When marketers consider engaging social media on behalf of a brand, they naturally tend to focus much of their attention on the most popular sites like Facebook and Twitter. While this strategy is sensible, given limited resources and time, there is the risk of missing out on opportunities offered by niche sites.
In a recent post, Brian Solis points out that there is life outside of Facebook and Twitter:
“If your only focus is Facebook, blogs, and Twitter, the grapevine to which you’re connected is only telling you part of the story,” writes Solis. “Indeed there’s life outside of Facebook and Twitter and the conversation is only reverberating at a deafening roar.”
As marketers, it’s our job to look for new opportunities and there are countless sites like Ning, Plurk, Tumblr and many more that are worthy of our consideration. While sites with large user bases tend to be most attractive, it might actually be more beneficial to target a smaller, lesser-known site if the community it supports happens to be more aligned with the focus of the brand in question.
Avoiding Social Media Burnout
It’s wise to diversify and consider new sites, but it’s also a good idea to be thoughtful and targeted in our approach or else we risk spreading ourselves too thin. Taking on more sites than one can feasibly maintain typically results in dreaded social media burnout.
Symptoms include lousy or stale content, unanswered questions from readers and worst of all, sites that have been abandoned altogether. This looks to the outside world like a boarded-up building with weeds growing through the parking lot pavement. If you don’t have the resources to maintain every site you launch, it’s best not to bother in the first place.
The key is to determine which sites one’s core audience is using and then launch accounts on these sites gradually as resources and time permit. In most cases, it will be important to have a mixture of sites — some that are used by the general public and others that support niche communities.
What sites have you considered when launching a social media presence for your brand?
Photo Credit: Pascal.Charest
