5 Less Competitive Social Media Platforms Marketers Need To Take Advantage Of

When someone mentions social media to you, you’ll think probably of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. However, from a marketing perspective, those platforms are the most competitive, costly, and depending on your target market, your customers may not actually be active on them. This is why you need to use the less competitive social media platforms as well. 

1. Pinterest

Pinterest is a lifestyle social media platform. It’s more suited for businesses that have a product or service that is targeted directly to consumers. Surveys found that 64% of Pinterest users see the platform as a place to look for ideas, products, and services. 50% of users make a purchase after seeing a promoted pin. 

These statistics mean that you shouldn’t ignore Pinterest. Instead, use it as a way to promote your brand, products, or services. Pinterest is largely image-based, so make sure that your images are high quality. 

Pinterest ads are known as Promoted Pins. These include a high-quality image, a short text, and a link to your own site. You can target your audience by age, gender, location, device, and interests.

But while using Pinterest you should be careful otherwise your account can be suspended like mine

2. Snapchat

Snapchat is also a great social media platform for communicating directly with your customers. It does tend to attract a younger audience, but if that’s who you want to target, then this is the platform you need to be on. 

Snapchat offers a number of different ads. One of them is the branded filters that you can overlay on your photos. Snapchat needs to be witty, quirky, and quick, so make sure you use a topical phrase and make sure everything has the logo and branding of the business. You should also pay attention to Story Ads, and Snap Ads. 

When you’re creating content for Snapchat, make sure you keep it Snapchat-friendly. Snapchat is fantastic for static photos and short videos. 

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn adverts tend to be more for business-to-business companies, but that doesn’t mean that direct to customers should ignore the platform. In fact, depending on your product or service, LinkedIn can be a great marketing tool. You can target your ads towards people with specific job titles, employees at specific companies, skills, interests or education. 

LinkedIn Ads has three forms - sponsored content, InMail, and Job results. InMail and Job results can be used to find the right people for your teams. However, Sponsored content is how you can get engagement and reach your target market. Just beware that LinkedIn users are often browsing while at work, which can mean that they won’t be at point of purchase, but could be looking for information instead. 

4. Quora

Quora is a question and answer platform, with over 300 million visitors per month. It has a huge variety of topics, so there’s something for everyone. There are a few ways that you need to use Quora to promote your business. Firstly, you can use the platform to engage directly with your customers, and potential customers. You can set up an account, and answer questions relating to your field. 

Secondly, you can use Ads. Promoted Answers show a specific answer within a home feed. You also have the option of image and text ads within the answer results. Quora allows you to be incredibly detailed in your targeting. You can target topics, interests, and keywords. You should make your ads easy and quick to read while giving the reader enough information. You can share more of your knowledge if you use your account to answer questions as well. 

5. Reddit

Reddit is one of the platforms that marketers either don’t think about or want to avoid for one reason or another. This would be a mistake. Reddit is the sixth most visited site in the world. It also has a huge number of topics and sub-topics. 

Reddit Ads let you target your audience but also fit into the user feed naturally. You can use the same ads on Reddit that you use on Facebook, but it’s a good idea to check out the topics and sub-topics you want to target. Examine other ads, posts, and answers on the relevant subreddit so you can see what your potential customers are looking for..

Author of Article - Jana Morrison (Content Writer By Profession)