There are millions of users online everyday and statistics show that social media such as Myspace and Facebook attract a high proportion of these users. However, when it comes to social marketing, social bookmarking, or just plain socializing, bigger is not really better.
Given the opportunity, would you prefer to try and socialize at a football stadium with 100,000 people, or at small gathering of 30 or 40 people, drinks and nibbles included.
The effect that a large crowd has can be quite daunting and can often make socializing difficult. Add to this the ‘crowd’ mentality. By this I refer to spammers and those whose motives are often uncomplimentary – too put it kindly.
Smaller sites don’t attract spammers in the same numbers. They still attract them but being small communities, they are soon removed. Socializing on these smaller communities can be a lot friendlier, easier to handle and easier to gain a large following of individuals.
The hardest part of joining some of these smaller communities is simply finding them. For every niche their is a community of sorts, whether it is a forum or social site like Facebook or Myspace. The moment you join you find yourself approached my moderators trying to help you get started and mix in easily.
What may comes as a surprise to many individuals is that most of these sites actually have extensions of themselves into some of the larger communities. Once you become fully immersed in the smaller community, you can move across to the larger sites like Myspace or Facebook and join the extended community there.
To continue the above analogy, it would be like being invited to the corporate boxes at the football – you have the large crowd in front of you, but you are also within a much smaller social environment – the best of both worlds. Big is not better – often small is the best place to start.
