Worldwide social media users in 2019 were 3.484 billion with 9% growth every year.

If your business is a startup, then the importance of implementing a social media strategy for your business remains undisputed. Social media marketing is something that all startups in 2020 need to implement and that too quickly.

“But I already have my business profile on all social media platforms and I daily share something on it.”

A common statement made by many startups when it comes to creating a social media strategy. Many startups mistake for sharing “something” daily on their social media profiles as their business social media strategy.

Of course, it won’t work and in due course of time startup owners give up on social media marketing thereby closing doors for great business opportunities they might have received if worked properly.

When you seriously want to increase your brand awareness, customer acquisition and generate more leads through social media, an in-depth social media strategy is necessary that will work wonders in 2020.

Best Social Media Strategy for a Startup in 2020:

Curious about how to create such a strategy?

1. Perform Market Research

Of course, before establishing your startup you must have done some market research regarding your product/services. But the term “market research” comes into play while creating social media strategy as well.

You need to study your target audience very well. Any single person is not active on all social platforms. Study your audience’s social media behavior and take decisions accordingly because random acts of tweeting or sharing posts will waste your time, money, and efforts.

For example, a business professional is more active on LinkedIn while a college youngster is more active on Facebook and Instagram. Hence, if you are a B2B business owner, head towards LinkedIn so that you can find emails from LinkedIn and connect with your B2B prospects.

So how can you perform research and locate your target audience on social media?

Here are some tips:

  • Perform internet research to collect demographic data about your social media audience. There are many studies available where you will get to know about which type of audience is available on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, etc. One such a study was done by Cision PR Newswire, 37% of Twitter users are between ages 18-25 while 25% of users are between ages 30-49 years. Hubspot blog statistics reveal that only 9% of businesses are active on YouTube channel.
  • Survey your audience to find out which social media tool they prefer. Keyhole is an effective tool to find out how various markets utilize social platforms to promote their products.
  • Perform competitor analysis and analyze your competitor’s social media strategy. You can use the Buzzsumo tool or directly head towards your competitor’s social pages. Study carefully how they have created posts and how people have responded. Try to implement those ideas in your plan.

2. Enhance Your Social Media Profiles

After performing extensive social media research, start enhancing your social media pages based on your data. Start with clearly defining your mission, business goals, and objectives you want to achieve.

Connect them with your social platforms. Since each social platform has its own USP (Unique Selling Proposition), don’t rush to create your social mark on each platform. For example, if your startup provides fashion designing services, build a strong profile on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.

You can also take the help of social media statistics and demographics (for e.g. Facebook Audience Insights tool) to know your customer’s behavior on various social platforms and then select those platforms that satisfy your requirements.

As quoted by Julia C. Campbell of J Campbell Social Marketing, “Pick one network and do it well first. Choose one that you like to use personally and are comfortable using. Master it”, we are not far from the truth.

How to Set up Business Social Media Accounts?

1. Facebook

Let’s start with the social media giant Facebook. To create your startup’s Facebook business page, you should have your personal Facebook account. While creating your business page consider the following details:

  • Website URL
  • Your startup’s physical address
  • Business contact number
  • Profile Picture (Preferably Company Logo)
  • Cover Photo (Preferably related to your business)
  • Company description (SEO optimized)

2. Twitter

A Twitter profile is comprised of six elements.

  • a twitter handle
  • a username
  • profile picture
  • bio (your business details, mission, goals)
  • header image
  • pinned tweet (you can use video describing your startup so that whoever visits your profile will get instantly attracted to the video)

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn works wonders if your startup provides B2B services. Through LinkedIn, you can easily connect with your B2B audience by collecting their emails using several email finder tools available on the internet. However, ensure you verify emails online to avoid any sending your content to fake email addresses. So, to create a strong business LinkedIn account, you need to provide:

  • Company description (300-400 words with relevant keywords and phrases. Include your company’s mission and purpose, business expertise, etc.)
  • Profile picture

3. Craft an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

After your accounts are set-up, it’s now time to focus on building social media content strategy because the content you post on your social pages has the power to turn your brand into a popular choice among your customers (of course including the standard of your services/product).

As you have performed your competitor’s social media analysis, craft some posts similar to them (not copy!) and post on your accounts. Analyze how your audience responds through each platform’s analytics. While crafting your post keep remember the following chart. The chart explains why consumers unfollow brands on social media.

