If there’s one thing that never changes in the social media world, it’s that change is inevitable.
New sites appear faster than popcorn popping in a microwave. Many of them disappear into obscurity just as quickly.
Existing sites try new features and discard those that aren’t working, seeking to evolve into one-stop destinations for members.
This constant change affects how I engage with various social sites, and likely does for you as well.
While I’ve written about the sites that I am active on in the past, I thought it might be interesting to start an annual mid-year tradition of listing sites which I am currently using.
I understand that others’ derive benefit from sites that I haven’t listed here and I think that’s great. We all get to use social in our way, so this is merely a list of sites and apps that I personally find useful. Since most lists are nothing more than someone’s opinion, this list is my opinion.
So let’s get started with the top 8 social sites of 2015.
1) Facebook – The 800-pound gorilla maintains its place as my most popular hangout. After going through a period of maxing out my friend limit, I now am directly connected to just over 2000 people as friends, though I suspect there are a number that I don’t really know. I’ve got approximately 9200 people following my feed and my fan page is liked by nearly 39,000 people.
While those fan page numbers are far greater than my personal page, it’s the persona page that gets the greatest engagement. I’ve discovered that content on my fan page gets likes, comments and shares only when I post others’ videos and photos that I find highly entertaining or inspirational. Ironic, isn’t it?
It’s fine, because the most rewarding engagement is from those who I actually have a relationship of some sort with. And for that, no body does it better than Facebook.
2) Twitter – When I started with Twitter in 2007, I had no idea what to make of it. Obviously, I caught on and quickly built a following.
I am not a heavy Twitter user, but I do post weekly and I like to others’ content even more often. It’s a great place to post short videos and photos, especially photoquotes (which I am particularly fond of.)
3) LinkedIn – The go-to social network for business, the site occasionally gets a little spammy. However, I use it to connect to as many people as possible with the premise that the entire point is to be able to connect with the right person at the right time. Since you never know who knows who, I find the larger my network, the more likely I am to be able to connect with my target.
I also have no problem paying the monthly fee for a premium account as I find the InMail feature to be quite valuable. The only connections I don’t approve are from foreign staffing firms (which usually have their entire team sending me connection requests) and those without profile photos. If you aren’t going to show me who you are, you are taking a whole lot of social away from the social network.
4) YouTube – The King of online video has been a preferred site for me to upload my videos since 2006. I still upload my videos there. However, it pays to note that Facebook’s native video feature is quickly becoming stronger. The fact that videos autoplay on Facebook provides a great advantage towards the likelihood that a video will be viewed.
Still, YouTube is powerful and I will continue to upload videos there as well.
5) Instagram – For as long as I’ve been on Instagram, you’d think I would use it all the time. I don’t. But I do enjoy posting photos from time-to-time, especially if I’ve got a photoquote to share. But I’m not very involved in the social aspect of the app. My loss, I suppose.
6) Meerkat – In the battle for live video streaming apps, I still prefer Meerkat to Periscope. Perhaps it’s the fact that Twitter snubbed Meerkat to build their own service while cutting their competition off from the social graph. Maybe its that I used Meerkat first when it exploded at SXSW in March 2015. Or perhaps it’s just the cute little critter combined with the yellow theme, which happens to be my favorite color.
Whatever the case, when I stream video I find that I get more engagement on Meerkat. I think the primary reason is that Periscope is packed with “drive-by viewers” just checking in to see what’s on but having no clue why they are watching. Meerkat seems to attract a higher-quality audience and they’ve got a cool tool that lets you embed live-streaming on your site. In fact, if you are reading this on my blog you can see it in the right column. I’m betting on Meerkat.
7) Vine – I don’t Vine much. Well, rarely. But I do like the app and turns out I’ve got some followers there. Sometimes I’ll post a video.
8) Klout – They say Klout is dead. They say Klout doesn’t matter. I say they are right… and wrong. The site isn’t dead, but the continued implementation under the new owners is lame. And does your Klout score matter? No, except when it does.
In other words, there are businesses and individuals that still pay attention to the score. If they are paying attention in choosing who to hire, or for some other outcome, it matters. It mattered to me when The Denver Business Journal did a cover story on the top influencers in the state and they based it on Klout score.
The social sharing tool on the site isn’t bad, but there’s not much reason to spend time on Klout. The perks are usually horrible and there isn’t much else to do there. But as long as they insist on giving me a score that others envy (even if they won’t admit it), I’ll continue to pay attention to what they are up to.
Next up, the eight popular social sites that I am NOT really using. Stay tuned…
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