Businesses now more than ever are using different platforms to promote their products and services. But what's the appeal of using some of the more niche social platforms?
TikTok - Pros Tiktok is a video-sharing social media platform, and is the ‘Fastest Growing Social Media Platform of the Decade with ‘500 million active users globally’. Looking to grow your business presence globally? Tiktok is available in 155 countries, allowing your brand to grow across all corners of the globe. Additionally, 90% of TikTok users use the app multiple times a day, giving your business the opportunity to grow brand familiarity through your posted content. Tiktok allows you to create marketing that doesn’t look like marketing. Finding less invasive techniques of marketing - such as a haul of products from your company page, or gifting influencers to promote these for both your business and channel. Using celebrities and influencers' mostly parasocial relationships with their audience can help establish your brand and bring you the traction that you desire. Additionally TikTok is an easy way to build a sense of community - creating a strong relationship with your users by incorporating their comments / stitches / duets of your product or service can create long - term, loyal customers.
TikTok - Cons As with any social media platform TikTok draws in a range of audiences with a range of interests. Staying on top of trends and understanding colloquialisms and jargon from your audience may feel daunting. Additionally, there may be internet trolls who could negatively interact with your content through comments, stitches, or duets. Ensuring your employ someone who stays on top of trends and jargon is imperative and reduces this risk. Furthermore, TikTok really needs someone to be the face of a profile meaning you will need an in-house influencer to maximise it.
Reddit - Pros Reddit is a social media platform that heavily uses discussion-based content across thousands of communities. As with many social media platforms, you can connect with the content you love through subreddits. Reddit is the place where you can dive into anything and connect with people on any topic. For a successful advertisement, we would recommend picking a category that closely aligns with your business and think of something valuable and insightful that your business specializes in. There have been plenty of examples of this done successfully; Toyota, for example. promoted a video of their sports-car range ‘Supras’ in the Formula 1 subreddit. Within the video, there were two drivers racing Supras, which fitted well within the Formula 1 subreddits stream of posts. Additionally, there is an AMA ‘ASK ME ANYTHING’ thread. This encourages Reddit users to ask your company anything. When using this approach, we recommend answering questions about your brand quickly and in an engaging way! This may involve employing an influencer or perhaps someone within your staff with internet know-how to truly appeal to your audience.
Reddit - Cons As with TikTok, Reddit attracts its fair share of internet trolls. Staying on top of your content and seeing how to interact with your audience without attracting negative audiences is key. As long as you and your brand stay professional - your customer base will continue to engage. Furthermore, Reddit is discussion-based so any attempt to promote yourself is not likely to sit well if it disrupts engaging conversations between communities. Maximising Reddit relies on using individuals to shout about your brand in an appropriate and no sales-focused way.
Tumblr - Pros Tumblr is a social networking platform that heavily focuses on blog-type posts. In general, posts that perform well for brands are image memes, animated GIFs, inspirational quotes, and retro packaging and advertisements. A pro for this platform would be advertising to a younger audience, this creates brand loyalty from young consumers.
Tumblr - Cons Lots of Tumblr users enjoy meme - type content, and so if you are advertising a product that may be deemed more serious or less ‘fun’, you may not receive as much traction as you would on other sites. It is also important to mention that Tumblr is a very niche platform and is likely to require more of your time to make it work. Overall, if you don’t know how to use the platform you may not be able to cater to the audience that uses it. Knowing your brand audience in relation to each platform's audience is essential when deciding where to advertise. However, there is never any harm in experimenting. All of these platforms, although more niche than the major players, have large enough audiences to potentially work from a business perspective if you a willing to invest the time.