Social Media for Startups

It is better to get your social media rolling as soon as you and your co-founder (assuming you have one) decide to build a minimal valuable product (MVP). Even before you have your product ready to be tested on real customers, social media provides you with great opportunity to listen to what’s going on in your industry and allows you to connect with first potential customers and build a list of first customers.

Pick right social media channels
As we all know there are 4 main social media channels that every company has to embrace: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Linkedin. If your company is in retail or e-commerce or any other business where visual presentation of the product is critical you will have to become very active on Instagram and Pinterest. But for most of us, the Big 4 social media channels will be a good start.

Select a social media management tool
There are tons of social media management tools around and you can find much information online comparing them with each other. I personally used Hootsuite and Buffer app. I like Buffer for its simple interface and easy scheduling but Hootsuite is much better when it comes to listening and monitoring.

Create a schedule
After you are done connecting your social accounts to the tool of your choice, you need to create a schedule for your social media updates. I would recommend starting with 3 or 4 updates per day. 2-3 updates can be related to industry news and the other one or two should be created by your team and somehow related to what your company does. For example: you can share a new blog post, new company update, case study, product feature update, or feedback request. Scoop.it is a great tool for your team to find related articles and news (and it has a free version). Another way to stay on top of the things that happen in your industry is to follow news websites, blogs, and resources related to your industry. I suggest you create a new list (‘News’) on your Twitter account and add all resources related to your industry. Also, make sure you include prominent industry experts and influencers. Most of them provide highly valuable information to your target customers.

Follow competitors
Following competitors will allow you to monitor what is going on on their side as well as jump into any conversation where you can add value. When their customer complains or asks a question, do not hesitate to help out. But be genuine when doing that.

Follow who follows your competitors
The nature of Twitter is such that people pay attention who follows them and in many cases they follow you back (I’ve noticed that between 20-40% of people follow me back but it depends on relevancy — so be sure to include short descriptive info about your company/product in your profile). It is a great way to expose your company and product to someone who would never had heard of you otherwise. In many cases such connections lead your competitor’s followers to visit your page, read your product offering in the description, and follow you back. Congratulations, you have just made an elevator pitch to someone online. You also open the door for new customers to check out your websites and maybe even capture their interest enough to sign-up for a trial or a freemium.

NOTE 1: As always, there are many options when it comes to tools that help companies research, discover, and add new followers. I personally suggestwww.justunfollow.com because they make it very easy to add followers using a particular Twitter handle or research a hashtag. Be sure to research hashtags that will help you filter relevant tweets. I personally recommend -www.hashtags.org, which shows you how popular particular hashtag is so that you can maximize the exposure for your tweets.

NOTE 2: You need to find a way to quickly pass the barrier of 2K followers on Twitter so that you don’t have to worry about how many people you can follow.

Follow companies that have same target customer
Your target customer uses many tools and services. Find the main players in the industry and start follow their social media audience. Again, it is a great way for you to have a quick introduction to a potential customer.

For example: if you are creating a product for sales teams, be sure to check out companies that provide products to this target audience such as Datanyze(real-time data on the technologies that every website uses), Yesware (sales performance tool for Gmail), SalesLoft (tool for building high-quality prospect list), Insightsquared (Salesforce analytics tool), among others. Many of their followers will be a great connection for you and it is a quick way to get exposure for your company and product.

Follow industry experts and bloggers
You can make a separate list on Twitter and add industry experts/bloggers so your team can easily scan through their tweets and decide whether some of them are worth retweeting for your social media audience.

Follow your customers and encourage feedback
As soon as you get a new customer create a private list on your Twitter (named ‘Customers’) and add each new one to this list. Listen to what they are talking about, ask for feedback and keep track of what is going on with these companies. Go beyond companies, connect directly with people you have worked with and try to build on your current relationship by listening to what is going on in their professional and personal lives.

Follow your prospect customers
This is an opportunity to engage with your prospect customer by providing relevant information or a specific product update. Maybe a new feature that they requested was just added to your product; share it on Twitter and directly to them. Sharing relevant data or information with your prospects will keep your brand in their minds.

For example, Datanyze does a good job providing market share information of companies and technologies that they track. This is highly valuable information for any team.

Follow relevant Linkedin groups
With social media tools like Hootsuite you can post directly to Linkedin groups that you are part of. You should research what groups have most members that fit your target customer profile before joining. Make sure you post relevant information as well which can be a great way to spark a conversation.

Create consistent format for your tweets
I have learned this the hard way. If you are consistent with your formatting, it is easier for visitors to scan your twitter page. I have learned a great deal about formatting from the Datanyze team. Here is a formatting example:

“The name of the article here” | short-link-to-the-article via @what-website(or resource) by @author #relevanthashtag #keywords

This is just a quick list of things that can be done to jumpstart social media for your startup. There are many other small tricks that you can find online. I will share some of them in future posts.

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