While you may be ticking along nicely by marketing your business through the mainstays of social media – have you put serious consideration into diversifying?
We should all be leveraging Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn – but what are you missing out on?
While these social media marketing platforms may not be entirely ‘new’, they are certainly underutilised and less understood than the familiar channels we know and love.
Better yet.. they’re growing.
Pinterest is an underutilised visual social media platform worth your consideration.
Pinterest is predicated on curating ‘boards’ of interesting visual content that inspire users. People visit Pinterest to get inspiration and share boards with others. Lucky for you, this often involves sharing products – your products.
For example, IKEA have embraced Pinterest as a way to show people interesting spaces and ideas that are comprised of their goods. They do this instead of relying solely on catalogues. IKEA (or you) can then lead a visitor to a purchase page to increase their sales.
Why should I use it?
- Has business specific pages
- Allows advertising
- Allows you to display your products in real life settings
- Boards are shared by like minded people, leading to a following
- Inbuilt metrics and reporting
TikTok
TikTok, as you may be aware, is a social media channel dedicated to short videos. Often ‘on trend’ and creative, these videos can rack up impressive view counts and have a wide youth-oriented audience.
If you have a creative side, or wish to tap into the 16-35 age group, many business owners are turning to TikTok in lieu of traditional advertising. As they say themselves:
“Don’t make ads. Make TikTok videos.”
Why should I use it?
- Can be used organically, or paid
- Create ad campaigns with goals, budgets, target audiences and metrics
- Taps into a creative youth audience to build an alluring brand
- Piggyback on ‘trending’ TikToks which are widely shared
Twitch
Made popular in large part by gamers, Twitch is a widely embraced and highly popular video streaming platform. While many will live stream their game of Fortnite or Call of Duty, it’s an excellent platform for live streamers of every ilk. It’s also a great place to advertise.
Depending on your business, Twitch is fantastic channel to bring people into what you do. If you’re a fitness instructor, builder, tutor, creative, or service provider, you can use Twitch (as well as Facebook live etc.) to organically create a window into your world.
Why should I use it?
- Livestreaming is an organic and trustworthy method of displaying your vocation or skills
- High interaction rates
- Very personal and engaging
- Perfect for service providers showing off talent and capability
Snapchat
Another youth oriented and highly popular choice is Snapchat. While many overlook it, there were over 218 million active daily users as of January 2021.
Snapchat is seen as less polished and more cheeky than say Instagram and thus gives a level of authenticity other platforms lack.
As a forebearer of Instagram ‘stories’, Snapchat allows you to send short videos or imagery that disappear quickly and do not create a lasting page. While you may or may not not do a lot of snapping for marketing reasons, it’s a great way to advertise, as many brands are found through the ‘discovery’ function.
Why should I use it?
- Tap into the youth audience
- Gain authenticity
- Get creative and less polished with content
- Excellent to advertise through, despite your posting behaviour
Yes, many have already embraced old twitter, but there’s a surprising amount of businesses and sole traders who have not yet made the leap.
Twitter makes it easy to update your customers and potential customers as to what’s going on in your business. With the little effort required and short form text content, it’s perfect to blast out small updates without being as involved as other forms of social media.
Say you have a sale, new product, new service, special announcement or something similar, make twitter your go-to!
Why should I use it?
- Snappy and simple messaging
- Best for short updates or sales promotions
- More personal and direct than other forms of social media
Manage your social better with a social media manager
Now that you likely have a large range of social channels to post to, many of these can be managed within one control panel to alleviate the hassle of multiple logins and posting.
By using a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite, you can send one marketing message to multiple social platforms at once, saving inordinate amounts of time.
Leave a Reply