Social networking is no different from the offline networking.
All of us have done, or are still doing, offline networking – it’s just that we never call it networking. It had always been like being with a bunch of friends! Be it the old school times, or high school friends circle, your co-workers, the neighborhood and so on.
The very same principles do apply with online social media as well; we just need to figure it out based on our needs and tastes.
There are two basic rules that apply to all kinds of networking. One – you can’t be a stranger. Imagine, sitting with a bunch of strangers and trying to teach, preach, share or sell your ideas and stuff. It is never going to work! And the other is the niche of the community that you are trying to get into. If you do not share the same ideas, skills, interests and intentions then you can never truly be a part of that community.
So, here is a list of social media sites, based on what interests you have, you can join the right one! Just make sure to be active, network and connect with the fellow members, post your comments and share your views. Don’t be a stranger with the only intention of dropping a link.
18 Niche Social Media Websites for Bloggers
For the women who likes to network:
Pinterest – Pinterest is a growing social network for women. It is already huge and with a great visual interface it attracts new users all the time. If you are a women blogger, or your blog audience is targeted to women, then this is the network that you should follow.
And what about Men?
GentleMint – This is the men’s answer to Pinterest. If you are looking for an audience that targets primarily men, this network can sure help. This is not as big as Pinterest, but growing all the time.
For those who likes to share amazing images:
StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is not new, but most people complain about huge bounce rates and that the stumble bots do not stay on the page for even one second. From my experience, the users at stumble upon do not like to read, text is boring for them. Try StumbleUpon if there are a lot of images on your page – creative, funny, awesome images go viral on StumbleUpon a lot.
For those who are too professional:
LinkedIn – Linkedin is more for professionals. If you offer a service, if your posts are about getting jobs, having skills etc. then Linkedin can be a real asset.
Most bloggers ignore linkedin because they think it is not directly on their niche. However, when it comes to bigger social sites like linkedin, you should do what you do on facebook – that is make the most out of it.
Q) What really works on Linkedin?
Ans) Skill.
That is perhaps the shortest answer I have ever given! But yes, linkedin is all about jobs and professionals. And one thing every job requires, and that is skill. Target your content towards the various skills required to do various stuff – and see it go viral on Linkedin.
Watch this video about Tracking Conversions From Social Media
BlogEngage – My personal favorite, this social community is just the right place for any blogger out there.
Here is how blog engage works. First thing's first – BlogEngage is a paid blogging community and the standard account starts at $30 a month! However, you can join a contest or a giveaway and get a free blog engage account. For more details, contact Brian, the owner of BlogEngage.
Once you have an account, go ahead and make a contributor account on the community blog of BlogEnage. Once your account has been upgraded to a contributor, submit a blog post introducing yourself to the community.
Just like any other social network, the more active you are, the more you will gain from the network. If you want to see how active people are at blogengage, check out our very own – Ileane's profile.
BizSugar – If you are a small businessman or you cover topics related to business and marketing, bizsugar would be your ideal target.
BizSugar has a lot of traffic and people out there are not just bloggers but they have good advertisers too. Every time one of my submitted post hits the front page of biz sugar I get 20 to 50 very interested visitors from the site.
Another thing we love about bizsugar is the giveaways and getting featured. Currently they are giving away tablets for being active on their community. The contributor of the week is a regular feature for bizsugar, just be the most active member and get featured on their blog.
Blokube – A smaller variant of BlogEngage – if you are looking for more social love for your blog, this can help.
Inbound – Inbound is backed with powerhouses like Moz and Hubspot. It is growing at a very fast rate and a powerful profile on it can be really helpful.
If you are looking for a really strong social niche in this niche, inbound might just be the one. However, this is not like the other social sites we have mentioned thus far – it is far more serious and active. If you want to gain anything out of it, would suggest you to build a really strong profile first before trying to submit any content of your own.
They do appreciate good content. Here's a small tip – submit some of your guest posts that you did for some strong A-list blogs. That should help you to build up your reputation on Inbound.
My Seo Community – Requires Facebook connection for creating an account.
For just about anyone:
Facebook – Facebook is for everyone as everyone is already on Facebook! This is one network that caters to everyone. If you are looking for more PPC options, this one can be a real alternative for AdWords.
