How to Improve Your Startup’s Social Media Strategy in only 3 Hours

Your startup has been founded, the administrative barriers are overcome, the crowdfunding was successful – so now what? No noise, nobody screams for your startup – different than you might have expected it. The simple reason could be that nobody knows your startup yet. Time flies, because your competitors are only one step away waiting for their chance to overtake. This is when social media comes into play – a mostly underestimated marketing channel. If you do it right, social media can be a powerful instrument. With the following simple tips you can improve your strategy in just a few hours – three to be exact:

30 min. – Find the right platform

The motto: class not mass. There is no point in being registered on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, Xing, Linkedin, Tumblr and Co. and in having your own blog on top if all those platforms are not played properly. A skillful combination of the existing networks is much more effective than playing around everywhere. The crucial question is: „who is my target group and where can we find them?“. For an interior design company the social media platform Pinterest is rather the real deal than for a company where the focus is on texts.

30 min. – Define clear goals

Furthermore it is important to know for which reasons social media will be used. Branding? For search engine optimization? Public relation purposes? Or do I just want to sell more of my product? All of these questions are essential for the social media strategy, because your topics will be the result of the answers. Twitter is excellent for customer service, blogs to optimize your search engine results and Facebook can sometimes push your sales.

30 min. – Prepare an editorial plan

After finding the right platforms for your strategy and defining your goals, you need to prepare the content. It is useful to sometimes integrate curated content in your editorial plan in order to earn trust and be seen as an expert. Know your target group, deliver what they want and need. Don’t just talk about yourself – sometimes ask questions instead. Facebook, Twitter & Co. are social networks for a reason. An interesting mixture of links, videos, pictures and infographics provides your reader with a certain added value.

30 min. – Consider a jump-start

All beginnings are difficult. You think sponsored posts are cheating? Good content spreads by itself? Then you really should rethink your social media strategy. It may be useful to help strong content with an extra media budget.  Facebook also wants to make money and reserves the right to restrict the reach. Famous bloggers like Conni Biesalski of Planet Backpack recommend Facebook newbies to rethink their strategy: „Starting a blog today, I would push the Facebook page right from the beginning with some media budget to get more people’s attention.”

60 min. – Monitoring and reporting

Monitor and analyse. What are your competitors doing? It’s worth taking a look to your left and your right side. Also the audience is important: They are the heart of your success.  An overview about how the audience thinks about you gives you the analysis of all the likes and comments. On the basis of this reporting you should specify your KPIs (key performance indicators).

0 min. – Have fun

The most important tip without any extra time: The content that is fun for you and your audience and makes both of you smile will deliver the best results.

Photos: Surian Soosay CC BY-NC-SA 4.0