Three Steps to Success on Social Media for Start-Ups
1. Create your strategy before your profile
2. Choose your channels wisely and listen to your audience
3. Experiment and be willing to evolve.
A social media presence is essential for startups and small businesses. Used well, social media can help shape your brand, create lasting relationships with consumers, and help you reach out to potential employees.
Digital marketing budgets are at an all-time high as a result of a nation obsessed with social media, online shopping and digital media. The nature of social means that you can benefit from instant feedback during the preliminary stages of your launch. Harnessing this potential is invaluable for positive evolution and cementing confidence in your brand.
Why Should Startups Use Social Media?
Social media channels offer you a route to reach your audience on the platforms that they’re most active on. This means your content in front of as wide an audience as possible, as well as giving you the ability to learn more about your audience by how they use social media.
In addition to free/organic social media use, targeted social media ads mean that you can put your brand message in front of potential brand advocates, grow your audience, generate leads, and more.
To make it easier to tap into social media for startups, we’ve put together three simple steps that can make all the difference:
1. Create your strategy before your profile
Before you get started, you need to know what you want to achieve. This means creating your social media strategy before you even begin creating your social profiles. To achieve your goals, every little piece of content you include will need to stem from your strategy – and the best way to know that you have done this is to have it at the forefront of your mind before you get building.
Define your goals by setting objectives; they could be any combination of the following:
- Building brand awareness
All startups will be using their social media channels to build awareness of their new business. - Distribution of content
If engaging, unique, and niche-specific content is an integral aspect of your startup venture, you should be using social as a primary method of preliminary distribution, driving potential consumers to your website. - Increasing web traffic
This will involve directing users from your social profiles to your website through links (in posts/in bio). - Customer retention and brand loyalty
Social media is an excellent resource for startups to connect with current customers and retain brand loyalty. - Locating and acquiring potential customers
Most social media for startups strategies include finding and acquiring new customers, especially through highly targeted paid campaigns. - Sales and Generating Leads
If you’re looking to generate sales and leads, you’ll have to differ your approach when building a strategy. Think about how your product or service would benefit and provide value to your customers, but avoid coming across too strong on the sales front.
Knowing your objectives will also help define the tonality, feel, and frequency of your posts, which platforms you’ll use, and the variety of audience you reach out to. These elements also have roots in your brand identity.
As a startup business, you may not have the budget to create amazing visual content to stand out from the crowd on social media. Luckily, there are plenty of useful tools to help you create great content for social media, including these alternatives to Adobe Photoshop:
2. Choose your channels wisely and listen to your audience
Not all social networks will be suitable for your objectives and target audience. Consider where the majority of your audience are most active. While there may be billions of users on one network, there is little value if they are not the right type of customer for your business.
Using social media channels, you can listen to your customers/target audience and get involved in their conversations online, as well as monitor your brand health. Social media also contributes to customer service as it opens up opportunities to help your customers with any problems they share, helping to improve relationships with your customers. On the flip side, responding to positive/complimentary will show your customers that you value their opinions.
Social media listening and monitoring can make it easy to get caught up in what your competitors are doing and saying. Remember to remain authentic on your social media instead of copying others if you want to build brand identity, trust, and loyalty.
3. Experiment and be willing to evolve
Take advantage of these early stages of your business and allow yourself to experiment with different content styles and engagement techniques and see what works for you! Always be willing to evolve as you discover more about your industry.
As you gain data over time, use the data to inform your future social media and content strategies by doing more of what works for your brand.
Throughout the process of building social media for startup ventures, be sure to evaluate frequently and comprehensively. If you follow these simple tips, you’ll be on track to create a strong brand identity and community through the use of social media.
Editor’s note: This article was previously updated in 2019 and has been updated for accuracy and relevance in April 2021.
