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Five Under-The-Radar Social Media Networks For Small Businesses

Didit Editorial

May 10, 2013: Most of the attention on social is focusing on the top three “big gorillas” in the social world – Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. But marketers should not ignore alternative social media networks, especially if they deal in international marketing. Social media networks tend to be segmented by language barrier, it’s hard for SMB marketers to break through on the really big networks such as Facebook with organic methods, and paid media can be prohibitively expensive.

Presented below are a few social media network alternatives for an SMB marketer who wants to reach small, highly targeted audiences:

Flickr – Flickr is a photo sharing utility that was bought by Yahoo in 2005. While it’s most often used as an image hosting service, Flickr has various special interest groups related to products and media genres. There is also Statsr, a Flickr analytics tool. As other marketers crowd venues such as Instagram and Pinterest, Flickr represents a channel that isn’t on everyone’s lips so it represents a “stealth attack” channel to get to the audience you want to communicate with. For those with a budget for paid campaigns, Flickr sells its own internal banner and search ads.

Livejournal – While on the decline from its 2005 high, Livejournal is known for its many and varied genre media communities. If you’re marketing towards a specific genre segment (say, H.P. Lovecraft fans or crochet maniacs), Livejournal is a great place to place content. But be careful! Many of the folks who are still on LJ are there specifically to avoid traditional advertising.

Deviantart – This portfolio site is used by professional artists to display and promote their work. Much like Flickr, customers for narrowly targeted segments can be reached, especially for genre properties and various photography subfields. Deviantart doesn’t sell advertising; its main utility is as a passive marketing channel that can be used to spread the word concerning various media projects. Services like Bitly can be used to track clicks that take users off the site to yours.

MySpace – (Or, “I’m not dead yet.”) Having been knocked off of its pedestal by Facebook a long time ago, MySpace is still home to many music artists and indie film makers who want to promote their products. MySpace also offers its “My Ads” self-serve ad platform. Today, MySpace is more niche-like than its larger rival Facebook, providing a middle ground between the more mainstream platforms in terms of user base (30 million as of June 2011) and the smaller networks. MySpace also provides full analytics and behavioral targeting for its ads.

Quora – The most under-rated social media network on this list, Quora does not bill itself as a social network, but as a user-created questions and answer site. Quora is renowned for its discussion-based communities and the wide reach of its members, and any plan that seeks to contact and make use of influencers should include Quora on its list of go to sites. Quora is not a place for paid media but instead is the home for earned media – it can be used alongside channels such as Twitter to place strongly written content and disseminate it amongst influencers who in turn will spread your content amongst their followers.

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