Feeling confused over where to begin with your startup’s social media presence? If you don’t know your handles from your hashtags, it’s normal to be unsure of how to get going – especially with limited resources at the beginning of your startup journey.
Increasingly social media is becoming a central part of startup operations, ranging from customer relations, to getting noticed by investors. From choosing the right channels, to deciding how much time to spend building up your accounts, to setting goals and measuring impact, there are lots of things to think about.
Without further ado, here are ten tips to help you get started with telling your startup story on social media.
- Choose your channels wisely. You’ve already conducted market research, and now it’s time to consider this in the context of social media. Instead of jumping onto every channel, consider your research results and where your customers are likely to be. Are you a B2B startup? Focus on LinkedIn. Are you creating bespoke, beautiful products? Prepare to invest time on visual channels like Instagram.
- Set goals. You also need to consider your goals before you invest your time. These could be to generate leads, attract tech talent, or to generate some buzz around your startup – maybe it’s all three. Understanding your aims will provide you with tangible targets to work towards and inform the kind of content you post.
- Post consistently. Having a regular schedule of content will help customers find you, trust you, and understand your brand. To establish the habit of posting regularly, create a content calendar to map what you want to publish. You’ll also find that this will be less time-consuming in the long run – ideal if your time and resources are limited.
- …and post carefully! While regular posting is important, make sure what you’re sharing is of value to your followers. Try to only post content which is clearly informative, educational, insightful or humorous (if this works with your brand!). This could include updates on funding rounds, insights into startup life, and progress on building products.
- Use automotive tools. As an early-stage startup, your time and money might be limited. If you’re unable to hire dedicated employees, tools such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and Buffer offer free plans from a single dashboard. These will help you schedule and deploy content in advance, easing the burden of returning to post every day.
- Make your identity consistent. With increasing competition, you want the customer experience of finding your social media channels to be seamless. To do so, make sure you use the same handles across all your social media channels, as well as the same bio and visual branding.
- Make positive testimonials go further. Making the most of positive feedback will help your startup build trust, grow your reach and raise brand recognition. As well as simply reposting customers’ feedback, consider how you can turn this into content. You could create blogs out of a customer experience journey, or create a highlight reel of positive feedback on Instagram.
- Involve your customers in your journey. One of the many benefits of your early stage startup being on social media is the opportunity for two-way dialogue. If you’re building a new product or service, social media provides an easy way for you to involve your customers on that journey. Make use of tools like polls and Q&As to hear their thoughts and help you build what your customers want.
- …even if it involves negative feedback. Receiving it on the public forum of social media can be challenging. But instead of hiding this negativity, take the time to address complaints in a mature and empathetic way. When handled the right way, responding to public negativity can create some new brand evangelists at an unexpected moment.
- Don’t be afraid to experiment. The only way to figure out what resonates with your audience is to try new things. Whether it’s exploring TikTok or starting a Facebook group for your community, trial and error is key when starting from scratch. Much like your startup journey itself, your experience of social media will be paved with successes and failures – and the most important part is the learnings which come along the way.
We hope this has given you some inspiration on how to get started with your startup’s social media channels.
