- The point in being active on a mix of social channels
is to diversify your investments, kind of like setting
up a mutual fund, where the risk is reduced since you're
buying into multiple stocks.
It's helpful to make informed investments
in niche social networks,
to reach your audience in places where there's less
competition and more opportunities to make an impact.
A niche social network is a platform
where a big audience is active, but there's not likely
as large of a user base compared to Facebook, Twitter,
or another more mainstream social channel.
Tik Tok, Pinterest and Yelp are examples of important
niche social networks businesses should consider being
active on to reach a specific type of customer.
These networks often cater to a particular demographic
as opposed to the mainstream channels
that pretty much reach everybody.
For example, Tik Tok is very popular among teenagers,
Yelp is great for reaching a local or regional audience
and Pinterest is best used to reach people
looking for inspirational visuals.
In addition to a smaller audience, these channels often
have a more specific use case for consumers
and businesses which is why they have smaller audiences.
Since these networks aren't trying to be everything
to everyone, it is to your advantage to get active
on niche social networks as there's less noise
from other advertisers.
In some cases, if you're an early adopter of a new,
growing social network, then you might be able to see
a significant return in terms of the amount of attention
you receive if it takes off.
With that said, here's a quick breakdown of some of the
noteworthy niche social networks to be thinking about.
Pinterest, arguably the largest niche platform,
is a visual search engine to get product
and design recommendations, especially when planning
a wedding or taking on an interior design project.
Another is Tik Tok, it's a place where users share
and consume short videos of a few seconds
that are typically preplanned to tell a story
or align with a popular challenge that's trending.
Next is Quora, a question and answer focused
social network where anyone can share a question publicly
and then experts on the topic chime in to answer
from their perspective.
I'd also recommend being aware of Tumblr and Medium,
which are both a mix between a social network
and a blogging platform for producing and sharing
different types of messaging.
Reddit is another networking take,
note of that it's a news aggregator
where its users share links on various topics,
encouraging up votes and sometimes passionate
discussions from others.
And lastly, two additional niche social networks
worth considering are Yelp and GIPHY.
Yelp is a destination for people to leave reviews
about restaurants and local businesses,
while GIPHY is a database and a search engine
for GIFs and other looping video formats.
It's time to make a strategic investment
in niche social networks, as there's an opportunity
to earn a major payout in attention.