Four Social Media Sites You Don’t Use (But Others Do)

Facebook.  YouTube. Twitter. Sure, you know the biggies, and like all the other business owners hoping to increase conversion with social media, you have your accounts all set up and current.  They have engaging content and tightly focused marketing copy. Well, maybe not everything is where you would like it, but you think you have your bases covered.

However, there is still plenty of online social media real estate to be had, and since preferences and popularity shifts so rapidly on the internet these days, it does not hurt to have your eggs in more than one basket.  Whether you’re just starting out with social media or you’ve been doing it for a while, one of the goals of  social media  is to engage with your current and potential customers at the places they are “hanging out”.   Therefore, here are four most popular places to hang out on the web (besides the ones you already know about).

Digg. You have probably seen the Digg icon at the bottom of plenty of blog articles and online newspaper pieces, but perhaps you have not realized the potential of this site.  Digg aggregates the clicks of approval (Diggs) that users make on any article published on the site.

You can place a Digg link at the bottom of your company’s blog that gives your readers a chance to boost your posts up in ratings.  If a piece manages to get at least a couple hundred Diggs, then you can expect to see a significant rise in traffic, since more users will see the article featured on Digg’s main topic pages.

If you are not already linking your online copy to Digg, start doing so.  If your content is interesting and engaging, you just landed yourself a free traffic generator.

Similarly, Technorati is a blog post aggregator that you can use to your advantage if you take the time to link things up.  In addition, the targeted advertising options here are popular if you are hoping to increase conversion with social media.

Yelp. This is a largely community-driven site that offers business reviews and advice on a variety of consumer topics.  It is most popular for its discussions of local restaurants, which are often moderated by locally hired experts who promote whatever businesses seem to most popular.  Get your business’s profile posted here and encourage your satisfied customers to post a review.

Hi5. This site is increasingly becoming the Facebook alternative.  Hi5 focuses almost exclusively on the entertainment part of social media—perhaps less on the actual networking.  Users play games and chat, and businesses who subscribe to the site’s targeted ad service can insert their message when most appropriate.  Marketing here is limited and only with payment, but some of the practices are worth monitoring if you want to increase conversion with social media.

The best practice would be to keep up with social media trends—who visits what and why – and the best way to do that, believe it or not, is to keep on the social media sites.

Are you ahead of the curve and using any of these sites?