Leveraging Social Media for Early-Stage Companies: Do’s and Don’ts
Social media is everywhere. A lot of the information that our audiences receive these days is posted on social media and it becomes a news channel for lots of not only individuals as consumers, but businesses as well. It has become a very important component of a corporate marketing strategy for any type of business. If you haven't been considering social media as part of your strategy, you really should, and today is the day that you should start an account and start posting your information on social media.
There are so many things going on in an early-stage startup that oftentimes promoting your brand becomes secondary to everything else. However, if you can get started on social media, it's going to pay dividends later on. As you build your audience, you build your followers, who could eventually become buyers.
There are many platforms that can be utilized. Which one you focus on depends on where your target audience is frequenting. Each one utilizes a different strategy, so you want to be conscious of that strategy when you begin to use it.
If you're a B2B, LinkedIn will likely be the minimum platform. It is the primary way that businesses are promoting what they're doing, to their potential customers, how they're connecting with their audience, and the majority of leads and brand awareness is developed over LinkedIn. It is a platform that allows a lot of different content to be used, such as videos, promoting documents, pictures, etc.
Your social media presence embodies your brand identity. This is the thing that people are going to connect with the most, it’s where they can learn to trust you. Can they look to you for a solution to their problem? Will they follow you along on your journey? Getting your target audiences interested in and giving them the information that they're looking for is going to build that brand affinity.
Here are some tips on what to do and not do when using social media.
Do post a mix of personnel-focused content and solution/technology content. Parties or networking events, going to events, having a speaker opportunity there, share that with your audience.
Do engage with your audience. Anytime you post something, review it in the days following for any engagement from your audience. This could be reposts or someone commenting on your post. Continue the conversation with them by replying, answering questions, and liking their comment. This is a great way to show that there's a team behind the brand. The more engagement you have, the more followers you'll get, the bigger your audience will grow, the bigger the pool of people that you can sell your product to eventually.
Do share creative content and curate what you're putting out on the network to your audience. If you have a blog that's coming out or you have a technology tip, share it on social because people love that content.
Do promote the content and posts of partners or customers that you're working with. As you're building your community, amplifying other people's messages brings attention to you from their audiences. More people will follow you if you’re working with brands they already trust.
Do set your company LinkedIn page. Populate it with your products or services, an explanation of what you do.
Do post on a regular basis. I suggest doing so at least once a week if not more. It can be time consuming if you're trying to post every single day. So just start with once a week and then just build from that.
Don’t be too promotional about your technology. Talk about your product and service, but in not a way that's salesy. People do not want to be sold to all the time and tend to be averse to any brands that do this on a constant basis. Your audience is typically looking to be informed, so educate them. Let them know about the cool stuff that you’re doing. For example: “Here's how our product is evolving,” “This is how someone is using it.” These types of posts are what's going to connect a person to a product.
Don’t ignore your analytics. If you are the administrator on your LinkedIn account, there is section on the admin portal that allows you to see analytics for followers, impressions, and information by posts. You'll be able to see very clearly which posts are working and which ones aren't. Impressions are the number of eyeballs that are actually seeing your post. The number of likes indicate the number of individuals that proactively viewed it clicked a reaction button. The click through rate refers to the number of people who clicked on a link that you provided in your post.
Don’t post on controversial topics. This is key because you don't want to inflame people that could and should be part of your community. This doesn't mean you can't have an opinion, but if you're taking a side that is going to alienate your audience because you haven't thought clearly through it or you're commenting on some political thing that's happening, be very aware that you could be alienating your audience. Stay professional in what you're posting.
If you have any questions, email me at rosa@rosalear.com. I'm happy to answer them. I hope you have a great day.
