Five social channels under-utilized by businesses

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A strong online presence is crucial for businesses today, and social media is a great way to promote your company and reach potential customers. 

While platforms like Facebook and Twitter are widely used, many other social networks can be worth your time and effort. 

There are quite a few benefits of always expanding your reach and testing new marketing channels, mainly:

• Accumulating more in-depth marketing experience
• Making the most of cross-marketing by making your brand (and its visual identity) appear everywhere
• Tapping into less crowded spaces (and hence building brand visibility in a shorter period of time)

YouTube

Sure, it’s not technically a traditional social network, but it’s a great place to get attention from people worldwide.

While Youtube is a well-utilized network for independent video creators and influencers, most businesses still shy away from the platform.

However, you must create appealing and interesting videos and upload them to the site. 

READ MORE: How to attract more customers to your local business

If you keep uploading interesting videos, you’ll soon notice you generate views and comments from many people who would not have otherwise discovered your company.

YouTube currently has more than 2.6 billion active users every month.

Therefore, Youtube is a very effective branding tool because those videos rank incredibly well for brand-driven queries (search queries that contain your brand or product name).

Create many videos around your brand, including testimonials, product reviews, walk-throughs, etc. Make sure your YouTube channel name (as well as the handle) reflects your brand name for better visibility in search results.

High-ranking videos drive additional brand visibility in organic searches, so make sure to use this B2B rank tracking tool to monitor your videos that are optimized for searchable keywords.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network designed for professionals to connect and network with each other. With over 875 million active users per month, it is the third-largest social network in the world.

Setting up an account is easy and free. It can help your business reach a larger audience, especially if you offer services rather than products.

By creating a LinkedIn presence, you can use this platform to connect with potential customers and grow your brand.

Businesses often ignore Linkedin because of the huge number of salespeople dominating the platform.

And yet, it is a great way to host your resume and research common connections with other brands and niche influencers.

Linkedin also offers an effective advertising platform that includes retargeting. This is a great way to reach your current leads and customers on an alternative platform and remind them of your brand.

Thus, Linkedin advertising is also a powerful email marketing tool allowing you to grow your list.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a great platform for promoting your business visually. It is not a new platform, but it is mainly used by retail brands that can sell products directly from Pinterest. 

However, Pinterest can also be a useful marketing channel in B2B niches. By creating and pinning engaging infographics, you can showcase your services to the 445 million monthly active users.

Tumblr

Publishing creative and informative blog content is an excellent way to increase brand awareness and reach a wider audience.

By sharing informative updates that put your products and services in a real-life context, you can attract more people to your business and establish yourself as an industry leader. 

Tumblr is a particularly effective platform for finding followers for your blog, with about 400 million active users each month.

By leveraging the power of social media and creative content marketing, you can effectively promote your business and reach more potential customers.

Slideshare

Once owned by Linkedin, Slideshare is a great place to repurpose your content.

Whether you (or your employees) are a frequent speaker or looking for yet another platform to publicize your sales materials, Slideshare is a great channel.

Slideshare uploads rank quite well, so it is a good idea to upload your product demos to rank another brand-owned page for your brand-driven keyword.

Make sure to create a well-optimized semantically relevant Slideshare upload description. Text Optimizer can help with that:

From sharing videos on YouTube, networking with other professionals on LinkedIn, showcasing your products on Pinterest, creating informative blog posts on Tumblr, and sharing presentations on Slideshare, there are numerous ways to reach and engage with your target audience. 

While it may take time and effort to set up and manage accounts on multiple social networks, tools like Hootsuite can help streamline the process and make managing your social media presence easier.

Ultimately, the goal is to attract even just a single additional customer, making the effort worth it in the end.

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Editors’ Recommendations:

• How to create effective social media ads
• YouTube rolls out a fresh redesign – here’s what’s new
• LinkedIn rolls out new photo and video features for posts
• Tumblr adds livestreaming to Android and iOS app