The Watering Hole : Marketing Tips & Stories

We’re really excited to introduce a new offering to small businesses: Tumblrsite.
What is Tumblrsite?

Tumblrsite is a Tumblr-hosted blog that looks, feels and functions like a professional website.

But, what is Tumblr?

Tumblr is a blogging service that's been dubbed "the world's most social blogging platform." That's because it's easy to discover new bloggers and posts though "tags." and "re-blog" posts you like on to your own blog. The social aspect of Tumblr has helped it grow to over 30 million users. And in August alone, Tumblr had 13 billion visits - that's a huge opportunity for a small business to gain exposure.

The Benefits of Tumblrsite:

• No contracts and no hosting required
• No engineers or designers to deal with
• Auto-post your content to Facebook and Twitter to more easily be found by customers
• Brand-consistent. Incredibly easy to modify settings and content.
  

How it works:

1. You sign up for Tumblrsite for only $59. (Much cheaper than hiring a website designer, right?)
2. Using an easy dashboard, you enter your business information, social media accounts, call-to-action and more. 
3. You upload a logo, business photo and choose background colors, link colors, font colors etc.
4. You upload photos and simply "tag" them with the page you'd like them to appear on (the Portfolio page or Carousel page).
   

And that's it!

Check out our live demo sites:

• Fork+Plate restaurant demo site
• Sutton Photography demo site

Sound good to you?

Get Tumblrsite for your business now!

There are so many themes to choose from on Tumblr, it's hard to know which one will be the best for your business. Below are five themes that we love for businesses, and we've even included which businesses they'd work best with.

Headline by asws - Free
A three-column magazine theme with extra pages support. It also has an About box in left column where could add your business's info, hours of operation and more.

• This theme would be good for: Designers, architects, startups, retailers

Stationery by thijsjacobs - Free
A very simple two-column theme that has a cool stack-of-papers background. This technique really lets the content shine without being too distracting. Also has support for group blogging.

• This theme would be good for: Restaurants and bakeries, writers, designers, musicians and composers, Dunder Mifflin

Boston Polaroid by rainerbird - Free
A simple, single-column theme that's perfect for showing off huge photos. Plus, most colors you see are customizable.

• This theme would be good for: Photographers, fashion designers, retailers, restaurants, artists

The New Yorker by Pixel Union - $49
This premium theme is a stylish two-column theme that has fantastic social media integration (in the Stuff I Liked section) and Share This capability. Plus, you can choose your icons and color variations to match your brand.

• This theme would be good for: Bars, restaurants, writers, graphic designers

Woodside by Addwater Agency (*Shameless self promotion*) - Free
The Woodside theme was created just for businesses and includes social media icons, Google maps, hours of operation and more. Plus, you can choose to load your logo (or regular text) for the headline and add a call-to-action button (such as "Make a reservation").

• This theme would be good for: Restaurants and bakeries, writers, designers, architects, illustrators

Below are Tumblr themes other bloggers recommend. Are there any you'd recommend? Please comment below!

• Mashable's "5 Beautiful Tumblr Themes for Small Businesses"
• Turncliff's "Best Free Tumblr Themes for Business"

As you may know, we've been creating some Tumblr themes lately. And now, we're happy to announce that we've release two more!
The first, 5th Avenue, is another theme optimized for businesses and entrepreneurs. It has a sophisticated granite background and includes features such as:

• Social media-optimized: Includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp and LinkedIn icons; as well as AddThis functionality for 1-click content share
• Easy Google Maps and Google Analytics integration
• Customizable call-to-action button to promote sales, lead generation— you name it!
• Brand-consistent: Add your business logo and colors, and customize the background

Read more about 5th Avenue here.
Our second new theme, Brickway, is a theme geared towards personal use. It has a cool, white brick background and customizable colors. It also has these nifty features:

• Stylish and modern
• Social media-optimized: Includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp and LinkedIn icons; as well as AddThis functionality for 1-click content share
• It’s easy to customize your theme colors and background
• Additional pages capability

Read more about Brickway here.

So far, all of our themes are free and are available in the Tumblr Theme Garden.

We'll be releasing some more free (and premium) themes soon, so stay tuned!

Many business owners believe that if they offer a daily deal such as Groupon or LivingSocial, their customer base will expand and they'll reach maximum profitability. However, as we've discussed before, there are some downsides to offering huge discounts on Groupon and other such sites.

The downside of daily deals and coupons include:

• In a study by Rice University, 32% of sales were not profitable for the business.
• The business might not be set up to handle sudden "rushes" of people redeeming their coupon, both staff and infrastructure-wise.
• In the same study by Rice University, 40% of the respondents who ran a promotion say they would not run such a promotion again.

In addition, industry experts are now saying that consumers might be beginning to suffer from "deal burnout," since everything from Yelp to Facebook to Travelzoo flood consumers' mailboxes with "limited time," "deeply discounted" bargains daily.

Recent research (and actually, there isn't much since this phenomenon is so new) has indeed shown that consumers may be on their way to deal overload. A study performed earlier this year by PriceGrabber.com found that the majority of online shoppers (52%) confessed to being "overwhelmed" by the sheer number of daily deals they got.

And another ongoing study led by Professor Utpal Dholakia at Rice University, is also finding that over time deal subscribers become less interested in the deals they receive. Says Dholakia:

We definitely see a diminishment of interest and involvement with daily deals over time… When consumers first sign up for deals, they are enthusiastic and interested, they want to share the deal with friends and family, but in interviews we've done, we see people don't share their daily deal choices on Facebook and Twitter as much later on. It's a classic symptom that they are becoming less involved.

Moral of the story: Daily deals, though they most likely won't die out completely, are probably declining in popularity due to the saturation of deals in today's consumer market. Daily deals might make sense for some businesses, but certainly don't count on your deal to boost sales and customer base permanently. Simply use the deal to supplement your other marketing activities.