Make Your Mark: A “Space” Suggestion for KNOWN

By Kiki Schirr, {grow} Contributing Columnist

In Chapter 5 of Mark Schaefer’s new book, KNOWN: The handbook for building and unleashing your personal brand in the digital age, he suggests eight strategies to find your own “space.” By space, he means your own corner of the Internet in which to flourish — an un-contested, or under-served, niche. I loved the entire book, but this chapter in particular got me thinking.

His second strategy, “Move to a new social platform within your niche,” is potentially one of the most effective of the eight strategies, but also perhaps the most difficult, especially if you’re trying to make your mark on a new platform before it blows up. How can you identify emerging social platforms and get a head start?

In this article I will suggest a new social platform that I think is still ready to be seeded, and I’ll give a few tips on how to identify social platforms early on.

Whale

Whale: Q&A is a relatively new app on the App Store. It launched in October of 2016, and in my opinion, has yet to really reach its potential. The premise is simple: for a few digital coins you can ask experts a question. If they take your coins, they’ll answer with a short but thoughtful video clip.

There are a lot of things to like about Whale as a user: you get to meet experts, ask questions that might not yet have been answered, and possibly get to know some pretty famous people.

There are even more reasons to like Whale as someone who wants to become KNOWN. Whale allows you to position yourself as an expert through merit. The better your answers are the more they will be liked and shared, and the more your face and answers will spread.

While Whale is currently only available on iOS devices, it might be worthwhile to invest in an old iPhone in order to try it out. It’s just that interesting of an app.

Social platform discovery

The best way to keep abreast of new platform releases is a service called Product Hunt.

Product Hunt is a daily, user-curated list of new tech products. While not all of the products listed will be social platforms, when you sign up for a Product Hunt account, it will ask for your interests. By subscribing to topics like “Social Media Tools” or “Messaging,” you can receive email updates of new, cool products.

Product Hunt can be quite a time commitment. Consider signing up for the weekly email instead of the daily if you’re short on time. Alternatively, in order to avoid missing out, you could receive the daily emails but set up a Gmail filter to alert you of choice keywords from your industry. That way, you only have to read the emails on important days.

As Mark states in his book, finding your space is a critical part of the four-step path. I hope that these two tools prove useful to you in your journey of becoming KNOWN. Let me know if you can think of other cool tools to use to make your mark in the world!

Kiki Schirr is a freelance marketer. She is an avid Product Hunt user and loves learning about new technologies. Kiki is currently building a video platform she calls WeKiki and draws Tech Doodles. She can be reached easily through Twitter.

Illustration courtesy Flickr CC and Simeon Berg.

 

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