CMO’s Guide to Social Media Sites
The social-media landscape has grown since last year with an additional 5 more communities/platforms added and a quite a few of them are already booming. So, which social media tools and channels will work best for your business?
This years largest growing community is Pintrest, which reached 10 million monthly visitors in less time than Facebook or Twitter did. It’s demographics include mostly women and it is quite popular in the Midwest. The concept behind Pintrest is that members can post images of whatever is of interest to them. From there, followers can then ‘like’, or ‘repin’ those images, which is then pushed out to their followers. Pintrest is a bit different as it offers a way to reach a group that is not usually considered a part of the ‘digerati’ and can be most useful for brand exposure and driving traffic to your site if your material gets ‘pinned’ by others.
This year, Google launched Google+, which offers some unique ways to interact, including Circles and Hangouts (group video chats) which make customer communication a breeze. Unlike Facebook ‘Likes’, positive ratings on Google+ can influence your brand’s search ranking. This channel has become a “must have” for social marketers, as it has more than 90 million users (though, there are questions about how active they are).
Three other communities that have recently been added to the social media pool are SlideShare, Quora and Instagram.
SlideShare is similar to YouTube for slide shows. It is a great way to promote your brand / products and communicate with customers, however it is pretty much a one way conversation at this stage.
Quora was founded by two former Facebooker’s and is based on questions for community members to answer. It’s an ideal place to share your expertise as it is a perfect addition to your content marketing efforts.
Instagram is an iPhone app that lets you take photo’s of your products or services, apply interesting effects and share them, which can also be pushed out to your Facebook page and Twitter.
Is it time for you to re-evaluate which social media tools could work for you? Gone are the days where having a Facebook page is the only option. There is a continuing amount of other channels that have different capabilities and purpose, and used together can connect with a massive amount of people. For an analysis of which social medial tools are the latest and greatest, CMO have, for the third consecutive year, turned to 97th Floor, an SEO and Social Media Firm for their perspective of the different social media channels and ones that could definitely be worth your time.
You can view 97th Floors take on 10 Social Network Choices on 2012 CMO’s Guide To The Social Landscape.
Yours in Social Media
Angie Rapisarda
