You have realized that Social media is an ocean of opportunities with both big and small fish swimming around.
An easily accessible audience following the flow of trends and marketing gimmicks.
These fish or potential customers are constantly on the lookout for something new and shiny.
But how do you attract their attention?
All it takes is well-thought-out social media marketing for startups to lure new customers & interact with the existing ones.
A perfect setting for your startup to flare things up, get noticed, and get going.
Don’t stress over the “when and how to start social media marketing for small business”; it’s no rocket science, and yes, literally anyone can do it! With just a little nudge in the right direction.
Remember how a simple picture of an egg from an unknown account became the most-liked pic on Instagram?
How will you know what social media platform your audience is using?
The easy answer is to immerse yourself completely into the world of your consumers:
Search for problems like your customers will
Take this for instance, “How to bake a cake?” If you are selling a cake mix, you might find YouTube influencers, recipe groups, and other social media forums that your audience is frequently visiting.
Mimic your users when searching on popular social media platforms
You will get a general idea about the volume of people talking about specific things on different platforms. After conducting thorough research on where your audience is, you can “cook up” your own marketing strategy for a startup to target them.
Where is your competition?
After all, the success of your competition’s chosen platform will define a very important battleground.
Keep in mind that as a startup, you can’t go wrong with Facebook, especially because of the sheer amount of users that browse the platform frequently. Close to 3 billion each month!
All you need is the know-how of the best Facebook tools for your brand and you are good to go!
“Don’t miss out on a platform just because your competitors don’t have it covered”
For you, it is more important to focus on the audience rather than the big players. That doesn’t mean you can just ignore the big blue whales who already have their startup marketing through social media as one of the channels.
You need to find a strategic balance between the two. Let’s find out how.
Interesting Read: 5 Examples of Personalization in Social Media Marketing
Tip 2 – Read and research your competition
If you are thinking of being the next Tesla and beating Elon Musk at his own game, then you need to understand how they got to where they are.
You have to believe that you can be the next big company that breaks free from the crowd & you will. Just keep a careful watch on your marketing plan, including social media for start ups, along with the product/service efficiency.
Not sure who you are competing against?
A simple google search around the niche of your product will show you a list of companies that have some market standing.
If you want to make an app or a website to teach people Spanish then you get a list of companies that are dominating the field of online Spanish language teaching.
You may look for affordable app development services that specialize in language learning applications to ensure a solid foundation for your project. But that’s not enough.
Almost all startups in today’s day & age are implementing small business marketing as nobody would want to go into battle without the right gear, do they?
I am talking about a digital Social media manager, a tool that syncs social platforms, schedules posts, reads results, and reaps the rewards.
Find one of those almost free social media scheduling tools that syncs all your social platforms in one place.
When compared to thousands of dollars that companies shed on social media software, it is one of those almost free social media scheduling tools that syncs all your social platforms in one place.
Tip 3 – Digital Marketing for Small Businesses Revolving Around Content
You don’t have to create a complicated web with too many layers, not at the beginning at least!
Start off with a simple plan. Social media marketing for startups is more about trial & error. You mightn’t get it right in the first few weeks or months but you have to be consistent with it.
“Don’t be just out of the box, think out of the world if you need to, but still respect the process
Especially if you are new to the game and haven’t tested the waters yet.
Many social media management studies have shown the efficacy of the “80/20” Rule.
No, this isn’t about splitting the café bill unevenly. It answers your question – “what to post on social media?”
What do I mean by Informational and promotional content?
- 80% of the content needs to be informational, something your followers can easily share and engage with.
- 20% of the content needs to have an enticing Call to Action.
Wondering what that looks like? Have a glance at Hubspot’s brilliant yet subtle social media strategy
The 80% Informational and sharable content in action:
Another one pulling on the user’s emotional strings.
The other 20% looks something like this:
Thousands of industry experts have devised numerous ways to market themselves, but you don’t need to follow the same social media marketing strategy for your startup.
Still, it is good to have a researched plan to fall back on, doesn’t it? So when in doubt, go the 80/20 way.
Interesting Read: 6 Content Marketing KPIs to Track Your Online Brand Presence
I am sure you have a lot of ideas that you want to try out but don’t make it a spontaneous task. Why not? Because each day you will want to prioritize a different aspect of your brand.
And that is wrong because your users will be left confused with the different types of things you post each day. Your digital marketing for small businesses should focus on communicating the overall vision of your business.
Think of a pizza with random flavors and toppings piling on top of it! Not just Pineapple but maybe strawberry, schezwan & mayo. All together on top of your Pizza! Would you want to eat that? I hope the answer is no.
That’s how your social media content will appear to the audience if there isn’t a social media business strategy.
“A Social media calendar for startups is a beautiful combination of structure & creativity combined”
It is better to jot down all your ideas in a calendar. What this will do is give your brand a smooth consistency that flows together perfectly!
Now, all you have to do is start creating and scheduling posts with a reliable social media scheduling tool social media scheduling tool.
The success of Amazon, a trillion-dollar company, can be tracked and credited to their “dive into the data and swim in it” approach.
“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess” ~ Ronald Coase, a Nobel prize winner in Economics.
That means you can literally create value out of thin air, a fire in a social media vacuum. Just by catching that slight flicker of flame and fueling it.
Now that we have answered your “how to start social media marketing?” part, let us get to the equally important “how to measure your small business marketing?”
You can see that each company goal mentioned in the image has a separate metric to focus on.
This cycle of Awareness — Engagement — Conversions — Consumer Retention— can also act as a step by step consumer journey.
Social Media Analytics tools help you navigate through these steps with amazing simplicity, which is important when you also have other organizational functions to take care of.
That’s not all.
You will also see actionable points that you can work on! For instance:
- It helps to know which posts performed well and which flunked.
- Track your high performing social media networks
- Video Vs Gif Vs Infographic Vs Text, who won with your audience?
- What to promote on social media?
And even highlights the best times to post on social media.
Without tracking your progress, your successes, your misses, and your crashes, you will not break out of the vicious cycle of mediocrity.
What is social listening? It is exactly as it sounds, tuning your ears to social mentions, comments & online whispers.
Let’s walk you through it.
You are the owner of a coffee shop that also sells baked goods.
One fine morning, two girls walk inside merrily chatting.
“The latte mocha here is divine!” one says.
“Yeah, I love it,” the other one replies. “But I don’t like the blueberry cheesecake, it is way too hard”.
Now, you start thinking if others also feel the same way about your precious blueberry cheesecake.
So you ask around the shop, you listen to people and realize that most have the same feedback.
This is an example of social learning revealing a truth that you didn’t know existed.
When you include tracking your comments, @mentions, and discussions about your brand/niche, you will unveil the holy grail of startup growth through social media, that is, “what do people actually like & what do they want to change?”
Make it a point to always listen to your customers, respond, and keep them in the loop of all the changes you implement for them. Keeping up with this practice can turn your way, especially if you’re a startup trying to establish your own social media strategy.
Don’t clutter your mind and your workload. A structured approach makes things smooth and sorted.
And Social media management works no differently. By opting for the right social media marketing strategy for a startup, you can have the right balance between flexibility and structure, to catapult growth.
