You would have started with Facebook, progressed quickly to Twitter, reluctantly found your way around Google+ (sorry, Google), suddenly realized that you need to have a LinkedIn presence, and then jumped aboard the Pinterest bandwagon as it started speeding away. You may well have even graduated to the various video-sharing social platforms – YouTube, Vimeo, and Vine – shortly after you learned that social media marketing was quickly becoming ever-more visual after the rise of Instagram. You might have even decided to cut your own blogging work out for yourself and started a Tumblr. to bolster your daily written output.

Phew. It’s a hard day’s work at your office, that’s for sure. But you’re coping. The only thing that could come along now and ruin your routine is yet another social network to keep on top of. Well, guess what – I’m here to tell you that, aside from the big 9 that I have already listed so far, there are 4 more rising stars out there that you will do well to find your way around if you are to really stamp your brand’s presence on social media.

1. Periscope

Fresh out of the app store comes Periscope, the new Twitter-owned video sharing network. However, this one moves away from what we’ve seen before in the fact that with Periscope you record your videos and broadcast them live to your followers.

2. Snapchat

This is not a particularly new platform, of course, but nonetheless Snapchat has yet to be integrated into the marketing routines in any mainstream way amongst SMEs (for plenty of large corporations have certainly started to take advantage of it). It’s a popular photo and video messaging service with over 100 million active monthly users, though has seemed to have found its calling amongst the younger generation.

3. DeviantArt

You don’t have to be Picasso to start posting on DeviantArt, though this is certainly an original image oriented social network. Indeed, this is supposed to be a platform solely dedicated to the sharing of original artworks by amateurs.

4. NextDoor

This is a great network for trying to improve your local SEO. Whilst the world seems to have shrunk since the advent of social media, a lot of the time we seem to forget that although we can now connect instantly with people half way around the world, rarely do we get to know our own next door neighbours. But NextDoor is the social network that aims to solve that problem.

Number Five?

And number 5, Ello… Only joking, I might eat my words but I really don’t see that network ever getting off the ground, so you have my permission to leave that one off your ‘to do list’ for the time being.