In marketing it’s important to know what the next big social media platform might be. It’s possible one of the current leaders could go the way of Myspace or Friendster and one of these could become the new #1 in their space. However, bluntly, none of these sites have the reach of Facebook, Youtube, or Twitter. There is the possible advantage of being an early adopter. Even if a site is relatively older but doesn’t have so many people on it, it’s possible to functionally count as an early adopter, such as is the case with the #3 entry. However, some of these social media sites, such as Bitchute and Minds, can have some more controversial content on them. Context is key when marketing on social media websites, and if your brand fits within the context of these communities then your brand could have an extra source of customers to socialize with who could end up using your product or service.
1.) Vero (https://vero.co/)
Vero is an Instagram competitor that says on its site, “No Ads. No Data Mining. No Algorithms.” There were some people who were fed up with what Instagram’s algorithm was, including the ads they thought were annoying, and some of them went to Vero. On there you can post videos, pictures, and more. Sometimes they have content contests. Here are a couple of pictures from the platform, and you can add me at https://vero.co/mondo_bobby if you want. 😊
2.) Minds (https://www.minds.com)
Minds.com is an alternative to Facebook that has its own bill of rights (https://www.minds.com/p/billofrights) which follows something called the Manila Principles On Intermediary Liability, and it also has a privacy policy that could be considered reasonably strong by a lot of people. For example the privacy policy states, “Minds does not willfully disclose the Personal Information of our users to anyone except to comply to applicable law or protect our rights.” This website is a good target for marketers because, unlike Mewe which I’ll talk about in #4, people can pay to boost their posts. Regarding the longevity of the platform, it’s good that they have a revenue source such as that. On Minds users can also follow hashtags and join groups.If you want you can add me at https://www.minds.com/mondo_bobby/. I follow the #marketing, #digitalmarketing, and #brandactivation hashtags. 😊
3.) Plurk (https://www.plurk.com/)
Plurk is a bit more popular in Taiwan but it allows for English as well. A good amount of the most searched for topics on the website have to do with niche topics such as particular games like Warframe or shows like Stranger Things. I joined to check it out as part of writing this article, so if you want you can find me at https://www.plurk.com/Mondo_Bobby. 😊
If you intend to market on here, it likely would only work natively if you knew enough about topics on here to talk about those mostly. Furthermore, since it seems like there’s more activity from Taiwan using traditional Chinese, it would be even better if you could do something like discuss Warframe using traditional Chinese. If you’d like to give it a try, luckily Mondo Marketing (us) can manage social media using traditional Chinese. Depending on your company’s niche this could be an interesting opportunity to try.
4.) Mewe (https://mewe.com)
Mewe’s homepage says, “No Ads. No Spyware. No BS,” and it has its own privacy bill of rights you can find on the homepage. There are groups and chat rooms, and this is a competitor to Facebook. To be able to market on here you’ll need to bring some value to the community that doesn’t seem like the annoying ads people want to get away from. This involves being social. Like, can you imagine being in a group and then the first thing you say is, “Buy from my company.” How well would that go over? If you’re the kind of person who just posts, “Buy from my company,” type posts, what makes you think it’ll be any different socially there than when in another social group? An example of being social in this situation is contributing to the conversation and being like, “Yeah I learned that marketing in Chinese is a bit more complicated since it can be written in both simplified and traditional Chinese, depending on the place.” From there people might find interest in that, ask you about yourself, it comes up that you work for a digital marketing agency, maybe they know someone who needs digital marketing done, and then you might find a client from that. That’s just one example, but it’s way less annoying than spam and many ads. How many website policies explicitly ban chatting about marketing versus how many websites, internet browsers, or browser plugins out there want to ban ads? A sociable approach is generally a good way to market through social media.
You can add me there at https://www.mewe.com/i/mondobobby and say hi, and also join the digital marketing group at https://mewe.com/group/5e6b3941702f605c0b7a00b1. I have an explicit no spam policy, and you’ll require approval which involves you showing that you understand there is a no spam rule in the group. 😊
5.) Bitchute (https://www.bitchute.com/)
Bitchute is an alternative to Youtube. As of writing a lot of the most popular content is political in nature, but there’s also videos such as Let’s Play style gaming videos, and you can find different categories. For marketing, it’d be good to look at the most popular videos on the front page of the site to see if your brand’s content could fit into the mix. I recently saw a video for a person who made a website for Made in America products, and posting on there would work better natively on the site compared to trying to promote Made in China products with the fact that it was made in China as a main selling point.
Mercifully, you can also set what kind of content you want to see. The categories you can choose are normal, NSFW (not safe for work), and NSFL (not safe for life). The default as of writing is the normal setting. While some of the people on here are taking refuge from being banned on Youtube, there is enough content on there that isn’t Youtube ban worthy such as cute dog videos.
It could be worth it to explore these alternative social networking sites for your social media marketing. Please keep context in mind, and if you join then please contribute instead of just trying to post ads. There is a reason that a couple of these are ad-free as one of their value propositions. If you could, please share this article with people you know. It could be fun to have more people trying out these platforms.