There are a stunning amount of social networks out there, offering some inventive, engaging ways for people to connect and share with one another.
Which ones should you be on?
Beyond the big six networks—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest—there are dozens more that are quickly rising in usage or are super valuable for particular audiences and niches. It’s a ton to keep track of. It can be a mystery to know where to spend your time.
I pulled up some numbers on these fringe networks to maybe help you decide where it’s best to spend your time. Here are the explanations, demographics, numbers, and details on 11 fringe social networks.
Overall tips for choosing a social network
Some of the best advice I’ve heard on social media marketing is this: You should choose the social networks that best fit your strategy and the goals you want to achieve on social media.
In other words, you don’t have to be on them all—just the ones that matter to you and your audience.
So how exactly do you choose the best social networks? Here are a few factors that we think might fit into this discussion.
Time – How much time can you devote to a social network? Plan on at least an hour per day per social network, at least at the start. (Once you get going, tools like Buffer can help you save a bit of time.)
Resources – What personnel and skills do you have to work with? Visual social networks like Pinterest and Instagram require images and photos. Social networks like Google+ emphasize quality content. Do you have the resources to create what’s needed?
Knowledge – What will be the learning curve for you for a given social network? Are there ones you’re quite familiar with already? Getting up to speed might be a factor to consider here.
Your audience – Where do your potential customers hang out? Which social network has the right demographics?
This last one is likely to be quite important as you consider the social networks beyond the big six of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, and Instagram. If your audience is spending its time on a fringe social network, that might make it all the more appealing for you to be there, too.
How to tell if your audience is on a certain social network
To determine where your audience hangs out on social media, you can look for a number of different signals. One of the most important ones in my mind would be intuition. Do you hear about a certain social network quite often? If so, it’s likely because those you are close to—your audience, in most cases—is talking about it.
Beyond intuition, here are some specific signals that could lead you to decide where your audience is hanging out.
1. Check the referral traffic from social to your website
In your Google Analytics reports, you can drill down to Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals and see all the traffic that has come to your site from the many different social networks.
Does a certain network seem to send you a bunch of traffic?
That could be a signal that a portion of your audience hangs out there.
(In the example above for the Buffer stats, it might be worth our exploring a bit into Reddit, Tumblr, or StumbleUpon as they both tend to send us a good bit of traffic.)
2. Notice the social networks of the people who email you
If you run your small business or manage your brand through your inbox, you’re likely to receive a lot of email from your audience.
And there’re some cool tools that help provide extra insights into your email contacts, particularly the social networks they all belong to.
The screengrab above is from Sidekick, and you can see clearly which social networks this person belongs to. As you flip through more and more of your contacts as they email you, it’s possible that you might be able to pick up on some trending new social networks where your audience may be heading.
Here is a list of possible contacts tools to check out:
You’ve likely got a great idea of the makeup of your audience—things like age, gender, interests, and the like. If you can match this to some of the up-and-coming social networks, you may be able to spot opportunities to connect.
Demographic information tends to come out sporadically, when a website performs a study or a social network makes a public announcement.
My favorite places to check for these insights are:
I’ve done my best to include some key demographics for each of the social networks listed below.
Our best tip: Reserve your username everywhere
I still think it’s great advice to pick and choose the social networks that suit you best.
At the same time, go ahead and reserve your username on every social network, even if you’re not sure you’ll ever spend time there.
Doing so helps keep these spots on hold for you if your strategy change or a network gets quite popular. It also helps protect your brand from others who may impersonate you or establish a voice and tone you’d rather they not.
To find out which spots still have your username available, you can use a tool like Knowem, which checks the major 25 social networks (or up to 500 if you’d like) to see what’s available.
What it is: Snapchat is a text-, photo- and video-messaging app that you use to send messages that will disappear one to ten seconds after your friend receives them.
Monthly active users: 200 million
Demographics: 70 percent women, and 71 percent under 25 years old
Which isn’t to say that businesses can’t succeed on Snapchat. Though the content disappears after a short time, it’s not all that different than a tweet or Facebook post getting swept away in the large volume of content on those networks. Users can screenshot what they like, too, allowing some content to live on elsewhere. And Snapchat itself has encouraged brand involvement with the release of Snapchat Discover, a story tool for editorial brands.
