A new year is upon us, and this can be a really good time to look at your current strategies for social media marketing and see where you can tweak things to reach a bigger audience and have your messages read by more of the right people. One of the biggest trends in social media marketing of late has been a movement toward a more diverse range of social media platforms, and this is set to be a continuing theme in 2016. If you are currently only present on Facebook and Twitter, this could be a very good moment to look at where else your target demographics can be found online, and to start setting up a presence on these platforms.
Why Facebook and Twitter Are No Longer So Easy to Market on For Free
Social media marketing is as important as ever, but like everything else online, it has changed subtly in the past few years. There used to be very strong reasons to put a lot of your marketing efforts into your Facebook page, for example, however thanks to changes in the way Facebook filters users’ newsfeeds, deciding what to show them based on algorithms rather than displaying every possible post from the people and businesses they connect with, marketing via a Facebook page is less effective than it once was – many of your Facebook followers don’t see your posts anymore.
Twitter has not changed what it shows its users, but over time as people have collected many more accounts they follow, your posts are at far greater risk of being lost in a sea of tweets.
Paid ads on Facebook and promoted tweets can still be extremely effective, however because the big draw of Facebook and Twitter marketing for many small businesses was the fact it could be done for free, this changes things.
The Rise of Other Social Networks
Facebook is, and always will be (probably) the social network that does everything. People share on it, message each other on it, and do things like play games and watch video content on it. Twitter is the go-to place for microblogging, and where a lot of people get and broadcast the latest news in just about every conceivable niche. However, there are lots of other social networking platforms that are more focused on one piece of functionality, one type of media, or one niche market.
YouTube is for video, Instagram is for images. Pinterest is for saving things found around the web to share to inspire others with similar tastes and interests. LinkedIn is for professional things, Twitch is for video game fans, and so on. Because these networks, and the many other smaller or niche networks are popular, but not overused as marketing outlets (yet), they can make a great place to have a business presence.
What You Should Do?
Find out more about the other social networks where people relevant to your products or services spend time. Do your research, and see where you may be able to share content, engage with people, and add value. Then, begin a plan for harnessing the power of those platforms, and a strategy for social media content curation that will allow you to easily manage the ones you choose as well as your Facebook and Twitter profiles.
By looking beyond the big two, you can soon find plenty of untapped potential for reaching the people who matter.
