We spend hours per day on social media without any guarantee that your favorite platforms are here to stay. There are many good reasons to try out these new social media platforms so you can pivot if necessary.
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Why should you consider trying new social media platforms
If you aren’t an influencer, you should consider trying out new social media platforms because there could be less competition on newer platforms that may give you an edge when you’re trying to gain an audience.
If you’re an influencer, this should be obvious. There is no guarantee that the social media platform you’re doing well on now will continue to be relevant.
Another social media platform can overtake Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, etc just like how MySapce was overtaken by Facebook and Instagram replaced Vine.
For many influencers, social media is a place where they make a living. There are many ways to make money on social media including ads, sponsorships, and affiliate marketing, among other methods.
If you overly rely on one social media platform to make an income, you may be forced to get a traditional 9–5 job should anything happen to the platform and your income dries up.
Take, for instance, TikTok was banned in the US briefly while Trump was in office.
It took a lot of people’s livelihood away or at least cut out a significant part of their income.
So let’s look at the following social media platforms
1. BeReal
BeReal is a relatively new social media platform that let users share pictures and videos that are unedited and unfiltered to combat the problem of the lack of authenticity that is the common social media landscape today.
You’re given 2 minutes every day to share what you’re up to. If you can’t successfully take a picture or video within that 2 minutes, you’ve missed your chance to share.
You can’t upload pictures and there is no filter to distort any reality. When you hit the button, two pictures are taken. One from your front-facing camera and the other from the back-facing camera of your device.
The only way for someone to see your pictures is for them to be your friend on BeReal.
You can add your real-life friends on BeReal or add strangers as friends on the platform.
Personally, I don’t expect this social media platform to take off as most users don’t want to live without the carefully crafted illusion of the lives they share on social media.
I’m guessing it can be hard for users to share their “real life” when their friends are sharing their best carefully edited lives online.
For me, I already don’t share any pictures, videos, or stories of myself online (except for the brief month where I shared stories to an account with zero followers) so I don’t see myself using BeReal but you may want to give BeReal a try.
2. Substack
Substack was founded in 2017.
Substack offers its writers their own publication so they can connect with the audience without a publisher.
It’s a platform for writers to share their work and for those interested to subscribe to their favorite creators on Substack.
Substack has a convenient calculator that let you calculate how much you may earn from Substack subscriptions.
Substack takes 10% of the revenue, the writers get to keep 90%.
As a writer on Substack, you get to export all your mailing lists. You own your mailing list, IP, and content unlike platforms such as Medium where you also get to publish articles for free under your own social handle but don’t own your mailing list.
The cool thing about Substack is that you also get to host your podcast as well as publish your comics on the platform. It’s not just a place to publish articles.
Here’s my personal take on Substack, the best way to make money from your writing is still through your own blog.
Substack is regulated a lot less tightly compared to other writing platforms but it is still not the same as a blog where you get full control and keep all your profit.
Should you decide to open your own store, you’d have to create one off of Substack and place the link in your Substack profile.
You can’t control popups, you rely heavily on their algorithm and your own marketing ability, and you have to share the profit earned.
You can still have a subscription-based monetization model with your own blog if you implement the use of Patreon or Woocommerce.
There are just still rules to follow and profits to share if you rely on Substack to fund your writing career.
That said, Substack is a good place to start for writers who don’t want to invest the <$100/year to start and operate their own blog.
Click here for BlueHost hosting and click here for a quick complete beginner’s guide to blogging.
This is a screenshot of the quote from the homepage of Substack.
While it may sound promising, getting 10,000 people to pay you $100/year is a lot harder than most people think.
It’s hard to get people to pay you money for words on a screen. For the same knowledge, if packaged into a course instead, you can sell for far more, think $499 a piece.
You’d just need 2004 people to pay you $499 each for an online course you can sell again and again to make $1M whereas, with Substack, you need to continually push out content to satisfy your subscribers otherwise they’d unsubscribe.
There gets to a point with blogging where your main job is to update the existing blog posts that are doing well. You don’t even have to push out more than one piece of writing per week/month if you wish.