Image Source: sproutsocial.com

You can see that activities like posting irrelevant content, too many promotional posts or poor customer services fail customers to impress. Therefore, while creating posts ask these questions to yourself:

  • What is my customer profile and what posts may interest them?
  • How frequently should I post?
  • What stories should I tell my audience to keep them engaged with my brand?
  • What type of content will my audience like? (Videos, Infographics, Questions, Quotes, etc.)

Start sharing content in the form of blog posts, videos, images, and presentations. Be consistent in your content sharing. However, follow 80:20 rule while sharing i.e. share 80% of relevant informative content and rest 20% should be promotional.

For a smooth running of this plan, set-up a social content marketing calendar. With a social media content calendar, you can organize your content ideas in advance so that your strategy becomes easier to execute. Read further to know more about scheduling posts.

4. Schedule Your Posts

Once you are ready with your posts, the next step to be followed is scheduling your posts which is a very important one. Marketing on social media delivers expected when your posts will resonate with timings. Sharing social media posts on specific times is necessary because these timings are connected with traffic. The majority of people are active on social networks on a specific day and time. Keeping this in mind, try to schedule your posts in advance using social management tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, etc. These tools not only help you stay organized with your social media strategy but also saves a lot of time and effort. However, avoid posting the same content on all platforms.

Some benefits of scheduling your posts are:

☛ You are able to Post Consistently

A social page updated on a regular basis attracts more audiences than a page updated once in 6 months.   Scheduling your posts in advance not only attracts and engages your audience but also helps you gain more followers. Your followers enjoy the versatility in your posts which they share automatically on their profiles which ultimately helps you gain more followers and increase in leads.

☛ You can easily figure out what works and what doesn’t

When you are new on social platforms, it definitely takes time to figure out what works for you. When there is consistency in your posts, you can easily analyze your audience response from your previous records. You can identify patterns where a particular type of posts is receiving good response while some are being ignored. Thus, you can make changes in your strategy accordingly.

Best Times to Post on Various Social Media Platforms:

  • Facebook: Wednesday at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
  • Twitter: Wednesday at 9 a.m. and Friday at 9 a.m.
  • LinkedIn: Wednesday at 9–10 a.m. and 12 p.m.
  • Instagram: Wednesday at 11 a.m. and Friday at 10–11 a.m.

5. Engage with Your Audience (Improve Customer Service)

The core motive of social media is to have conversations with people. When you publish your posts, your customers will see them and try to share their views on it. Engaging with your audience helps you to build trust with them along with creating a community of followers for your brand.

For this, you need to post something valuable and informative enough to encourage your audience to share and tag their friends in your post.

When people like and comment on your posts, it gives you an opportunity to establish a conversation with them. You understand your customer’s likes, dislikes, and preferences.

It also helps you to understand your customers’ concerns, especially if your startup provides ecommerce development services.

Sometimes, your brand may receive negative comments or complaints about your service which may damage your brand image on social media. However, if you handle them correctly, you can win the trust of your audience. For example, see how JetBlue Airways responded to their customer complaints.

Stay active to respond to your customers quickly and effectively. Keep an eye on what your customer is trying to say. Staying active on the social network makes your brand looks reliable and smart.

This doesn’t mean that you should be active all day on all social networks. As discussed above, figure out which social network works for you and allocate your activity timings for those networks. Focus on building relationships rather than building a huge number of followers.

6. Follow Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing refers to endorsements of your product or service by influencers i.e. celebrities, high-profile business professionals, or intellectuals with expertise in a particular field. Since many people admire and follow social media influencers, you can take help from them to promote your product/brands.

You can run promotional campaigns with influencers thus allowing your brand garner attention from a wider audience. The best platform for influencer marketing is Twitter where 1/3rd of Twitter audiences follow and engage social media celebrities and industry professionals.

Conclusion

These are some of the best social media strategies that will boost your startup’s brand recognition. You just need to implement these strategies by focusing on the needs of your target audience.

Using correct tools, techniques, and following the latest trends related to your brand niche, you can boost your social media efforts. You just need to have patience and play smartly.

Have you used any of these techniques in your social media marketing efforts? Share your experience with us now.