If you’re a start-up founder, then you know that it can be difficult to get your business off the ground. Marketing is key to getting your start-up off the ground and social media is an excellent place to get started.
In this article, we will give you a beginner’s look at how to start using various platforms for your start-up. We’ll discuss topics such as creating a social media strategy, developing brand awareness, and driving traffic to your website.
Whether you’re just starting out or you’re looking for ways to improve your social media marketing plan, this article is for you!
After all, if people don’t know about your startup, how will you grow?
Why is social media marketing important?
At its core, social media marketing is about connecting with potential customers and building relationships. Whether you’re advertising your start-up on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, using social media effectively can help you reach a wider audience and increase brand awareness.
Additionally, social media platforms are great tools for engaging with existing customers and driving them to your start-up’s website. Whether you’re running contests, asking for feedback, or simply sharing updates about your start-up, social media is the perfect place to start building a loyal following and growing your business.
Here are some meaningful statistics to show you why social media is a powerful tool:
- There are over 4.7 billion social media users globally, which amounts for 59% of the total population.
- People are spending increasing amounts of time on social media. As of 2022, people spend around 147 minutes on social media per day.
- The average person uses 7 social platforms per month
- Internet users spend more than 1/3 of their time online on social media
These statistics demonstrate that social media is a powerful tool for your start-up. With so many users and so much engagement, it can be an effective way to build brand awareness, connect with your target audience, and drive leads and conversions for your start-up.
What are some of the benefits of social media?
1: Brand Awareness
For many, increasing brand awareness is the number one reason they are on social media. With so many users and such a high engagement rate, social media is an excellent way to get your start-up in front of potential customers.
Some of the ways you can increase brand awareness on social media include:
- Creating a unique brand personality
- Having consistent branding across channels
- Create scroll-stopping content
- Take advantage of hashtags
- Use social media as a tool for teaching your audience
Generating brand awareness on social media can be fun! If you’re not sure where to start, our in house social media marketing expert offers consulting! To book time with Avery, click here!
2: Build Credibility
Social media is a great place to build credibility and trust among your target audience. There are many ways to build credibility on social media.
One of the best ways to become more credible is by educating your audience. You can educate your audience on your niche, industry, products/services, and more. A few ways to do this on social media include:
- Blog posts on LinkedIn
- Statistics on Twitter
- Carousel posts with information on Instagram
- Going live and answering Q&A
- Addressing FAQs on your Facebook or Instagram stories
- Creating educational Reels content
You can also engage with your followers by responding promptly to questions and comments and offering valuable insights into their needs and challenges.
Another important factor in building credibility is consistency. You need to regularly post and engage with your followers in order to build trust and credibility.
3: Communicating with your audience
Communication is key to building a strong start-up marketing strategy on social media. This involves using a variety of different communication channels, such as live video streams, Q&A sessions, and educational content like Reels.
Potential customers love to communicate with brands on social media. Many customers have even come to expect brands to provide customer service over social media. Start-ups are no exception and social media can be a great place to connect with your audience in a meaningful way.
4: Low cost marketing
Social media advertising can come at a relatively low cost, making it a great asset to your marketing mix. There are many different platforms out there that provide cost-effective advertising options, such as Facebook and Instagram.
Social media ads can serve a variety of purposes including building brand awareness, promoting new products or services, and even collecting customer feedback.
Plus, an added benefit of social media advertising is that you can set the budget.
In order to make your campaigns more effective, make sure that you have scroll-stopping highly visual content. The goal is to catch the viewer’s eye in a highly active marketplace.
Is there anything we should do before we start marketing on social media?
The short answer here is yes.
As with any marketing effort, you want to be sure that you have a picture of who your target audience is before you proceed. Having an ideal buyer persona is an immensely valuable tool that can guide your marketing efforts both on and offline.
Although it would be great for everyone to be interested in what your start-up has to offer, that’s unfortunately rarely the reality.
In order to understand your ideal customer, you should know:
- Their buying habits
- Their demographic information
- Where they spend their time online
- What their interests are
- What their pain points are
- Why they need your product/service
Another thing you should have figured out before creating social media profiles for your start-up is what your core values are.
Understanding your core values will help guide your social media efforts and create consistency online and offline.
Should I have organic or paid social media marketing?
Ideally, both!
Organic social media efforts can be a great way to start building your brand and connecting with potential customers. However, paid social media ads can help you reach a larger audience more quickly, allowing you to get the word out about your start-up faster and more effectively.
With that said, it’s important to start small and focus on one or two platforms at first. That way, you can learn what works best for your start-up and gradually expand from there.
If you’re planning on incorporating paid social media efforts, be sure not to be too promotional too often. The ideal ratio is 80/20: 80% educational, informational, or entertaining content and 20% promotional content. Users don’t like to be sold to all the time on social media and too much selling can lead someone to unfollow you.
If you’re wondering which social media platform is right for you, check out our article on choosing the best platform for your business!
How can I stay consistent?
Consistency is key when it comes to social media marketing.
Posting weekly and consistently is a critical element of building awareness and credibility for your start-up on any social platform.
Ultimately, consistency comes down to how much bandwidth you can dedicate to social media. If you have a dedicated team member, you should be posting 4-6 times per week. If you’re at the point where you’re doing things yourself, try to get started with 1-2 posts per week and add on more as you continue to grow.
Scheduling software like Later can help make things easier. Later allows you to schedule your content in advance and, therefore, you can dedicate a few hours of the week to scheduling everything beforehand.
If you’d like to check out Later, you can follow this link here to schedule your first 10 posts for free!
(Just as a note, if you use this referral link, we will get 10 free posts as well.)
Consistency is much easier when you commit to a smaller number of platforms that are more targeted towards your audience. Many start-ups use LinkedIn and Twitter as their primary platforms. These can be much more manageable as they tend to allow for more text-based posting and require less time creating visual content.
The use of video on social media platforms is increasing, so be sure to keep that in consideration when creating content.
What other marketing tools can I use to strengthen my social media marketing?
- Retargeting is a great way to supplement your social media marketing efforts, as it helps you reach people who have already engaged with your start-up in some way.
- SEO: optimizing your start-up’s website and social media content for search engines can help you reach a wider audience and drive more traffic to your site.
- Email: using email marketing to connect with your start-up’s followers can help build stronger relationships and keep them engaged.
Each of these tools can be supplemented easily with social media. For example, you can retarget individuals that have visited your social media pages. You could send visitors to your website through compelling captions and images. And you can use social media to build your start-up’s email list, by creating lead magnets and offering incentives for signing up.
With the right combination of these tools, start-ups can effectively market themselves on social media and reach a wider audience than ever before.
Key Takeaways:
- Social media marketing can be valuable for building brand awareness and credibility
- Social media channels are a great way to communicate with your audience
- You should know who your target audience is before getting started on social media
- Consistency is key!
- Paid social media marketing can be low-cost and can help to enhance your organic strategy
- Social media marketing can work in tandem with your other digital marketing strategies to create a robust brand presence for your start-up
Social media marketing is a powerful tool for start ups, as it can help you reach potential customers and build brand awareness in a cost-effective way. Whether your start up is focused on e-commerce, B to B services, or anything else, social media offers an excellent opportunity to engage with your target audience and grow your business.
If you’re looking for some help getting started with social media marketing for your start-up, contact us at Agency 8! Avery Sly, our dedicated social media expert, has over 4 years of experience managing social media accounts for businesses. She has personally gained over 100 million views on her Instagram Reels and offers consulting to start-ups to guide their social media efforts. To book time with Avery, click here!