Launched in 2014, Ello picked up a huge amount of press and momentum in September, as it was referred to as the anti-Facebook and its invite-only nature caused a bit of a scramble. Growth has slowed since, though the Ello team continues to roll out new features and improvements.
(The network remains invite-only, too. If you’d like an invite, I’m fortunate to have a couple extras on hand that I’d love to pass along.)
On Ello, you can post content just as you would on other social networks, sharing text updates, links, video, or photos/GIFs. Users can reshare and comment on your posts.
Recommended for: Those who greatly value privacy. Those with an audience of early adopters, outsiders, or unique individuals.
The connection between Twitter and Vine is tight. Vine videos can be shared easily to Twitter, and they embed quite smoothly right into a Twitter stream. The audiences that seem most primed to consume Vines would be those who spend time on Twitter or Tumblr, two of the best short-form networks out there.
Brands have found some creative ways to put Vine video to use, coming up with smart how-to videos and short films. One of the best examples that comes to mind is this fun video from Dunkin Donuts, reimagining a highlight from that night’s NFL game.
The Reddit community is one of the most passionate, well-informed places on the web, which can be particularly useful if your niche has an active thread there.
Topics are divided into subreddits where users submit the best and latest links, stories, and visuals. It’s a great place to turn for content ideas or to keep up with the newest, pre-viral info. And it’s also a great place to hop in and be involved, to build a bit of expertise and some connections with those who share a passion for your topic.
Reddit is for individuals, so you’d join as yourself and not your brand. Some of our favorite subreddits include:
Tumblr seems to add a lot of value for people who enjoy sharing fast, quick snippets of what they find interesting or amusing. Brands, too, can find value in the short-form nature of Tumblr as its quite easy to quickly publish any small thing—a quote, a photo, a video—that comes to mind.
In some ways, you can use Tumblr as a WordPress alternative, if you’re interested in a fast and simple way to set up and maintain a blog. It’s not as robust as WordPress, which some people appreciate. On Tumblr, people can follow your blog so that your posts are added automatically to their Tumblr dashboards, and Tumblr users can like or repost any of the content on your page.
A great example that comes to mind is Penguin Random House, which shares all sort of fun, short-form book posts.
Recommended for: Highly visual brands. Those with a young audience or whose content lends itself well to images, GIFs, video. Those who have enough unique short-form content to support a Tumblr blog in addition to a main blog.
If you’ve ever thought of doing video content for your brand, you’ve probably considered YouTube. As the number one place for hosted video, YouTube is the first choice for getting your video seen by people and embedded into your website.
Recommended for: Any brand with video (Wistia’s tools are a great alternative as well).
Very similar to YouTube in almost every way—social sharing, embedding on a website—Vimeo has carved out a bit of a niche for itself due to its smooth and clean interface. Whereas YouTube is well-optimized to help you find lots of great stuff to watch on YouTube, Vimeo is a bit more focused on the viewing experience itself, which leads to its popular use among professional video makers.
Patagonia has a great presence on Vimeo, where they share some of their wonderfully-produced videos.
Recommended for: Filmmakers and video professionals. Those with big, beautiful HD videos and audiences who care deeply about user experience.
Soundcloud has become one of the most popular ways to embed audio into your website and blog posts. It’s a great option for podcasters and musicians who can share their bits of audio super easily right on their website.
At the Soundcloud site, users can follow the accounts they choose, as well as repost and like any particular bits of audio. Another unique characteristic of Soundcloud—and one that made the network quite unique early on—is that you can add a comment to someone’s audio at any particular time during the playback so that your comment is attached to a certain timestamp.
You can join Yelp as a reviewer and share your thoughts on the businesses that you visit. Likely a more useful way for marketers to get involved in Yelp is by claiming your Yelp business page. Doing so allows you to respond to comments as the owner of the business and to see the stats on visitor activity on your Yelp page.
What it is: Foursquare is a mobile, local discovery app that allows users to search for recommended restaurants, shops, and businesses that are near their location
Like Yelp, you can use Foursquare as an individual to find places to eat and shop and to leave reviews. And you can also join as a business where you’ll be able to add some extra detail to your business’s Foursquare page, as well as reply to comments and check the stats.