Google+ – The social network powered by Google, it is fast gaining recognition and everyone is joining in. This is going to be the future of social for search, so make sure you are active on it.
For the travelers:
Travel News – A niche social site for travelers, share your best travel posts and see them go viral on this site. Submit a few articles every day, try to contribute in terms of making comments etc. you will see some very targeted traffic coming from this site.
So far, from what I have seen – list based articles works best on this site. Try not to spam it with low quality content, as there aren't too many alternatives for you on this niche.
Good articles like 100+ points list does really well, could end up getting into the all time famous submissions on the site. Try it, the traffic is worth it.
For the designers:
Design Float – Design is a very popular niche, if you are a blogger on this niche, you should join Design Float. Niche sites are the best places to gain targeted traffic.
Like to spread your opinion in the social media, be the critic:
Reddit – Do not try to spam, reddit is very strict – they will catch you. If you already have an account, give your profile link to a friend and make sure he can see it. Most people on reddit who have tried to post not-so-good submissions in the past, have their account ghost-banned. If your account is ghost-banned, only you will be able to see it. In that case, the best option for you is to create a second account and build it up rather than spamming again. Buy the Reddit Pro it only costs $4 a month. Make good comments on other’s submissions and build up your karma. Do not submit your own article till you have built a really good profile.
Digg – Digg is one of the oldest social bookmarking website, it still is good but dying slowly. Ages back, Digg was very much capable to send so many visitors that a website with an article on Digg’s front page could run out of bandwidth within an hour of it hitting front page. Things have changed though, Digg is no longer quite that big but it still is there, so make the most of what is left with digg.
Digg has almost stopped taking public submissions, they still have the submit page though. The new owners of Digg wants to change this social media site back to a startup – and from what it seems, they are pretty successful in that.
Slashdot – Another popular social media site, slightly directed towards the tech niche. Ages back, just like Digg, we used to hear the phrase – slashdotted! It was like a horde of visitors visiting your website when you hit the front page of Slashdot and even the most powerful servers used to fall apart. It still exists, so why not give it a try?
Are you green?
Care2 – For those who like to stay green, do organic and stay away from plastic – care2 is just the right social network for you. Do not think it in terms of a social bookmarking site to drop your link, if you are on the organic and Eco-friendly niche; try to network with other like minded people. The members there are very friendly and easy to network with.
Want more social networks? You got it!
Let's see how many of these you have tried so far?
http://instagram.com/
http://www.fark.com/
http://chime.in/
http://www.scoop.it/
https://www.tumblr.com/
https://www.pheed.com/
https://delicious.com/
http://www.newsvine.com/
https://www.diigo.com/
http://www.kaboodle.com/
There are a number of other social media networks out there, but this list is for bloggers. So, like I said above, try to contribute something to the community but we cannot forget the fact that our end goal is to get traffic, visitors, visibility for our own blogs. So it is mostly like – give and get, and thus we have only covered those networks where, once you are an established member, you can get something back for your own blogs as well.
I think Facebook and Google + are the most important, and I must say I was scared they were not in the list, as they were a bit low.
Nice Write up!
Hey Ugee,
thanks for your comment,
yeah, facebook and google+ are the big ones, followed by linkedin, pinterest, stumbleupon etc. everyone must be on the big ones for sure.
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
hi sen
nice article i totally agree with you facebook,stumbleopen,twitter its big social media site and its also given huge traffic to site and pinterest is also great social media site. thanks for sharing.
Hi There! Nice list. I agree on what you say about Pinterest, lots of women there who seem interested in fashion, beauty etc so the GentleMint tip is much appreciated.
Perhaps Youtube could be added to your list? If you turn your blog post into a video (use for instance Powerpoint) you can add it to YT and get a nice backlink to your post in the description. YT users could also be engaged and add comments.
hi Rick,
thanks for your comment, glad you liked the list,
Yes, Youtube should be on this list, and since you mentioned about the powerpoint tip, i guess slideshare.net is another site that should be on the list…
thanks for your suggestions,
regards,
Uttoran Sen,
Hi Sen
nice article very very helpful with me i only know the facebook,stumbleupon,linkdin,twitter and 2 or 3 more but i never know about this much of social media site that are helpful to us. thanks for sharing social media site list.
hii Uttoran
Nice Post very much informative…got to know about some hidden social media networks like design float , bizsugar and blogengage.
