Jordan Kurpita

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Research Project

Crabs & Marketing to Piranhas: A Deep Dive Into Tumblr’s Social Media Strategy

Bio

A creative mind looking forward to a brighter future.

Research Summary

Tumblr is a social media and blogging platform created in 2007. While looking at Marketing for Online Platforms and Social Media, this study hopes to discover how Tumblr markets itself to its audience and what strategies users are most receptive to. Current research primarily consists of user demographics, how users choose to present themselves, and how posts are used to convey meaning. The company-run blog, Brick Whartley’s Crab Emporium (Emporium), will be the focus of the study. This study will use a mix of deductive and inductive coding to categorize posts. Data will be collected from Tumblr between January 2023 and December 2023. Then, the researcher will conduct a multimodal analysis of Tumblr posts to highlight their meaning and gain a deeper understanding of how marketing works on the platform.

Research Poster

A detailed infographic titled 'Using Crabs to Sell to Piranhas: A Deep Dive into Tumblr's Social Media Strategy' by Jordan Kurpita, featuring a blue background and orange accents. It covers the analysis of 'Brick Whartley's Crab Emporium,' a Tumblr storefront blog active from January to November 2023. The methodology involved analyzing 238 posts for date, engagement, and content modes (text, image, polls). Results indicate 77.31% of posts contain at least one image, and products are depicted in images about 243 times. An engagement bar chart shows monthly likes, reblogs, and replies, peaking at approximately 95,000 in March and 78,000 in May, with lows around 5,000 in January and November. Conclusions emphasize the benefits of user feedback, the importance of images for user attention, and the use of a sales button.

Lightning Talk

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