You’ve heard millennials don’t care about Facebook anymore, but it’s still the most popular social networking site for Americans, even for users age 18-24. While Snapchat has risen to number three amongst millennials, there are still other networks to keep an eye on. Innovative business owners can use many of these platforms as marketing tools, while others are just for personal use.
We will be covering many of these networks over our next few blogs. Stay with us and find out what under appreciated social network is ready for your business.
Arguably the fastest rising site in popularity, snapchat allows the user to share photos or videos with friends or other users.
What makes it different: There is a time limit on the photos or videos. Once they have been seen, they are gone forever. In a world where the next big thing is only a tweet away, embrace the impermanence.
Business Savvy: Early business adopters used Snapchat to send out coupons (that had to be opened at the register before they disappeared) or debut new fashion lines. Keep in mind, the tone of your Snapchat marketing should be casual – think the opposite of LinkedIN.
Medium is a new kind of blogging platform. Take it at its name – it isn’t for long blog posts. Medium gives you a great cover photo spot (use it wisely) and space for a ‘medium’ length blog post. Posts are associated with your twitter handle, as are comments.
What makes it different: Users can comment on the post and create a sort of footnote that you can then click and expand to see what others had to say and how the original author responded to the comment. Comments are private until you publish them, but can lead to great discussions on a subject.
Business Savvy: Absolutely! Not only does Medium provide simple and clear statistics and graphs for you, it also makes it very easy for readers to share content on Facebook and Twitter. Because every user is associated with their twitter handle, you can also find your readers on other sites.
We Heart It at first seems like another Pinterest knockoff – but it has actually been around longer. It is an image heavy site where users can curate collections of everything they, well, heart! Users can search existing content or add their own.
What makes it different: At first glance, it’s practically the same as Pinterest. However, the little differences make themselves clear the more you use it. A cleaner more minimal layout makes the images pop, without descriptions (or wordy space for advertising) in the search results. Taste makers are also important – when you hit the information button, the first person to ‘heart’ the image is named. It is also far more popular with the coveted 18-24 demographic who see Pinterest as a place for moms.
Business Savvy: Not only can business create their own profiles and collections, like Old Navy having spots for their season collections, We Heart It now uses native advertising with sponsored posts. We can see this being a great space for any business that makes, curates or sells beautiful things. We heart it definitely skews towards image heavy marketing.
Think one of these platforms might be right for you business, but are unsure how to get it started? Contact Gibbons Digital Consultants today for an in-depth analysis of the future of your business.
