Social media is constantly developing and changing with new platforms and ways to use them arising every day. Recently we’ve identified four social media platforms that are less commonly used. Each of these platforms has a great potential for marketing with unique features that the current social media platforms just can’t quite offer. From the heavy visual content of Snapchat and Periscope to the powerful draw on the Chinese market that Weibo and WeChat have these four lesser-utilized social networks have a lot to offer to marketers.
Snapchat
The first and probably most well known of the four is Snapchat. Snapchat has been around for nearing four years, providing users with an easier way to share pictures and short videos than ever. With the added security and personalization of a timed message (no more than 10 seconds) and the speed with which the pictures and messages can be shared, Snapchat has gained popularity at an astonishing rate.
Snapchat’s true marketing potential wasn’t fully realized until recently when their snap story feature was added. The snap story allowed users and businesses to share stories for a 24-hour period of time to all of their followers at once with unlimited views. The smarter businesses took to the snap story right away by having their followers send them pictures which they would post back to their snap story for everyone to see, thus curating content from their followers. This tool is probably the most established of the four and offers you a great method for sharing visual content of a large variety of things.
Periscope
The newer alternative to sharing visual content is the app Periscope, which was founded by the creators of Twitter. Periscope offers a different kind of visual connection by giving you the ability to live stream events to your followers. This app, which was just released last March, has yet to be fully embraced by businesses but offers one of the most unique marketing opportunities yet.
The ability to live stream anything on short notice gives marketers and businesses a very powerful opportunity. Broadcast your chef cooking up a special meal, your crew preparing for a large concert, or a virtual tour of your hotel for your customers to see. The power of Periscope is only amplified by the suite of social features that accompanies it. Users viewing your stream are given the ability to interact with you through live chat and by sending hearts to the person streaming. Finally, customers can easily do a virtual tour and ask questions along the way.
Outside of the visual side of social media two other apps have been huge for breaking into one of the largest markets. Weibo and WeChat are two of the largest social media platforms in China and offer a plethora of tools to help you reach your audience.
Weibo
Weibo is essentially the Twitter of China with some of Facebook’s media features added in. Weibo gives users the Twitter sized 140-character limit however it also gives them more freedom to share other media like videos, music, pictures, and emoticons. Weibo has also implemented features to encourage users to spend more time on the app by giving them badges or medals for activity. Because Twitter and Facebook are banned in China Weibo has an extremely large percentage of the market share for social media, giving it a valuable reach for your business.
WeChat
An even larger percentage of the market share in China is held by WeChat, which offers one of the most diverse arrays of tools to marketers. The beauty of this platform is mainly focused around not only its diversity in tools but also its diversity in countries since it’s not only a Chinese social network but it also includes multiple other countries.
As one of the largest competitors to Facebook, WeChat can offer a lot to your business. The features provided by WeChat can give you a deeper connection to your users by giving you the tools to interact with them on a different level. Some of the tools give special status or access to users like virtual VIP passes while others can simply be a personalized distribution of coupons but the most notable feature is that diversity within the app itself, it does a lot and it’s still expanding.
In summary these four apps may not be something your business implements today but at the least they should be something your business is watching for the future.