Follow the money

Pinterest aside, one of the more amazing recent growth stories continues to be told by Tumblr, a blogging platform that doubles as a social network. The Royal Pingdom has documented and analyzed Tumblr's explosive growth as 'a page view machine'. Center Networks spotted Google Trend data showing that Tumblr's buzz is miniscule compared to its actual importance to social media. Tumblr is designed to reward creativity and individuality, features that have made it an extremely popular platform for digital agencies. The blog Marketing Land decided that they needed a Tumblr presence and shared the how and why of getting started.

One thing that Tumblr hasn't done yet is explain how it will make money, but that is slowly changing. They have always had a very strong bias against traditional advertising and have so far been limited to more modest efforts such as selling highlighted posts for $1. Starting May 2 advertisers will be able to buy space on Tumblr's Dashboard Radar a highlighting feature that gets about 120 million impressions a day. It's a very far cry from the aggressive programs at Facebook and Twitter. At Tumblr you still need to provide something that people really want to read before you can even start spending to reach their huge audience.

• A Social Media Dashboard for Google Analytics [Analytics Talk]
• The 5 Easy Steps To Measure Your Social Media Campaigns [Kissmetrics]
• Using Google Analytics Social Reports To Measure Your Website Content And Engagement in Google+ [Google Analytics]