Search, Social and Email are critical to a successful multi-channel strategy, but it needn’t stop there.

The Hitwise tool can help bring to light unfamiliar sites that you haven’t considered in your digital strategy.

Recently, I looked at sites that dramatically increased in Total Visits over the past year, creating the below list of potential channels to highlight the opportunity they represent.

If you haven’t explored these channels, it may be worth spending time this week playing with some terrific, innovative sites – I’m already a fan of several!

Site	Visits	Purpose of site	Opportunity
	March 2012 11.3 million (March 2011 0.9 million)	Users are served random websites based on their interests, which they  rate and recommend to peers	Post your own websites and allow a wide range of consumers to literally ‘stumble’ across your products. While this is a soft sell approach, links back to your product pages may result in conversions
	March 2102 8.7 million (March 2011 5.0 million)	A blog publishing tool	Identify influential writers posting about your industry and explore ways to partner with them to leverage an alternative, ‘word-of-mouth’ channel that engages more directly with consumers
	March 2012 6.7 million (March 2011 4.1 million)	Similar to YouTube, provides video clips across a range of subjects	Tap into a global client base with short films, newscasts, commercials etc or leverage the various advertising opportunities they offer
	March 2012 3.6 million (March 2011 0)	Users pin photos on particular topics and connect and share with other users	Earn the trust and praise of consumers by contributing quality pins. Include links to your website to enable conversions. Identify influential ‘pinners’ and use them as an alternative communications channel
	March 2012 3.5 million (March 2011 0)	This site features the iPhone application that allows users to share photos	Instagram sells its data to companies, enabling them to identify what products/models should be promoted most heavily and how to optimise window displays, search campaigns etc. Great for promotional campaigns
	March 2012 2.7 million (March 2011 1.3 million)	Reddit identifies what’s popular online by encouraging users to vote on existing links	Post photos, videos etc or ask for help and suggestions from consumers on what they would like to see from your product offering. Identify the topics relevant to consumers and craft your offering around those opinions

Be open to new channels that allow you to talk to consumers about your brand. Before launching into your own campaigns, it costs nothing to listen and learn from how consumers behave on the site.