Make belief – The official blog of Renaissance Creative

When writing a social media strategy, the main focus is often on Twitter, Facebook and a blog. For the widest reach, it’s a good idea to focus a large amount of your time and resources there.

But those are not the only platforms that you should plan for. There are may other second-tier, niche social platforms that are worth considering when devising a social media strategy, whether for your agency or for a client. I recently wrote about one, called Take Me Fishing, meant for outdoors and fishing enthusiasts.

Here are a few more that are worth considering:

DailyMile.com

DailyMile touts itself as a “social training log.” In a lot of ways it can be explained more easily as “Facebook for people who like to work out.” Each time you work out, doing anything from running to rock climbing (there are actually 18 different exercise options), you post it on your page, including distance traveled and time spent doing it.

The social element comes in when you add “friends”, who can then view your exercise progress in their own feeds, similar to Facebook’s NewsFeed. Friends can leave comments, “like” posts, and even send you inspiration. Users can also post status updates and photos or videos.

Users can track their running and cycling routes, sign up for races/competitions, and participate in challenges with DailyMile users all over the world.

DailyMile could be useful for an individual, whether it’s a CEO’s attempts to be more transparent and public, or a politician running for office and seeking to fully engage social media across more than just Facebook and Twitter.

Dopplr.com

Dopplr calls itself a “a service for smart international travelers.” It has been around for a few years, but despite that, it has not found itself cemented into the public’s conscious as a major social network, even after being bought by Nokia. Geolocation social platforms are all the rage right now. But Dopplr was around before Foursquare or Gowalla.

Dopplr isn’t interested so much in where you are, as it is in where you’re going and where you’ve been. Its users tend to be professionals who use the site to track their business travel, whether it’s to meetings or conferences.

That being said, Dopplr is a great tool to integrate into a professional’s social media presence. It’s also great for people whose job requires quite a bit of travel, and a bit of transparency – such as athletes, authors, CEOs and more.

Dopplr becomes more social by allowing users to follow each-other, to see what their travel plans are. Users can also leave comments and suggestions for fellow travelers, such as recommendations for restaurants and hotels.

GoodReads.com

This one is for the book readers out there. Calling itself “the largest social network for readers in the world,” Goodreads sets out to let users share their reading lists with others, including reviews of books read and even recommend books to others.

Its core users are the kinds of people who buy multiple books at bookstores, or from online stores for their portable devices, which has them updating frequently. It’s also useful for more passive users, who want to find out what others are reading, and what they think of it.

One great feature is the ability to create and update a To-Read list. There is an iPhone app, so while you’re in a book store, you can add books to your To-Read list very easily.

Using a social platform such as this would be useful for authors and public figures. There are ways to pipe activity on Goodreads onto a website, so visitors can see what books that person is reading, and what they thought of them.

A platform like this can act as support, to broaden out a social media strategy, because it focuses on something more specific.

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There are many more second-tier/niche social networking platforms out there, but these are three that I believe are interesting. When developing a social strategy each has something different that Twitter and Facebook can’t really offer in the same way.

The above can also add something to the Facebook and Twitter experience, since each offer the option to post activity straight to Twitter and Facebook from the sites.