Week 4 Thought Paper: The Big Power of Niche Platforms
Social media can be quite overwhelming nowadays. Sometimes it feels like yelling into a vacuum, or it can feel like being constantly inundated by information overload. As social media marketers, it is easy find yourself drowned by all the noise on the bigger platforms like Facebook and Instagram and difficult to stand out among the competition. The rise of niche platforms has brought with it the opportunity to find a differentiate from competition and form deep, lasting bonds with your audience. Niche platforms exist to “find a group of people who are very dedicated to something and bring them together” (Rashid, 2017). Says Sandra Cortesi, director of youth and media at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, ““You go [to niche social apps] because you want to deeply connect. You go because you have something in mind that you want to do and accomplish. You go with a desire to connect with a specific kind of community” (McHugh, 2018). If a brand can find a nice platform that is tailored for their specific interests and goals, then there is an opportunity to really make that platform their own and carve out a larger audience and presence than might be possible to achieve among the droves of competition on Facebook.
One of the most effective uses of a niche platform that I can recall is Emma Watson’s use of Goodreads for her book club, Our Shared Shelf, which Watson started while working with UN Women. In her introductory message on the group’s Goodreads page, Watson wrote “I’ve been discovering so much that, at times, I’ve felt like my head was about to explode… I decided to start a Feminist book club, as I want to share what I’m learning and hear your thoughts too.” Beginning in 2016, Watson and her team would select a book each month for the club’s members and would then host a discussion board on Goodreads at the end of the month, with Watson providing some introductory questions to foster an open discussion amongst the club members. On multiple occasions, Watson would host interviews with the author of the monthly book, such as this interview with Rupi Kaur when her book of poetry Milk and Honey was featured in the book club. Over the course of its four-year run from 2016 to 2020, Watson and her team recommended 40 books, all with themes of equality, feminism, human rights, sisterhood, solidarity, womanism, and women’s liberation. Though it is now dormant, and Watson has stopped managing the club, the club’s Goodreads page still has 232,010 members and an active discussion board.
The reason I think that Our Shared Shelf was such an effective use of a niche social platform is the way that it connected a wide audience to each other and to a beloved celebrity in a way that felt authentic, both for the celebrity and for the platform. Watson is known for being intellectual and bookish, so a book club seemed to be a perfect fit for her. Using Goodreads as tool to open that book club to readers worldwide was a great choice. The platform’s goal is to aid in book recommendations and seeing what books friends are reading, so it lends itself well to a book club like Our Shared Shelf. It allowed for a sense of familiarity and community among its members, as evidenced by it still being an active discussion site despite Watson no longer having an active role. In fact, this book club was actually the first time that I had ever heard of Goodreads, and now I will periodically give it a glance to check for book recommendations. Our Shared Shelf may be over, but I will always remember it as a great use of a niche platform.
References
McHugh, M. (2018, July 16). Will Niche Social Networks Save Us From Facebook? The Ringer. https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/7/16/17576802/niche-social-networks-alltrails-untappd-runkeeper.
Rashid, B. (2017, May 8). Are Niche Social Media Sites The Beginning Of A New Trend? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianrashid/2017/05/06/are-niche-social-media-sites-the-beginning-of-a-new-trend/?sh=57fc1793804b.
