Deciding your startup’s social media strategy? Read this

Startups in the early stages that are trying to get their name and product or service out there with very little budget always seem to turn to social media. This isn’t bad, in fact it’s quite good but most of the time it isn’t always great.

When startups think about social media, to them it seems to be just a place to sell their product or a way to get people talking about the company. All that is great but social media isn’t just something you do without purpose. Just being on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram isn’t a strategy. Before you try to use a platform to drum up publicity for your soon to be instant success, think about what you want to achieve. What is the holistic vision of your social media strategy, what do you want to get out of it and is it sustainable?

First steps: let’s crawl a bit, walk then run

Just because most social media platforms are free and fairly self-explanatory doesn’t mean they are easy to use or that the people will come. When it comes to social, building it doesn’t mean they will come. If you are a B2C startup, Twitter and Facebook may be a better option for you than LinkedIn for instance.

Twitter is great because it’s a content heavy platform and your company can easily get value from it if used properly. It can generate new customers, which translate into sales. Facebook is a good platform to engage your customers especially if your company is quite product focused.

If you are a B2B business on the other hand, it might be better to focus on LinkedIn and Twitter. LinkedIn is great for enterprise because the majority of your target market is here. It’s great for targeting specific industries and the use of groups makes it easy to focus message and content. In this instance, Twitter is good to help you create interesting bite-sized content that can direct the audience back to your LinkedIn page for a more thought info burst.

Also it’s important to realise that in the world of social there are rules; learn to follow them. Facebook is not there to make your business popular, it exists to connect people and Twitter is a place where people go to share their experiences. Join in and play by the rules don’t take it over and shove your ideas down their throats.

Time: too much is as bad as too little

Social media is not a haphazard project that you get involved in just because everyone else is doing it. It takes consideration, careful planning and management to be successful at it. As a startup social media is only one part of your marketing and engagement strategy. You have to decide what the return of investment needs to be and how much time you are willing to dedicate to it in order to get the right return. Do not spread yourself too thin, optimize your content for your audience, use analytics to understand the content that gets the most traction and the time the audience is more active.

There is no point sharing five-million Instagram photos of a new product at midnight when half your audience is asleep. Scheduling well thought out and engaging posts beforehand so that they appear in your target market’s feed just when they are more likely to view it makes all the difference. Importantly, it means your time is spent wisely on growing your businesses rather than wondering how many Google plus ones you’re getting. Track and measure everything.

Why so serious: learn to play a little

If all you are doing is sharing information about your product constantly that may be a fast way to lose your audience, you want to mix things up a bit. Share other content that relates to your product but isn’t necessarily about it. I really like the iFix Facebook page, the company fixes iDevices. You’d think the service it provides doesn’t leave room for much when it comes to sharing content, but actually it does. iFix is quite clever about sharing Apple related content, mobile information in general and useful tips for iDevice owners.

Find ways to give your audience some fun-filled value, engage their humourous side and give them water-cool content.

The bottom line when it comes to social is to keep learning and research the heck out of it.