Let’s face it, the traditional social media platforms everyone is using for marketing are becoming overcrowded. Advertising costs are going up, while reach and conversion rates are going down. What is it to do, what plan B do companies have before Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram get into a complete deadlock?
No, we do not have insider tricks to share with you and we do not encourage unfair competition, but we have a smart suggestion for marketers: take a closer look at emerging social media platforms and join the game before everyone else. Emerging social media platforms? Is there such a thing? Yes, there is.
Just like businesses, individual users are getting tired of the same old social media platforms. There are few innovations made to the basic concept. There are privacy concerns. And there is too much irrelevant advertising taking up space on people’s newsfeeds. Therefore, wherever there is a demand – for new public forums – there is also a group of developers ready to satisfy it.
Without any other unnecessary explanations, we took a look at new, emerging social media platforms and we recommend the following for our readers to focus their upcoming digital marketing efforts.
- Banjo
Banjo is not actually a standalone social media platform, but a very useful geolocating mobile app which aggregates social and cultural events from all the other social media platforms. The app organises these events by location, time and relevance, sharing content uploaded or live streamed by participants.
Why does it matter for marketing? Location becomes the Holy Grail of digital marketing campaigns. You want to reach the people living in your area of interest and you want to know what they enjoy doing and what interests and needs motivate them. With Banjo, you have both.
- Flipagram
Flipagram promises to be a better alternative to Instagram, in the sense that it offers users the possibility to add music to their short film or timelapse photos. The music is fully licensed – meaning that there will be no copyright issues to deal with. In truth, Flipagram will probably start attracting many Instagram users, especially those who found their accounts blocked and deleted for alleged copyright infringement without fair warning.
Why should your business join Flipagram? This new social media platform allows you to share content on Instagram and various other social media networks. Thus, you can integrate it nicely into your current social media strategy. Also, being fairly new ground for marketers, it will be easier for you to build a loyal community of followers, before other companies join this social media platform.
- Mastodon
If Flipagram wants to take users away from Instagram, Mastodon tries to do the same with Twitter. This emerging texting social media platform is more generous with its users – it offers 500 characters per post, compared to Twitter’s mere 140. Apart from text, users are able to share short videos and GIFV sets. The timeline is chronological, but given the fact that the community is still in the initial building phase, Mastodon messages will not scroll down as fast as tweets.
What advantages do you get from this new platform? It is a great place for building your reputation as an expert. Your messages will be visible to users for a longer time than Twitter or Facebook posts and you have sufficient creative freedom to describe the links you share and your stand alone posts in a manner that attracts readers.
- Line
What do you get if you were to mix Twitter with Groupon and with Snapchat? The answer is Line, a brand new mobile-based social media platform which focuses on text messages, instant live video, coupon sharing and other special offers from major brands and celebrities.
Line is a sort of hotline for people who want to access the offer of the moment and share it quickly with their friend. If your business model is built around short-term offers, then Line is a social media platform you should join.
- Wanelo
If you were to take a mall from its brick and mortar location and move it to the digital world you would probably come up with Wanelo. Only, Wanelo is a thousand times larger than any mall.
Despite its size, this shopping platform which has a visual similarity to Pinterest is the right place to be. You do not have to win people’s goodwill to take a look at your offers, because this is exactly why they joined Wanelo – to discover useful and beautiful products and take advantage of offers.