (See Corcoran’s “10 a.m. Special” Tumblr page for an example).
As the real estate industry begins to adapt to more visual platforms, such as Zillow Digs, Pinterest, Instagram and more, browsing galleries of listings is fast becoming a more pleasurable form of searching. I’m enjoying the move away from checkboxes and drop-downs.
Do you use Tumblr for marketing purposes? Leave a comment below.