Have you ever wondered why 90% percent of startups fail? Well, there are a ton of reasons, but the common mistake among failing startups is ignoring the importance of social media marketing. If you study and analyze the successful 10% percent of startups and their marketing strategies that kept them growing, you will realize the following two facts:
- Every successful startup needs to offer a valuable product
- A combination of right social media marketing techniques is required
Let’s explore 3 powerful social media marketing strategies to improve your startup’s chances of successes in a competitive market.
1. Build a community to grow your brand
Building a social media community is the most effective, easy to achieve, and sustainable social media marketing strategy. It will create a sense of brand awareness among your fans and potential customers by giving them the opportunity to interact with you directly. Building a fabulous online social media community needs meticulous planning, adequate resources in terms of time and, money plus a huge load of patience. Remember that there are no shortcuts and to build a genuine fan base online a period of at least 100 days is required, so don’t rush keep your strategy smooth and steady.
There are many popular online social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, where you can start building a community without paying a dime.
Remember the golden rule: Social media is about socializing; people may enjoy getting talked to but not talked at. To use social media effectively, you need to transform your business ideas and goals into a conversation where everybody can freely participate and share the ideas. You can follow these 3 simple steps to start building your own community.
- Identity the Hierarchy of social needs
Inspire your people, help them achieve their goals, give them some valuable information, create value to achieve your social media marketing strategy goals. The idea is to help people to achieve their goals, buy the best product online, support them in finding what they need, make them feel served. You need to identify the needs of your fans and align them with your business in such a way that you provide them if you successfully do that wonders will happen overnight.
- Your brand belongs to the people
Learn and understand your customer’s behavior online and provide content according to their behavior, effectively doing so will generate a much better response for your business. You should know that social media marketing strategies are successful only if they successfully influence consumers. A consistent pattern of testing, optimization, and evaluation of your consumers is required; the goal is to achieve the highest possible level of satisfaction of your audience. In the US, 78% of businesses hire fully dedicated teams for social media marketing and strategy management.
- Encourage engagements, sharing and discussions
Communication is the primary source of business but, you can’t use social media just for business if you do that you will never be able to create a growing and sustainable community. Support your fans and potential customers by creating a support group and welcome them with human interaction. It is reported that 57% of USA consumers preferred human interaction before buying something.
2. Explore social paths and learn how your audience interacts with your content
What are the social paths? How can you benefit from them? Well, to get started think of social paths are a door through which your audience reach your product or services. If you build a social media marketing strategy by considering and exploring the social paths of your consumers, you will easily be able to influence them. Social paths give you insight into your audience, and where they spend their time on social media platforms. Let me explain through an example:
Suppose it’s just before the summers season and many people will be using hashtags such as “#thissummers” now that you know this hashtag will be viral on Instagram you can use it to with your brand. It will help you generate more audience and engagements for your business, but please note that this is just an example; you must find out what works best for you.
Red Bull used “#thissummers” hashtag with a new look of their cans reflecting hot summer days just before the start of summers. They were able to reach more than 1.2 million consumers, and Red Bull was associated with “#thissummers” hashtag that went viral as “#thissummers” was trending high on social media platforms.
3. Use a combination of Social Media Marketing Strategies for your startup
Yes, it’s always better to use a combination of the most powerful social media marketing strategies instead of placing all your eggs in one basket. Explore what works best for you, then blend and mix different successful strategies to develop a customized strategy for your business goals. Social media marketing is an evolving process, and you must continuously change and improve according to the changing metrics and dynamics. Keep observing what worked best for your brand, which content received most appreciations from your audience then tune your strategy accordingly. If your startup can manage the resources, I personally recommend using multiple social media strategies on multiple social media platforms. There is no denying that developing a successful social media strategy is a process of trial and error; however, being aware of the best practices will save you from a lot of trouble and cost.
Leading London based social media agency Born Social, for example, state in their piece on Long Form Social Content that there is a taste for long-form content out there, even in this mobile-frenzied society. Deploying a strategy based around long-form content as a test for your potential audience’s taste could prove extremely valuable for not only eyes-on-page but also establishing an influential brand voice.
The key to a successful social media strategy is to increase social presence as much as possible; the more presence you will have on social media platforms better will be the returns on your investment. Measure all the metrics involved in your business and find out how you can increase your social media presence. For startups and tightly budgeted business, it may be hard to maintain a presence on multiple social media platforms and even harder to implement a combination of strategies. Nevertheless, more social media presence means better brand awareness, more sales, greater revenue, and higher profits.