4 Underutilised Social Media Platforms
It’s not an unknown fact that Facebook’s user base is aging and shrinking overall. Gen Z usually have a profile, but they are not using the giant social media platform daily. They are found on places like Instagram or Snapchat, and more recently TikTok. Not all businesses are trying to appeal to the demographic under 25, but as this generation ages, they will have more spending power and be on these other platforms beyond Twitter and Facebook. Beyond only using these platforms for selling your product or service, you can leverage them to showcase your employer branding and attract talented candidates for your team.
In order to have a strategy ready to go in the next few years, you should get acquainted with these social media platforms that are hot with the younger generations. Here are our top 4 sites that your marketing team might be underutilising:
1. Snapchat
With its self-deleting and encrypted messages, Snapchat has been growing in popularity among Gen Z and Millennials since its founding in 2011. It currently boasts over 200 Million daily active users. With the fun face filters, personalised Bitmojis, and creative flair that can be added to individual stories, it’s no wonder Snap Inc. is just growing in popularity.
Although Snapchat can take a little time to get used to using, if you have been previously using other PPC social media ad platforms, this shouldn’t be much different. The options that Snapchat offers advertisers are slightly different from their competitors. They offer four options for sponsored content: short form video, long form video, lenses, and filters. The video formats allow for easy conversions. They let the user simply swipe up to go to your site, or even instantly download an app without ever leaving Snapchat. The filters and lenses allow for maximal user interaction. They can take pictures promoting your campaign or event and then share it to their social circles.
Way fewer companies are advertising on Snapchat than its counterpart and main competitor Instagram. This means that your ads have less competition and more reach, while still being on a platform with a very high number of active daily users.
2. TikTok
Tiktok is even an even newer platform, but has reached huge levels of popularity among the teenage demographic. Currently it is surpassing both Twitter and Snapchat in terms of daily active users. TikTok allows users to upload short videos and sync them to popular song clips. With Vine having shut down suddenly in 2017, there was a gap in the market for short, user-generated videos. Whether you think the videos are a bit silly, you cannot argue with its popularity and down right addictivness. People are using the platform en masse and advertisers can showcase their brands on this new medium.
TikTok only recently launched their ads platform on the app, so the ads that appear there are sparse. With this exclusivity comes a more premium price than on other social media platforms. With a minimum daily budget of $500 per campaign and $10 CPM, TikTok ads might not be suitable for every company’s advertising budget. The platform allows several different forms of ads to offer: brand takeover, in-feed ads, or hashtag challenges.
Although still in beta, the ads platform allows advertisers to create video ads. It includes detailed analytics (unlike Snapchat) and is fairly straightforward to use.
3. Reddit
Reddit is known as the front page of the internet. Although it’s not a new platform (it’s been around since 2005) and is the top 20 most visited websites globally, it is often overlooked by marketing strategists. Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn allow advertisers to segment their audiences based on their own big data pools of users’ interests. Reddit, however, is already divided up into subreddits where users self-sort themselves on their own interests, beyond the very general interest information and geographic targeting also available.
If you are a clothing company, your ad can show up in the feed of r/fashion. If you’ve just launched a new video game, you can place your ads in r/gaming. This is also a great way to show non-intrusive ads. Many Facebook and Instagram users complain about the “creepiness” of the ads they see in their feeds. With a platform like Reddit, this is easily avoided as personal data is not relied on as heavily on their ad platform.
4. Tumblr
Tumblr is much like the Internet 1.0 days of forums. While much like Reddit in this regard, Tumblr tends to attract a more niche groups of mostly Millennial internet users. Although not as big of a user base as the other social media platforms we’ve mentioned, Tumblr still remains hugely popular. If you are looking to target an audience of more socially conscious and artistic users, this may be a great platform for your brand.
Its personal blog pages make it a great place to showcase your brand. It allows direct communication with your brand’s fans and is therefore a good venue for organic PR as well. Make sure to get acquainted with the language of Tumblr to really resonate with your audience and create shareable content. Make sure you’re using various mediums like videos, quotes, memes, and, of course, GIFs. Starting hashtag and GIF challenges can be a great way to incorporate user-generated content into your campaign. The sponsored ads can be targeted as with other platforms based on demographics, interests, and location.
As with all advertising mediums, it is important to go where your audience is. If you target demographic is over 35, then these platform are likely not the best fit for now. Do keep in mind, however, that younger people are quick to get on new apps, while older users generally trail behind by a few years. Therefore you might be wise in jumping ahead of the curve and learning to optimise your ads on these platform now. This way you will be prepared for the demographic shift in the coming years.
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