As a new business owner, social media is one of the most valuable tools you have in your arsenal. If you don’t have a robust social media strategy in place, then you’re going to struggle to retain a loyal base for your product or service, and you might also lose conversions due to a lack of engagement with your core audience.
The importance of using social media as an outreach tool and as a way to build organic brand awareness has been well-documented, but you may not know how to implement these practices. We’ve put together a few tips and tricks to help you make the most of the tools at your disposal, so here’s our guide to social media for new startups.
Success won’t come overnight
The first thing to realise about social media for business is that it’s not an instant fast track to success. You aren’t going to notice results immediately; implementing a strong social media strategy takes a lot of time, not to mention experience, so you’ll need to make sure that you keep at it. If you’re struggling, it’s a good idea to look into platforms like https://tikfreefollowers.com, which will help you to build a following and get started. From there, though, you’ll still have to create quality content regularly, or people will get bored and move on.
Content is king
When it comes to your social media strategy, there’s one thing to bear in mind: content is king. Creating great content is what will get you a lasting following; you can advertise your product or service all you like, but if you come across as too “salesy”, then you won’t endear yourself to your audience. Creating funny, relatable, and engaging content is important, and if you can make it educational as well, that’s an added bonus. There’s no fast track to social media success, but if there’s one thing you should always be doing, it’s making content people love.
Sign up for everything
You might not think that you need every social media platform under your belt, but you’d be mistaken. Signing up for every single social media platform you can is a must, and creating a unified posting schedule is also important. That’s where tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck come in; they’ll allow you to automate posts so that you don’t get overwhelmed by the amount of content you need to create for these platforms. Perennial apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are good options, but you also need to make sure you’re across any emergent platforms that are on the rise.
Hire a dedicated social media professional
If your startup has some extra cash lying around to hire staff, then one of the people you should consider hiring is a dedicated social media professional. As an entrepreneur, you might not have time to post on social media, even if you have automated your schedule, and so delegating that task to a dedicated professional is a good idea. Ideally, they’ll know what kind of approach to take in order to win over your audience, and they’ll also know what kind of register to use to reinforce the core values you have at the centre of your brand.
Use paid ad campaigns
As the old adage goes, “you’ve got to spend money to make money”. That goes for the world of social media marketing as well. While content marketing will go a long way towards helping you to retain an audience, paying for traditional ad campaigns within social media is also a good idea. Paid ad campaigns can be remarkably effective, especially on platforms like TikTok; you might not think that a platform more geared towards authenticity would value a paid campaign, but according to the statistics, you’d be wrong.
Talk to your customers
There’s nothing worse than a brand that feels like a robot on social media. Have you ever seen a Twitter exchange where a user will say something funny or off-the-cuff to a brand, only to be met with a robotic-seeming response? That’s exactly what you want to avoid. Talk to your customers and make sure you fully understand their complaints or comments before you respond. Social media can help you to build a rapport with the people who use your business, but you’ve got to make sure you’re going about it the right way or you could do some serious damage to your brand.
Emphasise SEO, but write natural content
Just like any other kind of content, social media also relies on SEO to make sure it’s visible on Google and other search engines. However, it’s arguably even more important to make sure social media content looks and feels natural than on other platforms. This is why you need to make sure that SEO is both a cornerstone of your content creation strategy and also a background element. It’s difficult, but with a little practice and competitor research, you’ll quickly start picking up and assimilating the necessary techniques for creating great social media content.
Don’t overdo it
When a social media post you’ve created goes viral, it might tempt you to create a whirlwind of them to see if any more hit the big time. This would be a mistake. Sit back and enjoy your social media success, and definitely don’t stop posting, but don’t try to capture lightning in a bottle twice. Instead, keep on creating the content that feels right for you and your brand. It’s also important not to “overpost”; too much exposure to your brand could make your audience sick of you, but it could also make Google and other search engines think you’re spamming, which is lethal for your SEO.
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