On Monday, November 12, the #SocialChat crowd gathered to welcome Monica Wright (@monicawright) for a round in the hot seat to discuss some of the social media sites often overlooked by businesses looking to get a little more out of their online marketing.
Monica Wright is a veteran online marketer specializing SEO and social media, and has worked with national and regional clients in a wide variety of industries including hi-tech, hospitality and tourism, and higher education. Her core strengths are building audiences and visibility using search and social channels, as well as diagnostic SEO. She shares her expertise by speaking at industry events such as SMX, SMX Advanced, PubCon and serves as Social Media Editor for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land.
For those of you planning to attend the SMX Social Media Marketing Conference in Las Vegas in December, Monica will be moderating a panel on social sites you shouldn’t overlook.
Q1 @MonicaWright what are some of the smaller or more niche social sites marketers should consider?
Monica: Well smaller/niche depends obviously on your business. The criteria is understanding your audience, and how they respond. Social media [is] not a one-size-fits-all. For example, for Search Engine Land, we have a pretty significant Tumblr following, and less so on Pinterest. It’s impossible to master all of them; it would drive you crazy. No time.
Q2 @MonicaWright along with Twitter, FB, & LI what social sharing options should be set up for blogs?
Monica: Again depends on the blog. Many find a fit with Pinterest, especially retail or image-driven businesses. Definitely G+ is a must for blogs. Stumbleupon is still a great way to share, because it’s easy. Tumblr is gaining. Personally, I find myself going in waves of networks, sometimes G+, sometimes Twitter, sometimes Facebook. People on G+ are prolific. Hangouts On Air has potential, just as YouTube changed video, now you can engage specific audiences.
Q3 @MonicaWright are there any niche sites that rock for B2B marketing?
Monica: Niche for B2B, good question – definitely LinkedIn, I don’t think we give it enough credit. I see so much on Slideshare lately. LinkedIn and slideshare share content since the acquisition. Although you don’t hear about it as much as when it first launched, Quora is still out there helping people get answers to their questions. One of my favorite B2B marketers for SEO &social is Derek Edmond. He writes brilliantly. See here: http://searchengineland.com/author/derek-edmond …
Q4 @MonicaWright Pinterest is great for weddings, home decore, & SHOES. Who else can benefit from a Pin presence?
Monica: Pinterest is not just for fashion and shopping. People curate content via Pinterest. We have curated content around the Olympics, the elections, different ways for people to consume topics and ideas. I like Pinterest for aggregating content in ways that you may have not thought of. They remind me of Jeopardy topics.
Q5 @MonicaWright What kinds of businesses are getting a huge payoff from a presence on Tumblr?
Monica: There are news organizations on Tumblr. I’ve seen/learned breaking news via Tumblr just as on Twitter. I mostly follow News and Tech on Tumblr. Following sites like npr, cnet, digitalthoughts, etc. The Tumblr dashboard makes consumption easy.
The group mentioned several sites that you might be interested in checking out:
