New Social Media Platforms You (And Your Business) Should be Using

Posted on Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Written by James Miranda, Content Creation Intern at MSM Designz

Whether you’re a Millennial or a Baby Boomer, you’ve used social media to some degree. With that, it’s hard to imagine that something as normal and popular as Instagram or Twitter could just disappear. That, however, is exactly what could happen before you know it. And along with it, is your business’s following. From the deli around the corner to the Walgreens in town, just about every business uses social media. Why? Because that’s where the customers are. For the most part, Instagram is for the younger crowd, Facebook is for older people trying to keep in touch with relatives, and everything else can be the mixture or somewhere in between. Part of what made these mainstream social media platforms so successful, however, is because they did something different or built upon existing ideas. Twitter constrained people to 140 characters (280 now) and allowed you to interact with complete strangers instead of Facebook’s tagline of staying in touch with people you know. Instagram added minute-long videos instead of Vine’s miniscule six-second videos. While there is plenty of statistical backing that Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest are the best platforms for businesses, it’s only a matter of time before the next thing comes along. So, let’s take a look at some up and coming platforms that could potentially dethrone some of our favorite platforms and that you as a business owner should consider using to get ahead of the game.

Musicaly.tictoc

Musical.ly/Tik Tok

Remember what we said about how it’s a matter of time? If you’re on Instagram and YouTube to any degree, you’ve probably seen ads play with these mashed up and dubbed music videos on an app call TikTok. If you have, then you know it’s already broken through and is something like the new Vine. Like Instagram, Vine, and Snapchat, this caters to a younger audience. This one may not necessarily be able to boost your sales drastically, but it’s good exposure to a young crowd. Especially if you can do something clever. Plus, it gives your content creation team a lot of freedom for creativity that’ll spread to other platforms.

Vero

Vero

We said earlier that one reason some social media platforms become obsolete is because someone else does something different or builds upon another’s idea. Enter Vero. It’s an alternative to Instagram where you share movies, TV, music, or just post photos and caption like normal. Vero’s big selling point, however, is that you get a four-part privacy system–close friend, friend, acquaintance, and followers–that’s kind of a first for privacy on social media. For businesses, this essentially allows you to target specific audiences. If you want to make a post about one of your services that aids other businesses, but isn’t necessarily important for your following to know, you can filter it. You can make it so that only local businesses (under one of the four privacy monikers) sees your posts.

hype

Hype

Hype is kind of a different deal and pretty innovative for businesses that like to connect with their audiences via livestream. It’s was created by Vine’s creators and blends multimedia like photos and GIFs into live streams. The interface sounds cluttered, but works intuitively and things can be removed from the livestream. Some businesses, like a coffee shop, that host local performers to sing at the shop could live stream the performance for their social media followers while posting information about the acts through photos. This one may be ahead of its time and business should start to delve into what else they can do with it and other live streaming applications.

Amino

Amino Apps

This was intended for the “nerd” community. But following its launch, Amino became a massive community pool of niche fans of anything. Yes, the anime or video game crowd is still the focus, but you get to create whatever community you want. So, it’s obvious that people started creating and connecting their own communities other than the anime and video game realm. So, from a business standpoint, you can monitor your following, hear from them, and post things in a different way.

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