So you’ve set up your start-up company and now decided to turn to social media as the first step in expanding your business. But where do you even begin? How do you obtain and grow your social media base audience? Focus your efforts on effective and efficient ways to increase your brand reputation and awareness. Here are 6 ways to quickly grow your start-up through social media.
1. Profile Presence
Develop your social media presence by determining which social media sites are your core focus, depending on your target audience. If they fall within the professional and corporate consumer group, use LinkedIn to create a brand profile. If your start-up is related to lifestyle or product-based, display your products on Instagram, where visuals can more effectively display its appeal.
Ensure that all of your social media have a consistent brand logo and design, as well as the tone of content that is shared. Owing to today’s advancement in technology, content can easily be adapted to suit each medium. Ensure that the reputation and image that you wish to portray to the public, is one that is being shown through your social media.
2. Repetition is Key
Be consistent with the content that you are posting and delivering to your social media audience. All posts must be relating to your brand, target audience or trends within the industry. Schedule your posts so that the timing of the posts is consistent and allows regularity. To manage the consistency of the social media posts, hire a social media assistant to specialize in managing your social media. Gumtree Jobs is a fantastic platform that allows you to list your vacant position onto their community website, manage your listings as well as search among a database of job seekers.
3. Virality
Boost your social media posts by taking advantage of virality. Use hashtags on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to link your start-up with keywords relating to your company. You can create your own hashtag to start a viral movement, promote competitions or promotions. Encourage people to boost awareness of your posts and company by including ‘like’, ‘comment’ and ‘share’ as a requisite to winning your start-up social media competition. You can also choose to select the function of automatically sharing a post on all social media platforms once you have posted on a single social media account.
4. Analytics
Track and measure your social media performance to make improvements and adjustments accordingly. Determine the most optimal times of the day to post and the duration of each post. The best time according to Sprout Social Industry Research is in the morning (9am), during lunch break (1 PM) and after work (6 PM). These times are when most of the population would be checking their social media where your start-up will be one of the first posts that they will see. Experiment depending on the different social media platforms that you will use as post timing is also determined by your target consumer market. Use Facebook Business Manager to manage your start-up profile page and advertising to boost posts through promotions on posts that require a greater reach.
5. Follow for a Follow
Follow for a follow is an effective technique for gaining instant followers and accumulate your target follower base. By following a person on social media, this will alert a notification to the account where they will then explore your start-up profile which typically results in a follow back. However, various social media sites have different follow limits. Twitter has the following limit of 1000 followers and Instagram has a limit of 7500 accounts. It is important to follow people who are potentially interested in your start-up and fall within your target market. Also, take this opportunity to follow main sponsors such as influencers and related brands that you will wish to connect and develop a relationship with.
6. Consumer Contact
It is integral to be highly responsive and interactive with your followers. Engage with their discussions through replying to their points made in the comments section of your social media posts. High interaction will show transparency and build trust with your consumers. This is also your chance to build relationships with your main consumers and outwit internet trolls!
It is also beneficial to share relatable posts rather than simply promoting your product. Create polls, quizzes and blogs surrounding the area of your start-up. Incorporate humor through creating branded memes as well as featuring customers in posts to amplify relatability.
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