Business
5 Social Platforms Marketers Wish They Knew About Sooner
Social media marketing isn’t what it was like back in 2016. Back when Facebook ads just rolled out, the market was fairly empty, and the grass was green. Nowadays, it’s pretty yellow and malnourished. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, but you’ll have to spend more money, and put in a lot more effort to make it work like it did when it was first introduced.
Today, digital marketing and especially social media marketing has grown in popularity and it’s much more complex than ever before. Nowadays there are so many platforms to choose from. There’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Linkedin, Youtube, I’m barely scratching the surface here. Each one is completely unique than the others and requires dedicated time and attention to generate results.
It may seem overwhelming, especially if you’ve never done social media or digital marketing before. But don’t worry, today I’ll go over 5 social platforms that marketers have ignored for so long, and has now become a gold mine for you to explore. You don’t need to compete on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any of the already popular and saturated social networks. Here are five social platforms marketers wish they knew about sooner.
Focus On Your Own SEO
Before you storm our headquarter with pitchforks, hear me out. You’re obviously wondering why SEO is on the list, clearly, your website isn’t a social network. Well…why not? Every social network you invest in has an inherent risk that you may lose everything someday. They’ll change their algorithms, get rid of features that you’ve invested lots of money in, etc. Imagine if Facebook got rid of Business pages, and you spent all that money to get a following. Sucks wouldn’t it?
SEO on your own website is yours. And yours indefinitely. Google’s algorithm will change, but if you look at its trends, it doesn’t change that drastically. And when they do, it’s just to make their search results more accurate and reward those who put in the hard work to create unique and shareable content. As long as you’re producing quality content to drive traffic, you’ll be fine.
This year, invest on your own website. It’ll be one of your best investments later.
Posting on Linkedin
Linkedin has gone through an evolution of just being the forgotten child in the social media family, to be the successful one. Linkedin advertising is still a hit or miss, however, you’ll need a much larger budget to get the same reach as compared to Facebook ads. One thing you’ll want to test out this year is simply posting on Linkedin. Just posting more relevant, informative, and engaging content. You can link it to your blog or other social platforms.
What we’ve found out is that Linkedin is a great social network to get engagements even if you’re famous. And it’s fairly easy to gain followers on Linkedin as compared to other platforms. So your posts could reach a wider net of audiences.
Reddit doesn’t come to mind when you think of social media marketing, does it? You’re not alone. Most consider Reddit to be a community rather than a social network, and either assumption is correct. Regardless, there’s a massive audience on Reddit that very few marketers know how to tap into.
And that’s mainly because of the Reddit community’s low tolerance towards marketers and spammers. This year, I recommend giving Reddit a try. Either by marketing on the platform or being a part of the community. One fantastic thing about Reddit is the raw feedback you’ll get from the hyper-engaged community.
If you really want to know what your target audience (assuming you find them on Reddit) is thinking, their behaviors, their problems, and things they typically ask, then there’s no better place to get your answers than Reddit. Just be careful, Reddit hates spammers and marketers with a passion.
Quora
By this point, you’re probably disappointed that you’re not seeing Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram on the list. Those platforms are already saturated and not as easy to just jump into and make it work for your business. Quora, on the other hand, is a community built on Q and A. It’s a niche little platform that lets you present your opinions or answers to a question that someone is asking. If your question gets a lot of upvotes and engagements, then it will boost to the top and remain there.
Quora is a gold mine that hasn’t been explored and ruined by marketers yet. It’s a great platform to drive traffic to your websites and simultaneously give real value to your audience directly by providing in-depth and well thought out answers.
Youtube…comments
You heard that right. Youtube comments. Thanks to Youtube’s algorithm the most popular comments (ones with the most thumbs up) will elevator it’s way to the top of the video and remains there. And that comment…will be seen by potentially millions of people watching the video.
If you want to do Youtube marketing, you can certainly invest in all the video equipment, write out your scripts, plan your shoot, edit your videos, and coordinate your Youtube SEO . You can certainly do that and it’ll only cost a small fortune of your time and money.
Or…you can leverage other people’s videos. Subscribe and follow them. Wait for when they post a new video and try to be one of the first few comments to make the list. Make sure your comment is funny, engaging, witty, or all of the above. And as their video gains popularity, so will your comment.
Conclusion
2020 is going to be a wild year in terms of digital marketing. There will be a lot of changes on just about every platform and new social media platforms will undoubtedly be introduced. You can’t invest in everything new that comes out. It’s often the ones that people overlooked that you can get the most out of. Hopefully, this article doesn’t get too popular and dilute the five strategies above.