Social Media Networks That You Should Check Out

Published on 19 Jul 2012 at 5:48 pm. 1 Comment.
Filed under Google,Search Engine Optimization,Social Media.

We’re all on Facebook. Many of us are on Twitter. Here are some social media networks that you should check out. They may help your brand.

Social Media Network To Check Out: Google+

On one hand, you’ll never be able to convince your parents to switch. On the other hand, you’ll never be able to convince your parents to switch!

Google+ is an interesting social media network. When it first came out everyone flocked to it. People were looking at it like it was Google’s attempt to recreate Facebook. For many people that’s all they really wanted.

But that’s not really what it became. Facebook has a bidirectional model. When you connect you are “friends”. Google+ is unilateral. You can follow someone and then put them into circles. They don’t have to follow you back. There are plenty of people who are following me on Google+ that I do not follow back. The people I do follow are then placed into different circles. I have circles for things such as old college classmates, friends, family, work, people from my local comic shop — all different groups.

This distinction has made Google+ a different type of network than Facebook. A recent study has found that user satisfaction is higher with Google+. It is an interesting network, where the biggest drawback comes from user adoption.

Being from Google it obviously has an effect on SEO. When you are logged-in to Google+ and do a search on Google you go to a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) that has been heavily customized. If you are not sharing your content on Google+ your site is ignoring a huge opportunity to grow your brand.

Social Media Network To Check Out: Tout

Until World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) started pushing it about a month ago most people had never even heard of the social media network Tout. Put simply, Tout is a video version of Twitter. Touts are up to 15 seconds long. It can easily connect with Facebook and Twitter so that it sends your Touts to your followers on those networks. You can send Touts to Twitter on a per-Tout basis, while Facebook is an all or nothing connection. It does allow you to write a text comment with Tout. It supports hashtags and lets you tag friends. It makes it very easy to view trending topics from the mobile app. Heck, I think it does it better than Twitter.

Honestly, I found it pretty simple. I am very surprised by the features that it lacks — most noticeably the inability to tag your location with a Tout. My only guess is that they believe that most of their users will be using a webcam connected to their computer, rather than the mobile app. Still, an interesting omission. Also, for an app that recognizes the value in microblogging you would figure they would have a URL shortener built-in. And the URLs for profiles are so long! Rather than reserve words for the URL like on Twitter, they have placed all user accounts in a “/u” folder. My profile looks like:

http://www.tout.com/u/powrsurg

Notice the lack of a “https” at the beginning? It does not encrypt your profile by default, and there is no setting to force it to always use a secure connection.

Those things are easy to add-on later. With a company that managed to get a huge brand like WWE to endorse their service I am confident that they have these things planned out. It is worth checking them out. Use it like Twitter to spread your brand.

Social Media Network To Check Out: Pinterest

Pin your inspirations.

Pinterest calls itself a virtual pinboard. It is a social media bookmarking network. Users find images on the web of something interesting that they “pin” to a board that they have created. Users can leave a comment as they pin it. Their friends can repin the image to one of their boards.

As a social media bookmarking site the pin will obviously have a backlink to your original page. This is great for SEO. Pinterest recognizes this. They offer social media share buttons just like Facebook and Twitter. If you run an ecommerce site, or your site has photo galleries, then I strongly recommend you add a Pinterest button to your website. It is very useful for B2C websites. B2B websites won’t get much value from this service.

Pinterest is invite-only at this time. You are going to need to request an invite on their website if you would like to join.

Google+, Tout, and Pinterest are some of the most interesting social media networks these days. Do you have another social media network that you enjoy? Please share it in the comment section below. We’d love to hear what you think.

This post was originally published as Social Media Networks That You Should Check Out for The BrandBuilder Company.