Last week, Ari Levine, Brand Strategist for Tumblr, treated DMI to a presentation on how brands are using their platform in new and innovative ways. If you’re not familiar with Tumblr it could be described as a microblogging platform that focuses on creativity.

During his presentation, Ari highlighted a number of features and insights that I found interesting from a social strategy perspective:

1. Engagement: It came as no surprise that Ari compared Tumblr to popular social networks Facebook and Twitter, but the numbers certainly impressed me; second only to Facebook, Tumblr engages the average user for 1 hour and 38 minutes per month. That’s an average of 14.5 minutes and 16.4 page views per visit.

2. Reach: Unlike Facebook’s Edgerank, there’s no secret algorithm that determines who sees what posts — if users are following your brand then every post you share is guaranteed to show up in their newsfeed.

3. Tone: Both Twitter and Facebook have quickly become outlets for customers to publicly express their disenchantment with a company’s product or service, often directly seeking customer service through wall posts and tweets sent to the brand. Tumblr boasts that users on their platform engage on the brand level, stating that their unique system of liking and reblogging rather than commenting keeps people positive and engaged, but not complaining.

4. Customization: Tumblr themes are almost as customizable as a website and can act as a hub for all your social activity — photos, videos, audio, chat, quotes and more.

5. Sponsorship: As is common with large social networks, Tumblr also offers paid options for brands to be highlighted through Spotlight, a highly curated showcase of their most popular blogs, and Radar, which features some of the best Tumblr posts.

Some of the more creative brands on Tumblr include The Hunger Games, Nike, Air Canada, Coca-Cola and J.Crew.

Have you used Tumblr for a brand? What other creative uses of Tumblr have you seen?