Are the new social networks worth your company’s time?

There are so many social networks nowadays. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ are just some of them. People are using them every day and they slowly become addicted. Actually, we all are addicted to social media. But not everybody knows that new social media networks are born every day even if we don’t necessarily find out at first instance. Only few of them can achieve the massive success of Facebook or Twitter, but some of them take the Internet and the users by surprise and they have success from the beginning.

If you have an online business and you want to make yourself known on some new social media networks, you have to first think about some aspects before starting to engage the public and promoting on them. The worst thing that can happen is to work in vain because you’re not going to get any traffic from them.
So before doing this, you should take into consideration these advices and find out if these new social media networks are worth wasting your time.
• First of all you must evaluate the new platform and check out what people are using it for. Other things to check out: how many users does it have and what are the main domains that people are talking about.
A very good example is Pinterest. Pinterest is dominated by female users. It has 10.4 million users and 80% of them are female. You have to study the audience of the network very well and see if it’s a relevant target for your business.

• Another thing to consider before going and promoting your business on a new social media network: carefully analyze if the users are your potential customers or if they can influence your potential customers.

• You already know the basics of the classic social networks: you can Tweet and repost things on Twitter, on Facebook you can Like and Share. You must see what other methods people are using on other networks in order to share the news with their friends. If you know that mechanism, you’ll understand the way your business could be promoted.
• It’s also very important to analyze the users’ behavior pattern. You can do that by observing what people on that social media network like to read and share. That’s a good way to make sure that you are promoting your business on a network where people are at least potentially interested in your products, services and the content that you want to post on your profile/page.

How can you create a new type of content for your business to leverage a popular new social media network?
Like every owner of a business, it is vital to know the limitations of your domain, but you have to know that there are always possibilities and opportunities to step into unchartered territories. You just have to be original, creative and to think outside the box, because when you come up with new ideas, you are reinvigorating your brand and you gain the possibility to expand to new target markets.
• Another question that each and every business owner should ask himself is: How much time and resources are required to participate in this new social network?
The average online business owner is already busy and has a lot of other things to do. Just think about it: how many free hours do you have to do all this work just by yourself? The truth is that the more social networks you’re active on, the more opportunities you get to promote your business and your brand. But also, the more social networks you’re active on, the greater the amount of time you’ll need to invest. After a while, you’ll only be able to post sporadic content across each platform.
We all know that currently there are 4 strong social network players: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. And all of them can help almost every business share its content. Just remember that the content which you are posting has to be original. You can create blog entries and articles about your services and products and you can share them on Facebook and on all the other social media networks where you have an account.
Another thing that you should really take into consideration when you are making the decision of promoting your business on social networks is that you have to take your time and interact with your friends and fans. Talk to them, communicate. Let them see that there is a real person behind the company name and logo.

This is what I wanted to tell you about new social media networks. If you have just joined a brand new one, I would be pleased to read about your impressions and I hope that the advices I gave you will help you.