Thanks for sharing that will be surely gonna help a lot and yes I like your thought that Pinterest is majorly concerned with female audience because as my personal experience I feel quite comfortable while using its interface
Nice Post
Keep posting
Hi Zenelia,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked the article,
Yeah, the visual interface of Pinterest is very good, it’s a top social site for all women.
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Hello Uttoran, very nice list here. I had never heard of GentleMint before. I’m definitely going to check that out. I am familiar with many of the others, but find I don’t have enough time to properly leverage them all. Thanks for the list and have a great day!
Hey Tom Jamieson,
thanks for your comment, glad you liked the list,
Yes, time is an issue for sure, try to get into as many as you can… then based on the ones that is most effective, stick to those and make a good account,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
This is an amazing list of networks with description . Couple of hours ago , i was searching for some networks where i could post /share links and now my search ends here . I would be signing up for folkd ,pheed and bizsugar as they suits my blogging niche .Thanks for sharing the information .
-Pramod
Hi Pramod,
thanks for your comment, glad you liked the list,
surely, bizsugar, inbound etc. are very strong social sites for the blogging niche. Get busy on those sites, build a strong profile… then you will get a lot of recognition from those sites,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Thats an awesome list of social networks with description, many of the networks are totally new to me. Thanks Uttoran for sharing this with us.
hey Sarah Harper,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked the article,
Always good to find new social sites, make the most out of them…
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
I feel like new social media networks pop up all the time, it’s so hard to stay on top of it all. Thanks for the tip on blog engage, it looks like it will be a great resource.
Hey Nicola P,
thanks for your comment,
blogengage is pretty old, it had been almost 5+ years now…
but yes, new ones keep popping and it becomes hard to keep track of it all.
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Nice introduction. Never thought of it that way. Well, it’s always a relationship, but showing social networking online in a similar thread of that of personal friendships definitely hit me in the eye.
Nice specification. This will definitely help marketers in knowing where to intensify their marketing strategies.
Hey Riza,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked the article,
Yeah, hopefully it will help the marketers – tried to sort it by niche so that one can put more focus on where their audience should be…
Agree with you completely, it is always about networking and friendship that works best on any social site,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
I use many of them or I can say almost all of them . And I guess G+ is now most important for us .
Hi Anil Kumar,
thanks for your comments,
good to know that you are already using most of the above mentioned social platforms. Do let us know which ones are working for you…
hope you make the most out of them,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Uttoran this indeed a great list breakdown, the Pinterest for woman thing really opened up my eyes. I tend to stick to a small handful of social sites myself as they’re time consuming enough (mainly the big 4 Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+), but I will certainly check out a few others on your list. Thanks again.
Hey Fabrizio,
thanks for your comment, glad you liked the article,
surely, Pinterest is a massive site for women. good to know that you are active on the big4, do take out some time and try the others – am sure it will help you in your marketing plans,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
List is so lengthy but very important to get you make a strong and huge social network. You must show your human face and does not let anyone feel you are robot, spam or just want to get traffic; obviously your objective is to promote your blog or business over there but first you must prove your worth in your social media friend and then ask what you want from them.
Hey Uttoran,
When I used to hear the word “Social Media”, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter was the only things which flew through my mind (mainly). You you changed my mind completely on that.
Thanks a lot for introducing some great Social Media websites.
Cheers!
Hey Amal Rafeeq,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked the post,
Yeah, there’s plenty more to social media than just facebook and twitter, and the others are not that small when sending traffic to our sites,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
I think the lists are endless. My strategy has always being, one at a time. As a blogger, you can’t always be active on all of these networks at a goal!
I’m now very much active on Facebook. Googleplus is my next target!