Lots of great conversations happen on Quora, and it’s quite easy to get involved yourself on questions that involve your brand or your industry. Sharing expertise is a great way to be active on Quora. You can also write content directly into Quora’s publishing tools, which is a neat way to repurpose existing blog posts or articles.
We’ve found Quora to be particular useful when questions surface about Buffer’s history or culture. Joel or Leo can hop in directly and contribute their expertise to the thread. And we can monitor topics and keywords to stay aware of when these conversations occur.
Recommended for: Individuals who would like to contribute to the conversation about their niche or brand.
Over to you
Which of the fringe social networks do you visit? Are there any in particular where you’ve found great traction or interest from your audience?
I’d love to hear about the networks that are significant for you and your brand. And I’d love to hear if you think Buffer should hop onto any of these up-and-coming spots!
Feel free to share any and all thoughts here in the comments.
Included in this package iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, and Apple Watch.
iPhone and Apple Watch mockups are delivered as Adobe Illustrator file (*.ai) so that you can rescale them to any size without loss of quality.
A big part of your job when you run a creative business is remaining excited and passionate about what you do while trying to avoid the pitfalls of bitterness, growing stale, or the myriad other unpalatable possibilities. Some career paths allow you to grunt through your job, but when you’re self-employed by your personal taste, style or hand, grunting through it typically leads to a poor final. And a poor final could lose you a client — eek! It can be a lot of pressure at times. In creative industries, your work is your leg to stand on, so staying fresh, inspired and challenged — and waking up wanting to make something better — is extremely important. But waking up like this every day is nearly impossible. You will be grumpy some mornings; you may wish you could call in sick (which you can’t); you might be uninspired and defeated before you even begin a project.
Creative blocks happen to the best of us, but what happens more than blocks is the mundane — the ugly, less dramatic cousin of burnout. The romance can fade at many stages in your career. I know because I’ve been there, and I’m only 24.
When I first graduated from Sheridan’s four-year Illustration program, I entered the workforce immediately (as in, the Monday following my last day of school) and took a job in advertising. It was challenging in a new way, and between freelancing on nights to pay rent, being thrust into a career I wasn’t quite educated for, and having just come out of an intensive four-year program without a breather, I quickly burned out. So I quit. Realizing that I was headed down a road to bitterness, I veered off and took a new path pursuing freelancing full-time as an illustrator and designer and, now blogging. Although I was reinvigorated by this change in being my own boss, I’ve experienced a few moments of boredom and staleness — which isn’t quite the same as burnout, but can be just as dangerous. So today I thought I’d share my tips for when the honeymoon stage fades in your career, no matter what field you’re in. —Sabrina
Don’t work for clients you feel icky about.
There comes a time in almost every person’s career where you have to take a job that you’re not passionate about to make ends meet. You won’t always have the luxury of saying no to work, especially if you’re just starting out, but as a general rule of thumb, it’s best to turn down a job you get a bad feeling from. It allows for room for a new, better job to come along that you can be available for, and will save you the stress and potential bitterness that can arise from the task. In my experience, my gut has been right exactly 100% of the time whether I listened to it or not. If a client is rubbing you the wrong way or leaves you with a bad feeling, trust that. If you’re wrong, you’ll likely do a poor job because you’re on the defense, and if you’re right, then you’re in for a not-so-fun ride. Working for enough clients you don’t mesh with can lead you to resent your career, and that’s never a good thing (but if you’re already in a situation with a client from hell, this may help). There is plenty of work out there, so don’t take too many jobs that don’t line up with your skills, wants, needs or beliefs; you’ll only grow to hate your job.
Start a personal project.
There is an overwhelming amount of possibilities that exist for creatives: you can work in many different fields, doing just about anything from lettering for storefronts to making illustrated GIFs for Twitter. And a lot of the time, you might not even know what you’re best at or most passionate about unless you try it first. That’s why I believe in giving yourself permission to play by assigning yourself with personal projects. You can only go so far experimenting with your style, technique or medium with paying jobs, so challenging yourself to do something different with your down-time and staying busy are both important to keeping fresh, inspired and confident. In my own experience, a personal project I once did led to building new skills which led to a boat-load of work that I would have otherwise had little or no access to.
