Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube. By now, most of us are somewhat familiar with that set of company names. We’ve written about them in past posts. As an entrepreneur, it’s critical to have a professional presence on the large, well known, social media platforms. But is simply having a presence good enough? The answer is “no” on two fronts. First, the key is to have a targeted and consistent marketing message on the major platforms. Second, ignore some of the key lesser known social media sites could wind up costing your bottom line.

Poor photos, bad copy and low quality links are some of the common symptoms of folks that have ales than optimized social media presence. My advice is simple. If you don’t have an optimized, strategic social media presence it’s actually better to not have a presence at all. If you don’t have the time, expertise and or desire to maintain a proper social media presence, consider outsourcing the work to a quality social media manager.

Flickr, Delicious, Yelp and Scrib. Know any of those names? If not, don’t worry. Many people aren’t as familiar with these lesser known social media platforms. Think of learning a bit more about these platforms as an opportunity to get a leg up on most of the competition.  To help you in that regard, what follows is a brief description and link to each, thanks to our friends at 60 secondmarketer.com.
Flickr: This is a photo-sharing site that can be used to build awareness and drive traffic to your product pages. If you’re selling hunting rifles or tennis rackets or widgets, you’ll want to use Flickr to a) build awareness for your product and
b) drive people from Flickr to your website. Strengths: Flickr is easy-to-use and has a clean user-interface. Weaknesses: Photo-sharing sites are important, but they’re not the very first thing you’ll want to work on in your social media campaign.
Delicious:
This is a social bookmarking service owned by Yahoo. When someone tags your article, video or blog post with a Delicious bookmark, it’s the equivalent of a “vote.” The more votes you get, the more visibility your content has on the Delicious website. Strengths: It’s everywhere. Weaknesses: You have to have a lot of traffic and a lot of votes to show up on the radar screen.

Yelp: This platform offers user-generated reviews on cool places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play. Yelp has an augmented reality Smart Phone application that makes using it on the run a blast. Strengths: User-generated reviews are a
great way for customers and prospects to find out about your business. Weaknesses: Some people try to game the system with faux reviews, but Yelp does a pretty good job of keeping those faux reviews at bay.

Scribd: This is the largest social publishing and reading site in the world. You simply upload your speech, ebook or PowerPoint presentation to the site so that others can be awed by your wisdom and expertise. Strengths: A great way to potentially get your content in front of thousands of readers. Weaknesses: There are a lot of other people competing for the same eyeballs.

To your continued business success.