Again, you can still give Substack a go. It does look promising. The data showed that they currently have over a million paying subscribers on the platform despite it being relatively new.
3. Polywork
Polywork is a networking platform very similar to LinkedIn.
Polywork was first launched in April of 2021.
The most notable thing about Polywork is that it accommodates the hustle culture where you can have multiple titles in your bio.
With LinkedIn, you only have one space to display your title and tell the world what you do.
You can also reach out to other creators on Polywork for a chance to work together, get hired, or grab a coffee to chat.
Here’s a look at what a Polywork profile looks like.
Personally, I think Polywork has a lot of potentials. I believe it is a much more attractive option for the younger generation and may even become a substantial rival for LinkedIn.
I do love its clean modern UI and I’m sure it’d be appealing to most young people under the age of 40.
4. Supernova
Supernova is a social media platform that is very much like Instagram where you get to share pictures and videos, except, Supernova donates to charity.
You get to nominate a charity you want to support in your profile and every time your picture is liked, Supernova will donate a bigger percentage of profit to your charity of choice.
Supernova has 24/7 human support which allows for a more inclusive and kinder community than you would see on Instagram.
Supernova is still very new at this stage such that they don’t even have enough reviews to display yet. I do think that the idea of donating to charity will appeal to many people. It is something I plan on trying out sometime in the future perhaps when more reviews get in.
5. Clubhouse
Clubhouse is a social media app that allows users to interact using audio.
Most social media apps today focus on sharing photos and videos whereas, Clubhouse’s main focus is on the sharing of audio.
Clubhouse isn’t exactly a podcast platform. It allows users to share audio information with an audience in real time without as much preparation as you would a podcast.
All kinds of topics are being discussed on Clubhouse including relationships, economy, investment, etc.
More and more social media platforms are popping up with their main feature being audio sharing. This may be a good time to jump in. It may be easier to build an audience right now when there aren’t too many creators on Clubhouse yet.
6. Twitter Spaces
Twitter Spaces isn’t a separate platform off Twitter but it is an embedded platform on Twitter itself that allows users to create their own “space” and host an audio-only event online.
The audience can join in through their audio and ask questions if necessary. The host would have the access to decide who can speak at which time.
Twitter Spaces would be great for Q & A sessions, info sessions, seminars, and even hiring events.
Anybody can join the Twitter Spaces through your Twitter profile and listen in.
Twitter Spaces is worth a try but if you don’t already have an audience on Twitter, this may not be necessary.
A virtual event still is better with the visual component involved. Twitter Spaces benefit those who are already active on Twitter.
If your main platform is Instagram or Tiktok or YouTube, you’d still have a better tune-in rate if you stay on those platforms.
7. Public
Public is a social media app as well as an investing app.
With Public, you get to see what people are investing in and have your investment portfolio open for the public to view.
You can display different types of investments including crypto and stocks.
You can join discussions in public channels or private message someone on the platform.
If you’re an investor, Public is worth checking out. Public may be a good place to network with like-minded people who are equally interested in investing and personal finance.
The best place to grow an audience
Believe it or not, the best place to grow an audience isn’t Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, or Facebook. It’s your own self-hosted blog.
With a self-hosted blog, you gain full control over your audience. You’re not at the mercy of an algorithm change and you don’t have to pray that the social media platform stays relevant. There’ll also be no need to pivot to a new social media platform.
You can monetize your blog in an unlimited number of ways whereas, with a social media platform, you’d be restricted to a few and may even be forced to share profit.
Your blog will always be relevant as long as you push out some content once a week or even once a month.
On other social media platforms, your hard work doesn’t always end in fruitful results as you are utilizing someone else’s platform instead of your own. You are at their mercy and you may not even own your own content.
I would encourage any content creator to think about their long-term future and give blogging a try.
If you want to learn more, click here to read this beginner’s guide to blogging.
Final thought
New social media platforms are always popping up. Soon the most relevant social media today may become irrelevant.
It’s always good to stay aware of any new changes taking place in the ever-changing social media landscape.
