Social media has transformed the ways businesses reach consumers. It is less expensive than other marketing channels and a great way to connect with your target audience and get your brand in front of them. It has helped many brands maximize their reach, so it can be a powerful weapon to increase brand awareness and lead generation for your startup as well.
Social media is a necessity for all businesses and startups, and almost all of them have social media profiles, yet many of them fail. Like any other marketing channel, you need to have a plan – an effective social media strategy to be successful on social media. In today’s competitive world, there are many businesses fighting for attention, so you need to make sure that your social media efforts are effective.
5 Proven Ways to Build a Social Media Strategy for Your Startup
Here are some tips that will help you enhance your brand awareness, market your startup effectively, and ultimately fulfill your marketing goals.
#1. Establish Your Mission, Objectives, and Goals
Before creating and implementing a social media strategy, you must first build or improve your social media profile.
You should be clear about why you want to be on social media and what you hope to accomplish there for your startup. Are you just there to build awareness? Do you want to offer customer service, do you want to build a reputation as a fun brand that posts memes, or something else? Establish your mission, objectives, and goals you want to achieve. Based on this, you can choose social media platforms that meet your objectives.
Start building a strong social media page and make sure it contains complete business information with captivating images.
#2. Know Your Audience
It is important to research your customer base, identify your target audience, and know which segment of the audience you want to cater to.
You should collect customer data on a regular basis. For instance, you can add an extra field for subscribers to enter their date of birth while subscribing to your email list. This will give you an idea of the people who are most interested in your products or services and you can target that age group.
To have a clear understanding of your customer base, you should build customer profiles by collecting data about them.
#3. Choose Social Media Platforms that Are Ideal for Your Brand
Once your audience is defined, you will be able to select the ideal social media platform to market your brand on, and also direct your targeting strategy on that platform.
For instance, if you are a B2B brand, LinkedIn and Facebook are your best options. On the other hand, if your business directly caters to consumers, you should utilize platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Choosing a social media platform to market your startup will also depend on the kind of content that you are focusing on. For instance, Instagram will be your ideal option for your social media marketing efforts if you are focusing more on photos and short video-type content.
#4. Create High-Quality Content
“Content is king”. This rule remains same for all social media platforms. You should devote lots of time and effort to your content strategy and create content that adds value to your audience. Through your content, you will be able to set a tone and establish a voice for your brand.
It is important to develop a content strategy as it will give you a clear direction. To implement an effective strategy, you should know what type of content your audience would be interested in. You must then determine how frequently you need to post and how to best promote your content.
You can publish or convey your content through blog posts, infographics, videos, presentations, podcasts, and more. You can also give your audience an insight into your office culture by sharing behind-the-scenes photos and videos. Sharing your journey and the story behind your company name and product is an excellent way to create transparency, which in turn creates likeability and gives people a reason to follow you. Humanizing your brand helps you cultivate your brand's personality and values by establishing meaningful connections with your audience.
#5. Ensure Maximum Engagement for Your Brand
Your brand should be able to build a connection with your audience. For this, you need to make sure that you respond to all the compliments, feedback, queries, and even complaints on the social media platform.
Remember, all the likes, shares, comments, brand mentions, and reactions that your content receives are different forms of engagement and you should implement your social media strategy effectively to ensure maximum engagement for your brand.
You can also create groups or join groups that are relevant to your products or services where you can actively interact with your target audience. Building a community around your brand and constantly engaging with your community will help you build brand loyalty, leading to better conversion rates.
Wrapping Up
Customers who have a good social media service experience with a brand will most likely recommend it to others. A well-planned and well-executed social media strategy can help you improve brand awareness, customer acquisition, and lead generation.
It can be difficult for a startup to start from scratch and slowly build a social media presence; however, implementing the tips mentioned in this post will make your job simpler.
Author bio
Andy Beohar is VP of SevenAtoms, a Google and HubSpot-certified agency in San Francisco. Andy develops and manages ROI-positive inbound and paid marketing campaigns for B2B & Tech companies. Connect with Andy on LinkedIn or Twitter.
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