Whether you remember the days of MySpace or grew up with Facebook, social media has likely been a major part of your life. With that said, social media can be about much more than posting selfies and pictures of your dinner.
Many smart startups gain tons of traffic and customers from social media. If you’re wondering how to promote a startup on social media, look no further!
Based on our 10 years spent working in the social media world, these tips work better than anything else.
Table of Contents
1. Claim accounts on all popular social media platforms.
If you think that the average person only uses one social media platform, think again. According to Hootsuite, the average person uses 7.2 social media accounts each month. With that in mind, at least in the early stages of a social media strategy, it’s important to create accounts on all the popular platforms.
We’re sure you know the ones. But, just in case, use these platforms to start creating your social media presence:
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- TikTok
Once you have accounts created on these platforms, save your screen names and passwords. Now, you can move on to step #2.
2. Provide as much info as possible.
As you begin creating accounts on social media platforms, you’ll notice sections allowing you to add more information about your startup. In most cases, the people visiting your social media have some level of interest in your business.
So, it’s a must to ensure they don’t see those generic, gray person with no features, profile pic. Take or create a great logo and slap it on your startup’s multiple social media accounts as your profile picture.
The next step is to add images of your company. Placing great photos on your social media platforms humanizes your startup. It’s also imperative to round out a strong social media profile with a description of your company.
In your profile descriptions, aim to answer questions like:
- What does your startup do?
- What makes your startup unique?
- What are the main things you want people or companies to know about your company?
3. Share a mixture of relevant content.
At this point, you reached the crucial part of any social media strategy: posting content. Depending on how much content exists from your company, your exact posting schedule can vary.
In the interest of keeping this part simple, we recommend sharing what your target audience wants. Addressing these wants can involve posting content from your business. But it’s just as important to share content from other relevant sources.
And, of course, don’t share content from your competitors. However, relevant news, studies, or anything from reliable companies you’re not competing with is fair game to share.
4. Stay consistent with your social media strategy.
Posting quality content is essential for success on social media. However, it’s just as important to make you’re posting consistently. No matter what social media platform you use, you’re likely going to face lots of competition.
One of the best ways to beat your competition is with a consistent posting schedule.
While this strategy is effective, it’s not for the lazy. At first, a great social media marketing strategy means finding your “best” platforms.
And that’s going to involve posting multiple times per week on all the popular social platforms. Soon, you’ll begin to notice more followers on certain platforms. That leads us to our next step.
5. Narrow down your focus.
At this point, your social media strategy should uncover a few platforms with more followers and engagement than others. Your fingers get a slight break at this stage.
Narrow your startup’s focus to the few platforms where your social media marketing efforts are paying off the most. If 10,000 Facebook users are fans of your company, and you struggle to get YouTube followers, Facebook’s one of your chosen platforms.
With your platforms selected, you can now focus on building social media presence on these special websites.
Now’s the perfect time to take a look at your top-performing content. Find or create content similar to these topics and continue posting. At this point, you could even step up your posting frequency a bit.
6. Find trending topics
Hopefully, your well of content never runs dry. But if it does, or you need a little extra inspiration, check out trending topics. You can use websites such as Google Trends and Google News to learn about the latest trends.
Another place to learn about all the latest trends is Reddit. Simply follow a few relevant groups or “subreddits” and sort by what’s new or hot in the past few weeks or months.
You can also look through social media to learn about trending topics. Just remember to act fast with trending subjects. Waiting too long to create content about these topics can mean missing out on a nice wave of traffic.
7. Understand what works best on each social media platform.
One factor separating a great social media marketing strategy from a bad one is knowing what content works on different platforms.
- Facebook: Regardless of how you feel about Facebook or Meta, your startup still needs a page here. While Facebook’s organic reach is decreasing, it could be worth exploring a few paid ad campaigns on this platform.
- Twitter: This platform is best for short-form content (less than 280 characters). Twitter is great for posting company updates. You can still share links, but keep it short and sweet.
- Instagram: Instagram users are about all things visual. The bump in the road of using Instagram in your marketing plan is not being able to insert links in your posts.
- TikTok: Whether you love it or hate it, TikTok isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We’ve heard mixed things about using this topic from a marketing perspective, so be careful that you’re not too promotional.
- Pinterest: This social network is about much more than sharing recipes or decor tips. Using Pinterest in an effective social media strategy is all about creating great visuals.
8. Pay to promote your top-performing content.
Posting content that your target audience likes is a great way to gain organic traffic. With that said, your startup can also have success with paid campaigns.
Running paid social media ads are great ways to get instant traffic to your landing page or whatever else you’re driving traffic to. You don’t have to only promote your best social media content. It’s also possible to create ads for your startup’s best blog posts or something similar.
If you want more engagement for certain posts, boosting them by paying to promote them is a smart idea.
9. Start groups
Your startup can also appeal to its target audience by creating groups on social media. For instance, due to its now limited organic reach, some companies find they can show up in more feeds by creating groups.
In most cases, you don’t want to name this group the same name as your startup. Instead, we recommend naming your social media group around the topic you specialize in.
10. Split test
Wouldn’t it be cool if you magically knew what content your target market would engage with the most? Unfortunately, that doesn’t exist (yet). But, you know what does? Split testing, the next best thing to being able to read your audience’s collective mind.
Don’t worry if split or A/B testing is a new concept. Here’s how it works:
- You create a few social media posts, each slightly different than the other. This strategy also works with paid social ads.
- Social media users each see different variations of your ads.
- By looking through analytical data, you can learn about what ads or posts earn the most likes, shares, and other forms of engagement.
11. Communicate with other accounts.
We admit, so far, we’ve left out one major aspect of social media: being social! Communicating with other personal and business accounts is a vital part of a great social media marketing strategy.
This concept is also known as relationship marketing, and it can be a vital part of your company’s strategies. Responding to followers and accounts mentioning your brand takes your business far beyond creating good-quality content.
One of the top social media tips we can give you is always responding kindly. Eventually, there will be a time or two (or more) when someone is trashing your company. Always responding with kindness makes your company look like the bigger person…or business. You know what we mean.
12. Check out the competition’s content.
What’s a social media marketing plan without seeing what your competition is up to? In all seriousness, monitoring the competition’s content is a great way to learn what your target audience wants – because your companies share the same main audience.
Of course, you won’t be able to see every unique insight into how your competition’s content performs. But looking at likes, shares, and similar forms of engagement can guide you along your startup’s social media marketing campaign.
13. Ask your target audience questions.
Your startup can also boost its social media performance by asking its audience questions. After all, what do people like talking about more than themselves?
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with what you ask your audience. Some companies include followers in their social media marketing plans by straight up asking them what content they want to see next.
There you have it, your complete look at how any startup can succeed with its social media efforts. The previously mentioned tips help your startup cover the crucial aspects of connecting with and growing a big audience on social media.
If you’d like to learn more about how to market your startup, don’t miss out on signing up for Content Marketing Life’s free weekly Build a Better Startup newsletter.
Alex Eagleton is a copywriter and digital marketer passionate about helping companies connect with customers. Throughout the past decade, he’s worked with companies including Referral Rock, Connecteam, and Ramsey Solutions. He’s a versatile writer who understands how to align with companies, truly matching their voices and tones.
When he’s not writing, he enjoys spending time with his dogs, reading, and playing guitar.
You can reach him by emailing alex@contentmarketinglife.com.