Social Media Marketing: Setting A Strong Foundation for Your Startup Business

Social media marketing is one of the best and popular strategies if you want to market your startup business and link up with influencers. Social media platforms can definitely get you there!

To a startup, social media is especially valuable because it doesn’t require a lot of input in terms of resources to get it going. That said, there are certain tricks which if followed, can enable you to get the most out of social media marketing.

Social Media Marketing is Knowing the Right Networks to Use

There is a tendency among startups to pick social media networks in which they can comfortably engage without a strategy. The common mistakes committed by startups when it comes to choosing the right social networks are trying to master every single network and secondly, picking a network simply because the competitor is on it.

If all your competitors are on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should also adopt these networks. It should be strategy driven and not simply out of imitation.

To give you a hint on some of the most popular networks today, you can check out Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram. Through these networks, you can promote your content as well as build a community around your business.

Each of the above networks has its own unique characteristics which you must bear in mind if you want to succeed in them. For instance, Facebook is frequented and preferred by customers who love visual posts such as videos and pictures. On the other hand, Twitter is a haven for prospects who love and respond well to links.

The way in which social networks operate differ from one to the other. Reddit is perceived as a tightly guarded network and a no-go zone for spammers. While Twitter allows you to schedule posts, Reddit doesn’t give you that opportunity. Reddit requires a much slower approach compared to Twitter and the posts are specific to the categories chosen.

Determining the Best Time to Post

Some people believe that there is a perfect posting time for Facebook or Twitter. The truth is your audience will determine the right time to post. For instance, teenagers are active in the mornings and at night and therefore these are the best times to target them with posts.

Some of the best practices for Twitter and Facebook are as follows:

• When doing Facebook posts, Saturdays are the best times and on average, one post for every two days can serve you well.

• Twitter, on the other hand, works best on Tuesdays all through to Sundays and on average you should post 1 to 4 link tweets every hour.

• Try to analyse your audience in order to determine the best posting time. There is no one-size-fits-all.

Leveraging on a Keyword List

When doing content marketing, you cannot afford not to have a keyword list. This is often developed through research around your business products and services. The same keyword list will prove invaluable in social media content generation and promotion.

There are tools such as Hootsuite which can help you in setting up search streams using your core keywords. If you are selling toys online, one of your search words could be – the best toys for kids online.

The social networking management tool will then help you to monitor the stream of conversations taking place around your keywords and where possible join in to influence the conversations. Your keyword list can also help you to target online ads that you may be running.

Creating an Influencer List

As mentioned earlier, one of the top marketing techniques on the web is to earmark influencers and influencing them. This process usually takes quite some time to develop and requires patience. You do not start your business marketing today and by tomorrow you have thousands of people following you.

Your main focus should be on creating meaningful connections with your audience especially those who are already influential. In an online marketing survey, it was established that close to 78% of the respondents who were social media users acknowledged that posts done by brands significantly influenced their buying behavior.

If you are running an online gym promotion, your target influencers could be celebrities who love working out. Through the influencers, you can reach thousands of other potential customers even with a single tweet or post. People who use influencers experience a huge surge not just in traffic, but followership as well.

Community leaders and journalists are some of the renowned influencers you cannot afford to ignore. The rule of the thumb is to target influencers who you can easily connect with.

The best way to building an influencer list is to first begin with a market research. In this research, strive to find blogs within your space that are popular. Then, find out the people in charge of writing up the content in these blogs and establish the ownership of the blogs. You can also do a search of the core keywords you are targeting to find out who appears in the search results.

One thing you need to bear in mind is that a huge followership does not necessarily mean you are influential, you need to go a step further and find out the level of engagement of your audience as well as their follower to following ratio.

Building a Blog

As opposed to the times past when building a blog was a difficult task, today the process is much simpler because all you need is to download the necessary software and then upload it on a server based on the setup instructions. Content management systems such as WordPress have amazing plugins that make the process very simple.

Once you set up your blog and the backend is ready to go, you should start thinking on your curb appeal. Get a design that is impressive and if you are not quite sure, a professional can help you. Before you finally put your blog live, invite a few friends to give their opinion on the design and the aesthetic appeal.

Focus much of your efforts on user experience and ensure you publish the right content at the right time and targeting the right people!

There you go! The above strategies will ensure that you get a footprint on the social media platform as far as your business marketing is concerned.