Take a break, revisit old inspiration.
Whenever I find the romance fading in my career, I take a break. For me, taking time off to do nothing usually leads me to work harder when I do get back to work. I find I experience a mild feeling of guilt for taking time off, and whether that’s healthy or not, I usually come back to my desk swinging and eager to kick butt. It’s important that when you do take time off, you really check out. Use this time to watch documentaries or movies that inspire you, read a good book, revisit an album you loved growing up, or visit a gallery — whatever toots your horn! Rediscovering old inspiration and unearthing new inspiration is always great motivation to get your heart back into your work. But don’t wait too long: I find inspiration grows stale quickly, so take advantage of the time when you’re jazzed up and maybe start that personal project. Not tomorrow, or later today, but channel it when you’re most inspired.
Change your surroundings, shake it up, get uncomfortable.
It doesn’t sound pleasant, but discomfort can be a very powerful tool. It builds character and confidence, opens doors for personal growth, and can lead to finding what you don’t like, which is just as important as discovering what you do like. Getting out of your comfort zone can be as simple as setting your alarm a few hours earlier or working in a coffee shop for the day, or more involved activities such as going to an event you would normally shy away from, or reaching out to get coffee with a leader in the industry whom you look up to. Boredom usually leads to laziness, which isn’t any way to find happiness or success. As John F. Kennedy once said, “Nothing worthwhile has ever been accomplished with a guarantee of success.” Being happy is one thing, but being content isn’t necessarily a good thing. Some excitement and change of scenery can do wonders.
Overall, it’s unrealistic to love what you do at all times. Burnout, creative blocks and a loss of romance happen to the best of us, but you can help it! I hope my tips prove to be useful at some step in your career; I’m always sharing creative business advice on my own blog, so don’t be a stranger! This community is only made better by dialogue, so please share in the comments below what you do to combat a faded romance in your career.
You know how jail cells feature a combination toilet/sink? Years ago I joked that if Milan had a prison, their toilets would look like this:
Silly joke aside, it turns out there was an unusual project in Italy to have prison inmates design microapartments.
To be clear, the convicts of the maximum security Spoleto Prison in central Italy were not given computers and copies of AutoCAD; rather, “We asked them to be our consultants, to design a cell together,” writes Cibic Workshop, the Milan-based design research center that undertook the project. “[To design something] more livable, compact and functional, that can respond to new needs.” And the prisoners at Spoleto knew a thing or two about furniture; the prison features a woodshop where convicts create furniture provided to other Italian prisons.
The resultant project, called “Freedom Room,” was presented at the Salone in 2013 and was intended to stoke debate about what a low-cost “essential living” unit should look like, whether applied to a hotel, hostel, dorm, building full of microapartments, or yes, a prison.
But while many press outlets covered the event at the time, the documentation was poor and underwhelming. For example, no one took the trouble to actually explain what we’re looking at. All we see is a bunch of pictures of a space, with no context, no hint of what the prisoners/designers were thinking when they created one area or another.
We dug through Cibic’s documentation to find some kind of key or diagram. All we could find was a few images with Italian-language call-outs on them. We ran the copy through a translator in an effort to further explain the project, which currently appears to be deader than a doornail (the documentation stopped with the exhibition in April of 2013). Below we list our best guess at the translated descriptions:
1. Doorway
The opening to the outside, being enlarged at the top, allows you to enjoy a greater amount of natural light
2. Table/Worksurface
A place to study, read, cook, work
3. Beds
Most of life in a cell takes place on the bed. Here it is also a sofa and a decent place to concentrate
4. Drawers
Storage for clothes and linens
5. Wardrobe
With sliding doors to contain not only their clothes but of all the selection of objects that accompany life in prison
6. Shower
Today most prisons do not have a shower in the cells, which yields problems with a person’s dignity and privacy
7. Sink
To be used for washing, laundry and cooking. There would also be a place to dry objects or clothing.
8. Toilet
9. Cabinets
To store small items and whatever will be used on the worksurface below
10. Shelves
For books or other objects, with the ability to close the shelves with sliding panels
At any rate, it’s nicer than any dorm room I’ve ever lived in.
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