Introduction
The most popular social media platforms receive a lot of attention from marketers and users. However, you need to know that they are not the only social platforms with potential. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are the dominant social media platforms that are being used today; they dominate the different discussions held online.
There are sites that are less spoken about such as Pinterest, Quora, Tumblr, and Reddit. These sites offer so many opportunities, especially for marketers. Of course, these platforms are not a match for the big sites, but they are still very important. What you notice about the sites is the fact that they have very loyal user bases that are ready to give great content the attention that it truly deserves.
The opportunities
The smaller platforms also make it so easy for the brands to actually leverage one of the most effective forms of marketing, which is use of video. The online world is so stuffed with the written content and this is what is making video rise in popularity today. Today, companies that are concentrating on producing the best videos are taking the biggest share of the online market. There are still those who ignore how powerful visual media is and they are losing greatly.
You can achieve a great ROI if you pay attention and target the social media sites that seem to be unpopular today.
Making the most of the opportunities
We will all agree that information is power and when you have the right information, then you have everything that you need to make changes that could possibly change the life of your brand. There are some tips that can help you pick the best sites for your campaign and how you can take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself to you.
If something exists, then it is probably on Reddit. Reddit seems to be one of the best things on the internet. It has thousands of communities that are referred to as subreddits and they cover pretty much everything. The topics included in the subreddits can be very broad like world politics and there could be some on crimes within your home area. Every niche is covered on Reddit.
In most cases, the users tend to be very sensitive to any kind of advertising and so it is not wise to post videos that are too promotional. You may not get the reaction that you anticipated. It is wise to pay attention to what the subreddit community prefers, choose the target communities, and then start participating in the conversations as organically as possible. You can post videos that are for entertainment or education even when they do not need to have a promotional messaging.
Because people are constantly scrolling, the site is a great place for gifs. As such, you can take one part of your video, which is most engaging, and then distill it to a short gif then post. When you are engaging more than one community, you need to be very careful not to come across as spammy. You should take advantage of the cross-posting feature to make things clear.
Quora
Quora is a question and answer kind of site. Here, a person posts a question and allows people to answer. The users can then vote for the question making it visible to more people.
This platform is not as resilient on the visual content as some of the other sites, but it is still a great place where brands can use videos to influence and engage users. The secret is to remain active on the forums and answer some questions using educational videos where relevant. You can type a response, but sometimes people are more compelled to view a short video, as it feels more authoritative.
Video answers can boost SEO. It is wise to sign up for notifications on some of the questions and topics that are closer to your brand.
Tumblr
This one is so much like Twitter because much of the engagement usually depends on what is reblogged, be it comments or content. When someone re-blogs a video you posted, his or her followers get to see the video as well. The same is true for posts. The users usually form communities around specific topics.
Before you dive in, you need to take time to get familiar with the culture that surrounds your topic or brand. This is very important on Tumblr. When you rely on an old meme or misuse a joke, then your brand ends up looking bad.
Tumblr is great for gifs as well but it is also great for the still images. Still images are far much easier to re-blog. In order to increase engagement, you can have full video slices, pictures, and GIFs. User generated content should also be included so that you encourage users to re-blog their favorite content.
On Pinterest, the users usually have to scroll through many pages of videos and images before they can find the favorite items. It is common for the users to maintain different personal boards that can be separated according to the topics.
You should maximize video use on the platform by being very specific about why the users should pin it. Find out the questions that you can answer and the categories where the content fits. To be outstanding, the visuals have to be impeccable.
The “how to” videos tend to perform better than other content. The Pinterest users are usually very serious about the quality. This means that you should invest in your videos, especially at the beginning to get the users attention and maintain it.
Conclusion
As much as Facebook and the other big players of social media are great with marketing, they are not the only ones that can get you ahead in your marketing game. It is a great idea to be as familiar as possible with the other social sites regardless of how lesser they look. Using these sites can help you take advantage of the opportunities presented to us by video marketing.
Category: social media marketing
Keywords: social media platforms, social communities, video
Tags: social media marketing, video marketing, digital marketing