2 Emerging Social Media Platforms You Should be Using RIGHT NOW

Inthe brave new world of Social Media for Small Business there are thebig, well known and highly lauded vehicles for promotion (Facebook,Twitter, Blogging, Yelp, LinkedIn) that almost every business has heardof, if not tried.

And then there are the new entrees into the scene, which get a lot ofbuzz in certain industries but which have not yet reached mainstreamawareness. The obvious barrier to embracing these tactics as an “earlyadopter” is that your target audience may not have jumped on boardeither which will delay the potential benefits of directing your energyinto these strategies.

However there are a multitude of advantages to being among the firstin your area/industry to embrace these new platforms and a potentiallygreater payoff in the long run then directing your efforts to competingin the over saturated Social Media spheres.

These newer tactics are not as widely used, and therefore not ascompetitive, as the older social media platforms. There is plentifulroom for growth on these platforms, potential for untapped markets andabove all else an advantage to having more time to getting a toehold inthe space before others flood the market.

These two tactics are heavily favored to succeed (both by investorsand by predictive trending based on early adoption). By being the firstto embrace them your business has a distinct advantage in capitalizingon the potential business expansion opportunities.

Platform: Social Q&A

Sites: Quora, Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Questions , OnStartups Q&A, Focus, Matchpoint, Facebook Questions, Aardvark

Social Q&A is relatively new to the Social Media Market. Quoralaunched with much fanfare this summer following in the heels of highprofile social search acquisitions by big names like Apple, Google andYahoo. Social search and crowdsourcing information and Q&A is hereto stay. Yahoo Answers, one of the oldest and therefore more pervasiveof the Q&A models, consistently shows up in search queries and nodoubt these other sites will also start to pop up as they grow innotoriety and popularity.

In fact, several hours after answering my first question on Quorawe experienced immediate results in the form of site visits andconversions. Although not everyone can expect immediate turn around,there is no doubt that these communities are by their very nature activeand seeking, and that demonstrating your expertise can give you atoehold in your field and give your business exposure in a highlydirected way.

If you sell custom made bicycles and someone is researching apurchase and comes across a thoughtful (and well ranked answer) how muchmore likely will that potential customer be to seek you out when itcomes time to purchase?

The reason to embrace this tactic right now is simple, to get thereand answer questions before other people do. If you look at older siteslike Yahoo Answers or LinkedIn, some questions have tens (evenhundreds!) of answers. Being first, and at the top, increases thelikelihood your response will actually get read and have an impact, muchlike keywordand search ranking ensures that your website will get visited. In factsome of the sites close questions after a period of time, which means ifyou don’t answer a question while it’s open, you may never get toanswer it.

Platform: Geolocation

Sites: Facebook Places, Loopt, Foursquare, Gowalla

Before the launch of Facebook Places, only 7% of Americans were even aware that Geolocation services exists (according to Mashable).After the launch of Facebook Places, the burgeoning field ofgeolocation has been exposed to Facebook’s community of 500 millionactive users, according to Facebook’s own statistics. Each user has an average of 130 friends, 50% of whom log on to Facebook in any given day.

Facebook Places is therefore a huge windfall for the geolocationmarket. Not only did they dramatically increase the awareness of the“check in”, they also opened up the technology to people who don’t havesmartphones (while it may seem that everybody has a smartphone, the actual statistics revealthat only about 30% of mobile users are using their browser!). With theintroduction of Facebook Places, even if you can’t check-in you can seeand comment on other people’s check ins.

The result is an widespread awareness of geolocation which coincides with market predictionsthat indicate that by the year 2013 1 billion people will havesmartphones. This means that adopting and cultivating your geolocationstrategy now will give you a distinct advantage of operating in a lesscompetitive space, much like the early Yelp users and facebook fan pageadopters before the novelty of the technology wore off and people beganto feel over solicited.

Another motivator is that unlike Facebook Places (which requires youto upload documents that demonstrate proof of ownership of yourbusiness) the other geolocation services do not have such rigorousprotections in place at this time, which means someone else could claimyour business.

These two tactics both possess inherent advantages for earlyadopters. Why wait? Check out these new social media platforms andexplore how they can enrich your existing social media strategy!

About the Author: Dena Stern is the Community Resources and Marketing Manager at WorkingPoint,a financial accounting tool for Small Businesses. She is responsiblefor community outreach and is a frequent contributor on the subject oftechnology trends, social media and marketing on the WorkingPoint Blog.

Photo Credit: webtreats