Currently, Tumblr powers over 12 million blogs and many small business marketers are considering how yet another tool fits into their web, content, search, social and blogging strategy.  At Spyder Trap, we’re involved in conversations on Tumblr and we’ve also started utilizing it ourselves.

Tumblr For Small Business

Spyder Trap’s President Mike Rynchek recently discussed Tumblr in a Mashable article “The Pros and Cons of Tumblr for Small Business”. Rynchek was one of a handful of online marketing experts interviewed for the article as they looked at the benefits for small businesses.

Mike and the other experts agreed that your online communication needs to start with goals and if Tumblr can help you achieve those, then it’s a good move. Mike stressed that those goals should not be directly monetary, but along the lines of driving traffic, brand awareness, communicating expertise and engagement.

“I look at Tumblr as an ingredient in a bigger recipe,” he says. “Tumblr helps facilitate your search efforts, which in turn drives more traffic to your site. This helps give you an indirect return on investment. Tumblr can also help create another indirect return through engagement.”

As you look at what you are trying to accomplish online, consider how Tumblr and it’s benefits might enable that.

Spyder Trap Uses Tumblr To Get More Visual

We’ve started using Tumblr ourselves for 2011.  Spyder Trap In Focus gets updated a few times a week with photos that show our people, office culture, projects and more.

This photo is just one of the many staff, office and project photos we are posting to our Tumblr site.

When we started considering Tumblr, two driving reasons were behind our decision:

1. We identified that Tumblr would be an easy way to add a specific type of content (photos), make publishing easy for us and consumption easy for visitors.  While we already blog and use other social channels at length, our Tumblr site is a visual channel of our company.

2. As an online marketing firm, it’s up to us to know the tools and services out there for our clients. Using it ourselves allows us intimate knowledge on what clients would benefit from Tumblr.

Just as we outlined above, we wanted Tumblr to add to our mix, not duplicate.  In landing on a photo-only use, we are producing content we didn’t share before to an audience we might not have reached.

Doing What’s Right For You

As a small business you have to carefully plan and manage your time and resources.  Tumblr might be a great way to share more content and expertise about your business, it might also not be the right choice for your current marketing strategy.

With any social and web service, make sure you fully grasp its benefits and what goals they can help you accomplish if you utilize them.  Doing your homework and putting together a plan will help you make a decision on tools like Tumblr and adding to your online equity.

It’s hard not to stumble upon a blog post over the last few weeks discussing predictions for 2010 with regards to Social Media, SEO, Sponsored Search (PPC), etc. So rather than hopping on the bandwagon and look outward at these industries, I decided to take a look inward at our own company, and how we look to make 2010 an even bigger success than 2009. So here we go, our 2010 New Year’s resolutions for Spyder Trap Online Marketing:

1) Blog more frequently
It can be easy to let blogging slip through the cracks as other projects, deadlines and a million other timely business matters pop up, but 2010 will see even more proactive blogging from the folks at Spyder Trap.

2) Attend more speaking events
We have attended MIMA events, #SMBMSP events and appeared on panels at MNAMA events. There is a wealth of marketing knowledge right here in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area, and there is always more to learn. As Anthony J. D’Angelo once said: “Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” Cheers, Anthony. We feel the same way.

3) Host another speaking event
Our presentation on Social Media for Business at the James J. Hill Library in November in conjunction with the Twin Cities Thursday Happy Hours group was a great success! In fact, we had so much fun we’re thinking about doing another one! Time for a little crowdsourcing: What would you like us to speak about?

4) Continue to strive to higher levels of success
Always try to outdo yourself. Challenge yourself to something, no matter how small the task may be, faster/better/different/more efficiently than before. You’ll be surprised with how addicting this can be.

5) Continue to grow and nurture our employees’ professional growth
Focus on nurturing your employees’ growth in their respective fields while building their talent in other areas by training them in different aspects of the industry. Developing experts in a niche that are knowledgeable about other dimensions of an industry is a winning combination.

What are your New Year’s resolutions for your company/organization? Maybe you have some professional resolutions for yourself? Whatever they may be, we’d love to hear them!