The power of social media nowadays is pretty obvious, over 55% of the global population use or used at least one social platform in their life. If you don't include social media in the digital marketing strategy, your business misses a lot. Having social accounts for your startup active, provides a lot of development opportunities, but before discovering them you need to find out which social media platforms are the best for your business profile and how to make use of them.
Social media is a broad term describing all websites and applications that allow users to interact, share their opinions and personal life in real-time. It’s not only Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter that rules - those times are gone. Now we have numerous platforms that can be beneficial for your company including Linkedin, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, Snapchat, Youtube, Reddit, Quora, and much more. It’s easy to get lost, isn’t it? You’re probably wondering now which social media will be a good fit for your startup.
Let’s start from the beginning - of course, there are a number of available platforms but it doesn't mean that you have to be present on every social app you can think of. Actually, such a strategy definitely won’t be beneficial and may even make your life harder. You should choose social media according to your target, so if most people active on a particular platform belong to your potential clients’ group, your startup should be present there. A bit of research on the purpose and the target group of the particular platform will help you to choose channels that resonate well with your brand. Let’s have an easy example of a startup that is a B2B company - it should probably choose Linkedin as its main focus as from this platform professionals and B2B companies benefit the most, TikTok, however, might not be the first and best idea as this platform is mainly used by young people for entertainment purposes. One last thing - if you want to try some channel you should definitely do that, just think about how you can use it in the best possible way to attract your target audience.
Now that you know what to consider before choosing the right platform for your startup, let’s focus on how your company can benefit from using social media. So here are main advantages of implementing social media presence in your marketing strategy:
Reaching your customers
Social media gives you the opportunity to connect with clients in real-time via comments, reactions, and chats. Not only can you reach them, but they also have a possibility to reach you, so make sure to check your comment section and chats every day. Social media are present in every aspect of our lives now and people are used to it, so they have become the main way of communication. Reaching a company via chat or comment section seems much easier and quicker than by email as that seems too official. This is particularly important for young companies as their social media inbox won’t be overfilled with messages at once, so they will be able to personally answer all of customers' questions and doubts there. Engaging content is another way to reach your customers, make sure that you’re providing posts with important and interesting news like huge discounts, special offers, new products or updates from the industry you are operating. Try to diversify the message you want to pass via your posts - it all depends on the type of platform you're sharing the content to. Stay active and remember to post regularly, but be aware that too many posts can irritate your audience and be perceived as spam, so you try to find a sweet spot by analyzing the audience reactions.
Building relationship with customers
Creating a series of engaging posts is not enough to build a strong relationship with customers. It’s obvious that your startup needs to take care of existing clients and being active on social media opens many possibilities to do that. It’s very important to stay in touch with them so make sure to answer as soon as you see a comment or message so they feel that you are there for them. Showing your engagement and professionalism will increase the loyalty of your audience and as a result, boost sales. When a startup is active on social media, customers feel its presence in their daily life - that can help to increase its visibility and make clients more engaged. Remember, people are more likely to purchase products from companies that they know and trust and social media is a great way to build this relationship with them.
Reaching new audience
There are over 4 billion social media users, of course not all of them are your potential customers, but that still shows enormous opportunities for business development. Social media channels are a great way to reach a new audience and thanks to that generate new leads. By being consistent in creating engaging content, you can encourage new followers to visit your website and buy your products. To reach a new audience you can leverage social media ads that give you the opportunity to target a particular group of people, so if you aim to attract new followers you can simply exclude existing ones from your ad’s target. Organizing contests or using hashtags is also a great way to get more engagement. However, your startup should remember that it takes more time and effort to convert followers into existing clients that is why consistency is a key.
Using affordable methods of advertising
Being present on social media is basically free so it's a great way to start with your digital marketing strategy. However, when your startup starts to grow it will be inevitable to invest in social media and paid campaigns to get more recognition on the market to beat the competition. This is one of the most affordable methods of advertising and can easily help you decrease marketing costs in comparison to traditional promotion activities. Moreover, it can help you target your audience efficiently and control it - as you can choose users that will see your ad, track who the campaign is reaching and change this later on if needed. Depending on the type of campaign you can reach various goals and target different groups - only your followers, or broader audience to attract more people. Moreover, you can determine qualities like age group, interests, gender, and much more!
Establishing brand and boosting brand awareness
It’s probably one of the biggest struggles for new companies - how to build brand awareness when there are so many competitors on the market? Well, using social media can definitely help with increasing recognition as you can influence how your brand is perceived by existing and potential customers. Social media is a great way to share the story of your startup, create its image and present the offer. You can share with your customers whatever you think is needed to fall in their memory and gain their trust - show who is working in a startup, what is important for your brand, what are goals of your company and what you have already achieved. Seize an opportunity to have a real-time connection with your audience and share what is happening in a company, inform about open job positions, spread the word on company public activities. The sky is the limit, you just need to match your communication to your audience by deciding what type of content you want to share. Building a consistent brand image allows you to increase brand recognition on the market and enhance traffic on your website.
Testing ideas and getting feedback
If you want to stay competitive in the market you are probably constantly working on a product and trying to improve it or implement some innovations. Social media is a great way to test some of your ideas and get feedback from potential customers. Creating pools and drawing conclusions from opinions in the comment section and chat can give you important information about customers' needs and views. Frequent interactions with your clients will help you improve the offer and receive valuable feedback therefore get to know what your customers really want.
Keeping track of metrics and startup growth
Social media is probably one of the easiest ways to keep track of your market presence and the growth of your business at the same time. Numbers don’t lie, by creating a good digital marketing strategy over some period of time you will be able to see measurable results. Social media platforms provide you with information not only about the number of your followers but also with data on posts’ reach, page traffic, users’ engagement, and more other insights. Those numbers will show if you’re being successful on a particular channel and what type of communication is the most crucial for your growth. Also, they can be valuable for further analysis of your customers’ profile and their needs.
Take your startup’s social media to the next level!
Social media presence is a crucial element of the marketing strategy of any company, but if you want to take it to the next level you should use tools that help you analyze all the valuable data that you can find underneath. Fortunately, Vestbee partners up with an affordable and easy tool for monitoring and analyzing social media in real-time - Brand24, which offers 30 days for free and 10% discount for first payment.
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