Turn Your Niche Into Your Breakthrough
When you think of running social media accounts for your business, what comes to mind? Do you think of making sure that your Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook profiles are up to date?
If this comes to mind, then you are on the right track. Those three social media platforms are very popular and can be very beneficial to your business. However, if you hyper-focus on these popular sites, you can be missing out on more targeted social media apps that can draw in a more select crowd to your business — these are called niche platforms.
So, what is a niche platform? According to ThreeGirlsMedia.com, “A niche social network is a social media platform that focuses on a specific interest group or demographic.” These specific focuses range anywhere from cooking to dog walking to almost anything that you can imagine. The power of niche platforms is that they are not oversaturated with content that you can’t properly get a message across to your target market. In most cases, those who use niche networks will consume your content and increase engagement because it is something that actually interests them.
Do you think there isn’t a niche social media site for you? Check out this list of 60+ Niche Networks that may fit what you’re trying to do.
A niche platform can be of great benefit to your business, but it is essential to understand that a little research must go into the process to get the payback.
Your audience should be the first thing you assess when you consider creating a niche platform. The more you understand your target audience, the easier you can find a platform where your audience is active. It would be best if you did your research before getting involved with a specific platform to ensure that you can produce quality content on the site, and that it is a site that will be beneficial to your business.
Research is essential because there are some niche platforms that you shouldn’t consider when setting up a profile for your business. For example, when I was in the first couple of years of my undergrad, there was a social media platform named YikYak. It seemed like a community of college students that used this app to communicate with each other anonymously from the outside looking in. If your target market is college students, this may have seemed like the perfect platform to promote your product. However, once you were on the site, you saw that this platform was mainly just college students talking badly about professors, people in their class or mentioning any parties taking place that night. This app quickly took a turn as it faced many lawsuits and became a hub for bomb threats, cyber harassment, and threats of physical and sexual violence. If you did a bit of research, you could see that this is an app that you would not want your business to be associated with.
Do not let this example deter you from finding the right niche social media platform for you. These platforms have power. An example of this is the recent Wall Street Bets extravaganza that skyrocketed stocks for both Game Stop and AMC and shocked everyone on Wall Street (upsetting many very wealthy people). All of the planning for this took place on a forum named Reddit. I won’t go into too much detail because I am sure you have heard of this, but here is a CNN Business article just in case you want to read more.
Social media is such a vital asset to have in your business. Doing social media is easy; doing social media well is where it gets hard. If you have something that you want to show to the world, by all means, do it. You don’t have to stick to the status quo of only using the most popular social media sites. Find the people who love what you are doing, and produce great content for them. Every day, users are bombarded with ads, but you can create word-of-mouth advertising and conversion by focusing your efforts which may lead to your next great breakthrough.
There are people out there that are searching for your content; you just have to find them.
