You probably know all about Facebook and Twitter, and use them all the time. But there are many other established services that offer great avenues for sharing content with your friends and followers. These 5 underrated sharing tools each specialize in different tasks, and all keep your audience engaged in ways Facebook or Twitter can’t.
500px
This photo-sharing platform is my go-to place to post photos, engage with fellow photographers, and view some exceptional photography. I like 500px more than Flickr because it has a more professional atmosphere that encourages users to only post their best work — not an Instagram of a cat asleep in the sink. Although I never get tired of cat pics, 500px offers:
Popular Section: shows you the best photos by way of voting, and believe me, there are some impressive photos in the popular section. If you get a photo into this section, you will be able to interact with hundreds or thousands of photographers.
Facebook integration: When you upload a photo to 500px, it gets added to your 500px album on Facebook. This allows you to reach a larger audience and engage your friends.
Voting and Comments: The comment section is helpful because of the professional atmosphere. Fellow photographers add great insight on what you could have done better and what you got right.
Blog: The blog helps you discover the secrets of the many tricks in photography. It has info you can use right away, and if you can get a guest post published, you will reach a giant audience.
In addition to sharing photos with other photographers and friends, users can sell their work as well. I have taken advantage of this program, and although it’s great, I’m still not quitting my day job.
This is an excellent way to discover new work, share your photos and have your work critiqued. It gives you the motivation to get out there and start shooting.
Croice
This broadcasting service has a lot to offer social-media aficionados who are getting bored of common blogging and Instagramming. Croice allows users to share their experiences in real time, by broadcasting their voices and images from mobile devices or computers. Where Twitter allows 140 characters to update an audience live during events, trips around the world, or rooftop breakups, Croice allows users to do this with an unlimited amount of speech and photos. Some of the features users will find most helpful:
You Can’t Beat Free: All of us can appreciate a free service that can really help engagement
Instant Messaging: Croice allows listeners to IM with each other and with the host during a broadcast. This instant feedback gives broadcasters a convenient way to react to their listeners on the fly, making it an event worth remembering.
Widgets: Embed a widget into blogs or anywhere else. Listeners can tune in to the broadcast straight from the widget and can also instant message and view shared photos without leaving the page.
These features allow users to do more than just talk to an audience, they can talk with their listeners as well. I really like this service because it allows me to keep from saying “you had to be there.”
Spotify
You may be thinking, “How is Spotify underrated?” People tend to just use it as a service like Pandora, finding great music according to their tastes. But, Spotify has much more potential as a sharing service. In a world where tastes in music separate people more than almost any other social metric, Spotify can help:
Create Collections: Find the best new and old music by searching through your friends’ collections — and they can do the same with your collections.
Share: When you find a new song or artist you’d like your friends to know about, you can post it on Facebook, Twitter, your blog, or on Spotify.
Follow: Your friends can follow you and get instant updates to whatever you’re listening to, new collections you are making, and songs that are really important to you.
Connect: If you are trying to develop your brand or blog online, you can discover which music is emerging and incorporate it into your marketing strategy.
I’ve often heard friends say they wouldn’t go on a second date with someone if their musical tastes didn’t align. Shallow? Yes. Should I get new friends? Probably. But this is a fact for many young adults. Spotify is a great tool to meet people who share the same tastes and to expose your friends to new music they’ll appreciate.
Buffer
One of my favorite companies that’s really coming into its own this year is Buffer. It’s a scheduling tool that allows users to share over many different networks at specified times. What sets Buffer apart is its customer service and community management. It makes users feel they are personally listened to and part of a larger community. The more people who use Buffer, the more the Internet will understand this resource. Buffer features:
Scheduling: Set up times for your posts to appear on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and App.net so you can space out your posts and make sure they are seen during peak hours. And you can use the excellent SocialBro extension to determine peak times for your followers, and then import those times into Buffer.
Analytics: See which posts do best and during which hours.
Buffer browser extension: You can buffer retweets from Twitter and Tweetcaster, highlight words to share them as a quote, right-click on images to send them straight to Buffer, and many other cool shortcuts.
Buffer is ideal for social influencers, social media mavens and marketers because it lets them make sure their posts will be seen across many social sites. If you ever have a question or problem, you can write to Buffer and 80% of the time and you’ll get a response within 6 hours. Not bad for a sharing powerhouse with over 1 million users.
WeChat
This Chinese social media service, formerly known as Weixin, is starting to gather traction in the rest of the world. Now the service has more than 270 million active monthly users. The tool offers many features that Facebook does not, which is one reason for its growing popularity in the U.S. with over 150,000 users and growing. It is similar to WhatsApp but with some additional features.
Live Chat: A group voice chat that allows one user to talk at a time, kind of like a walkie-talkie channel with all your friends.
QR Code Group Chat: This generates a QR code for your group chat that lets you share it via email to your friends so they can join in. I see a lot of potential for guerrilla marketers as well, by printing out the code on sticker stock or business cards and spreading them far and wide.
Moments: Share special times with your friends using the “moments” feature that lets you post photos and texts of a special time such as a wedding or the first time (or last) you eat fugu.
Shake: Use your location settings to find anyone else in your area by shaking your mobile device. It is a way to meet up with users nearby who are looking for a new friend. I can see many sketchy dates happening as a result of this, but it is an interesting feature.
Drift Bottle: Users create a voice or text message and send it adrift in an electronic sea. Other users can pick up this message-in-a-bottle and reply to it if they want, or they can throw it back into the sea.
WeChat is an interesting take on social media, making it easy to see “non-western” features that are added into its capabilities. This is fun and although it still hasn’t optimized itself for a western audience, social media needed a fresh look at connecting with people — which WeChat delivers.
Top image: Flickr/Jason A. Howie
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