For any business, the first thing in mind is to reach out to its potential clients and your target audience. It used to be an extremely difficult task even a few decades back. But now, the Internet has transformed the world into a small place.
Platforms, such as social media websites, ensure that you can connect with people from all walks of life in no time at all. This is what’s making social media websites a favorite among business owners. However, if your business is a startup, there are a number of things that you need to keep in mind while using social media. Every step needs to be undertaken prudently to ensure that they do not have any negative impact – but instead can drive the business forward in style.
Social Media for Startups
Coordinate All the Platforms You Use
Want to be successful on social media? You have many platforms to use and you might focus on a couple of them.
However, to get the most out of them, you need to use them all. The major thing you need to do while using all the social media platforms is to coordinate them properly. If each social media page remains as a stand-alone effort on your part, they are not likely to deliver the results that you desire. Hence, your efforts will not be of any help.
However, it can be an easy task if you are focused. All you need to do is integrate your social media with your blog and website.
Optimize Your Blog and Website
Both your website as well as your blog need to be optimized for social media. You should use social media icons, which should be displayed prominently on pages. It will help to ensure that readers will share your page if they like your content. This, in turn, will result in more visits.
Social media platforms should have links so that visitors can go directly from these pages to your website. This can also be a good way to increase traffic to your website.
Pay Attention to and Participate in Social Media Conversations
Whether it’s a large, well known company or a startup such as yours, paying heed to social media conversations is a must. Almost all the time, someone is speaking about your brand. You need to know all of them.
Moreover, you should also participate in these conversations. To drive your business to perform well, it is important to be active on social media websites. You should ensure that you reply to all comments and queries that are posted on your blog and social media posts.
However, you need to take a perfectly balanced approach to monitor what you are saying on these websites. These small actions can play major roles in helping you connect directly with your potential clients.
Join Relevant Groups
When you are planning to manage social media for a startup business, the first thing should be to spread the word about your website among your target audience. And there are quite a few ways to do it. You should try to connect with as many people as you can. If you find some of them to have an interest in what your business offers, even better.
The easiest way to find people interested in your offerings is to join a group on the subject. Take part in discussions on topics related to your website. And, if possible, refer to your website in a veiled manner. You should try your best to ensure that people are visiting your website, but your efforts should not be so blatant that they appear as a publicity strategy.
Spread the Word
Being a startup, you should focus your efforts on making your company more and more popular among the people. Are you ready to spend some increasing the publicity of your company? Posting ads on different social media websites may turn out to be an outstanding decision. It lets people know about the existence of your company, its offerings, and so on.
Moreover, you should also participate in different conversations in groups and pages. Mention your company every now and then. This can be a useful strategy to let people know about the existence of your company, which is a new organization. It will help you in the long run to make the most out of social media.
Include a Call to Action
These days, the call to action is a must. It is important for you to include a call to action at the end. You can ask readers to follow your business page on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms.
You can also ask them to share among their friends and peers, so that it can act as a form of indirect publicity.
Start Small to Have Full Control
Social media is an excellent platform to connect. And once you have identified your target audience, it is possible to use it for the best results. However, always remember that social media is a vast platform. You are a startup and still new in the field, so it is always better to start small. You need to have a grasp on all your activities on social media.
For any startup, social media can turn out to be a great way to move forward. If you are the business owner, you need to undertake every step involving social media platforms prudently. It can turn out to be a game changer and create a strong base for your company.
Social Media Photo via Shutterstock
Great advice, and don’t feel compelled to be on every social platform under the sun. Start small, do a great job, and then expand to the next platform.
Yes Robert, it is really important to start small. Else we might lose our way. Social media these days is really a vast platform. Starting small will help us chalk out the way without any hassle.
There are a lot of social media platforms out there. Joining them all and taking part in conversations on all of them – just the thought of that brings on a sense of overwhelm by proxy. And that’s not counting new social media platforms that might launch in the future. Unless they hired a social media team I guess.
That’s where the importance of starting small lies Ebele. It will help to keep the whole process under control and you will be able to make the most of it.
William: Definitely with you on starting small as it makes it more manageable (psychologically so, too). But, even if it was something I gradually grew into (or got used to managing so many of them), I’m not sure I’d want to be on every social media platform going.
Mary @ fruitionMedia
William you touched upon three points that many small businesses miss: paying attention to social media conversations, joining groups and a call to action. Do you have any statistics, validating the efficacy these strategies?
No Mary, I’m sorry. Right now I don’t have any specific statistics in hand. Will surely look for one and share with you in near future.
Aira Bongco
Another thing I have learned is that you don’t need to use all social media platforms. Choose two that you can maximize and stay there. Let’s face it. Managing social accounts can always get confusing so it is better to just manage a couple of accounts.
Two I can manage! I’m the most active on Facebook, followed by Twitter. But to be completely honest, Twitter’s never really done it for me, so I might drop it. I’m looking into Pinterest.
Yes Aira, using too many social media platforms can just confuse you. It might not be two, but keep the number low and ensure that you are able to synchronize all the sites you are using.
Keeping on top of all social media platforms as a start up as well as day-to-day work can be a big struggle. It’s great if you can register the majority of social media networks to begin with (securing your business account name where possible) and start off managing just a few of these accounts. You can always revisit the dormant accounts at a later date. If you get it right, it can be a great source of traffic.
Yes Bill, that’s why you should only keep a few active accounts on social media. And what is most important is selecting the few right social media websites. And if you can manage those few accounts properly, that will be almost enough for your startup.
Nice post William.
I tend to have a different use case for each of the social channels/platforms and might in some cases only use one or two per site. Pinterest for example is great for Ecommerce sites targeting women between 25-50ish and is great for attracting traffic to a site. Stumbleupon has worked well for me on a fitness website with one post alone attracting over 200k hits in the last 6 months but you might have issues getting these viewers to convert past the first view. The list goes on but just trying to highlight a point here, and to agree with other comments above – its very easy to get overwhelmed if you try to do too much too soon.
Cheers
Gary.