The Huffington Post's Tumblr captures the wide variety of the content posted on our site while also reinventing it for the Tumblr audience. We turn entertainment news into memes, we present election information with innovative graphics, and we create GIF sets of our favorite YouTube videos.
Last year HuffPost decided to invigorate its Tumblr presence by relaunching its page with a new layout and strategy. The focus was to highlight visual content created for HuffPost stories, such as infographics and original photography, while also creating original Tumblr-specific graphics to promote breaking news.
Since the relaunch of the Tumblr in February, the account has grown exponentially. The follower count has grown by 264% from 45,000 followers to 164,000 followers. In 2014 HuffPost's Tumblr received 182,150,721 million impressions, 19,334,105 reblogs and likes, with an engagement rate of 10.61-percent. Additionally it had four posts with 600,000+ reblogs and likes, five posts with 400,000+ shares, and more than 20 posts with 200,000+ shares.
The diversity of content on The Huffington Post's Tumblr — all adapted visually — is what sets it apart. Everything from evergreen stories to breaking news events are adapted graphically for Tumblr.
If a celebrity is cast as a comic book hero, we aren't just the first to post about it, we round out the story with a fun GIF or graphic. (See the animated graphic here)
When ISIS and the Middle East were trending across Tumblr's newsfeed, we adapted a post about the hijab and Islam into a photoset. (See it here.)
Or when another state legalizes gay marriage we make a creative gif celebrating.
Whenever a celebrity or politician has a great interview or is trending, we represent their words visually by creating quote cards. (See a quote card here.)
During award ceremonies and fashion week put a spin on the coverage with creative style gifs
But where our Tumblr truly excels is in gifsets. Over the last year we've focused on being the source for gifsets that are visually captivating and tell a story. Whether it's a recap of the best scene from Game of Thrones or retelling an inspiring YouTube video, our Tumblr's greatest success has been in these gifsets with more then 40 gifsets sharing with 100,000+ likes and reblogs. (Here is an example)
Furthermore, when we relaunched the Tumblr, we redesigned our page's layout. We opted for a clean, simple look that focuses on the content rather than the design of the page. Our goal was to create content that really stood out on a busy newsfeed, so we kept our page layout simple to complement the eye-catching content being posted.
The combination of original quote cards, graphics and gifsets has led to the success of our Tumblr. After almost two years of it being an all but abandoned platform, it took only one month to reinvigorate the page and we were a trending blog, with our content leading in search results and top hashtags.
This original content reaches beyond the Tumblr audience with our followers posting it to Imgur and then it making the front page and here's another example. Additionally we were recognized has having some of the posts all year by Tumblr's Year in Review. We had some of the most shared posts in feminism, parenting, ice bucket challenge, business, and healthcare.
While we are only two months into 2015 we have had tremendous growth as well.
We are also the leading Tumblr page amongst media brands according to our Tumblr analytics. Instead of rehashing content from our website, we adapt it into shareable media for the Tumblr audience.
