THE POWER OF THE PLATFORM: VISUAL STORYTELLING ON SOCIAL NETWORKS 101 Tumblr Tumblr is a blogging platform with a difference: it allows users to quickly reblog posts (text, images, video, quotes, links, or music) by other users with a click of a button. A Tumblr account is simple to set up, and it is visually appealing. And it plugs your business into a platform of mil- lions of users searching for the best in visual inspiration. Importantly for marketers, Tumblr appeals to millennials and users with high levels of disposable incomes—both target demographics for brands. Tumblr was recently purchased by Yahoo! for $1.1 billion, showing that the platform doesn’t just have the confidence of its millions of users but of the business community as well. The key to Tumblr is its simplicity. Tumblr isn’t about long blog posts and information-loaded content. Instead, it’s for quick visual inspiration and consumer lust. Photos, videos, charts, quotes, and Q&As fill Tumblr streams, with users’ reposting everything that catches their eye, wherever they are. It is fast paced, creative, irreverent, and entertaining—and it has street cred, often vital to brands hoping to attract younger customers. One of the great features about Tumblr is that users can add comments only if they reblog your post, which cuts out a lot of comment moderating time for marketers, who would normally have to filter out trolling com- ments. This really helps the sense of community on the platform and gives it a positivity that can be lacking on other networks. Tumblr has found favor with fashion companies and college students. Vanessa Gabriel’s shopping website aSociete.com is one company reaping the benefits. aSociete offers exclusive discounts on top fashion brands to college students, offering as much as 50 to 80% off retail. Vanessa part- nered up with other Tumblr bloggers, and as they started writing about aSociete, the signups started to come in: “It started to happen organically where random people on Tumblr would post about aSociete and how much they love us. Over 5,000 people came in off one organic post. It is crazy how viral pictures can go on Tumblr if they’re trendy and fashion- 107 able at that moment.”