Hey Emmanuel,
thanks for your comment,
you have a good strategy – dominate one social site at a time and move on to the next. Google+ is a great social network to be active on – make the most out of it,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Linked in is critical for any professional or business owner. The amount of contacts and free networking you can do by joining groups is immeasurable. It is an excellent marketing tool, one that almost begs to be a basis in any business.
nice article social media site are always helpful website promotion. social media site is also useful for get traffic. your article is very helpful with me thanks for sharing.
hey hiren,
thanks for your comment, glad you liked the article,
Yeah, social sites are great for promotions and traffic building, good to know that the article helped you,
cheers,
Uttoran Sen,
I know most of these sites and time to open accounts on other sites, yeah dude I too noticed high bounce rate when promoting my posts in stumbleupon, have to give it a try again.
Hey Sai Krishna,
thanks for your comments,
Yeah, stumble upon has pretty bad bounce rates… though if your site has some images on it, you might get a better result,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
I am surprised to see that Twitter is not in your list. Among all other i like Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon are best.
Hey Rajib,
thanks for your comment,
I thought I had added Twitter along with tumbler etc. at the end of the list! am quite surprised myself to make such an oversight… and thank you for letting us know,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
I am so glad to know that 🙂
I have actually just put my site on StumbleUpon and so far it is doing pretty well, but most of my traffic is coming in from facebook and surprisingly enough Instrgram has brought in traffic!
Ahoy uttoransen, I have nothing to say about this post. I’ve seen some new thing in this post. I visit this website daily and Thanks for publish your guest post here. I’m really glad to see it here.
Last word, Thanks. 🙂
Hey Reaz,
Good to see you here and thanks for your comments,
Glad you liked the post,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Great post, yup and YouTube is the best place to for blog. Pinterest has more women than men and it’s also great to be there. Love your list.
Hi Ferb,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked the post,
yeah, Pinterest is really a women dominated social site, someone looking to target women in their marketing goals, should definitely try out pinterest,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
I use almost all of these great social networks and I can say it helped me alot to gain knowledge and to grow my business. If the right strategies are used, I really think that these networks could really add value to our lives.
Hi Thomas,
thanks for your comment, glad to know that you are active on most of the social sites mentioned on the list,
surely, social sites are a wealth of information and they can add a lot of value in our lives,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Hey Uttoran,
It is a nice list. Stumbleupon is also a very good option in social network.
Thanks for sharing
Hey Ritul gangwar,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked the list,
Yeah, stumbleupon is a great option for driving traffic, and if the content is attractive, one can expect some use of those hits as well,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Hey,
Social networking is the best way to create a good link with your customer and according to me Linkedin is the best site where you can promote your business and yourself easily.
Thanks,
Jane Brown
Hey Jane Brown,
thanks for your comments,
Yeah, linkedin is a good source for any business that is trying to connect with their customers.
cheers,
Uttoran Sen,
Thank you for the list of social networks. Never knew there were so many network that one could join. Very helpful list for us bloggers!
Hey Lynne,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked the list,
surely with so many social sites, we bloggers have got plenty of options to network and grow our audience,
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Hi Uttoran,
Thats an superb list of social networks with description, many of the networks are totally new to me. its very useful for me.. Thanks for sharing
Hey Sam,
thanks for your comments, glad you liked the post,
hope you make the most out of these networks,
cheers,
Uttoran Sen,
I find twitter to be the best social network to drive the traffic if you have good followers on Twitter you won’t need much of anything else. It’s easier to get viral and your content can last for long too. Its good for initiative’s too with a little spend you can create new trends.
Hey Raheel Mushtaq,
thanks for your comment,
surely, any top level social site is good to get visitors and make content go viral. focusing on one network and making an authority on it surely helps,
cheers,
Uttoran Sen,
I think that we should use all social networks. They can affect in a positive way your rankings.
Hey Nick,
thanks for your comment,
surely, the more social networks you use, the more traffic and social following you can manage. However, time is a luxury, we bloggers don’t have… so, with limited time, you should make the best use of it,
cheers,
Uttoran Sen,
thanks for sharing , this whole information is new for me , i thought facebook is the best place to promote my blog but i was wrong thanks once again.
Hey ANUBHAV MISHRA,
thanks for your comment, glad you liked the article,
happy to share,
Facebook is still one of the best places to share your articles and promote your blog, along with many of the above mentioned sites.
thanks,
Uttoran Sen,
Thanks for this list. Let me ask you, how do you keep up with all the social media? Do you have a VA or only dabble in what works? I have a hard enough time on FB, Twitter, and G+.
Thanks!