LinkedIn is unquestionably the most popular social media platform for B2B social selling. Many blogs and resources, including ours, focus on providing strategies and guides for the business platform. Even though LinkedIn has a significant emphasis, you shouldn’t count other platforms out of the social selling equation.

In fact, niche platforms, such as industry-specific forums and video-focused platforms, can also be used to curate an audience and promote your product. You just need to know how. Luckily, we will give you an easy-to-follow how-to guide in this article.

The importance of niche platforms

Let’s start with some handy background information on niche platforms. These social media outlets allow you to share and receive thought leadership and curate an audience in fields closer to your target demographic. Unlike huge social media platforms, niche platforms are much smaller and usually focused on a single industry or subject. This like-mindedness allows for a closer community among users of these spaces, making it an excellent platform to try and build connections with others.

Many niche platform users, especially those active in their community, are experts and well-experienced in the topic at hand. While your main objective might be sharing content, seeing what others post is essential. Reading back will allow you to gain knowledge from industry experts and help you determine other members’ pain points and interests. When you plan to share content, you can tailor it to those concerns and trends, making it much more effective and personalized for your audience.

Posting on niche platforms allows you to grow your audience at a faster rate. Conversely, Forums have a smaller user base, and while that may seem like a bad thing, it also lessens your overall competition for eyeballs and screen time. The reduced competition, plus a forum’s ability to foster a small community, let you curate an audience of like-minded people in your industry. In addition, once you get some traction on the forums, you can add links to your other social media pages, directly linking your audience to desired web properties, increasing traffic to your website or other social media pages.

Industry-specific forums and websites

Now that we’ve talked about the advantages of niche platforms and forums let’s look at some often-underutilized examples that could boost your B2B social selling:

• LinkedIn Groups: While LinkedIn is a vast platform, LinkedIn Groups are a great way to introduce yourself to forum posting if you don’t know where to start. Groups consist of different LinkedIn members interested in one specific topic, like a forum, and there are many different ones to choose from. Through groups, you can get the same experience of forum posting while staying on LinkedIn, combining both the small community of a niche platform with your already developed LinkedIn account. In addition, you can find other platforms through LinkedIn Groups, giving you a second step when you’re ready to begin forum posting. We explain here in detail how you can use LinkedIn Groups to your full advantage.
• GitHub: While software developers and IT professionals know GitHub as a code repository, it is also a hub for technical discussions and collaboration. B2B sellers specializing in IT and software development can comment on a developer’s coding projects and help with industry challenges. In addition, GitHub lets you see the latest from software developers, letting you gain insight into trends in the community and what projects will be promising in the future. 
• Doximity: Designed for healthcare professionals, Doximity is for doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel to connect, collaborate, and share medical knowledge. B2B sellers in the healthcare industry use Doximity to educate and inform healthcare providers about new products or services.
• Spiceworks: Known as the “Facebook for IT professionals,” Spiceworks is a community-driven platform where IT professionals discuss tech solutions, share advice, and seek recommendations. B2B sellers targeting IT departments can participate in discussions and provide solutions tailored to IT challenges.

Video-focused platforms

Video platforms like YouTube and TikTok work very differently than industry-specific forums. These two websites house millions of short- and long-form video content on many different topics. Although they might be bigger platforms than the other niche ones we’ve discussed, both video platforms have many of the same benefits and can even help more in terms of shareability.

While there are numerous videos on these platforms, they are often categorized and cater to specific interests, resulting in users only discovering a fraction of the platform’s content. Both YouTube and TikTok favor a predictive algorithm, pushing videos one user would like while hiding those they don’t. While this is mainly to allow viewers to stay on the platform, it also helps with audience curation, as your content will be delivered to people who are more likely to enjoy it rather than needing to be constantly sifted through to find it. 

However, depending solely on the algorithm won’t guarantee success on these platforms. That’s why the share feature for both becomes so advantageous. One good thing about videos is that they are easy to spread to other platforms, so you can share your YouTube or TikTok videos on LinkedIn or Twitter to be shared with multiple audiences simultaneously. Adding a small description to those posts lets you spread different messages with your content, further inviting people to engage with your video.

In addition, cross-posting, which describes posting the same content to multiple platforms, is very common with online videos. Re-uploading your TikTok videos to YouTube Shorts can alleviate the time taken to create content for both platforms while sharing your content to two platforms.

When it comes to these videos, the sky is about the limit for what you can do. Product reviews, how-to guides, and customer testimonials are good ways to get your community to see firsthand how your product works and benefits others. In addition, challenges and collaborations with other B2B influencers can drive engagement and combine two audiences. There are many ways to create videos, from funny to informative and everything in between.

Final thoughts

While LinkedIn remains the king for B2B social selling, there’s a growing trend of utilizing other platforms depending on the target audience. Industry-specific forums, groups, and even platforms like YouTube and TikTok are being explored for their potential to reach B2B decision-makers in a more targeted way. Taking advantage of these platforms allows you to join a more close-knit, like-minded community that may be more of an untapped market than expected. Ready to join a new niche community? Or are you more excited to get the camera rolling for some videos? Let us know on LinkedIn; we would love to hear from you!  

Photo by Dai KE, bruce mars, Thought Catalog, and Csaba Balazs on Unsplash