Social media provides an inexpensive marketing avenue for startups. Managing a strong digital presence can help you turn those ‘likes’ into profits, only if done correctly. Building a social media presence requires planning, designing and developing campaigns that will connect your brand to an average customer. Startups usually learn from trial and error, experimenting along the way what works effectively for them. However, to build an effective digital presence startups should avoid these common errors that may effect their reach in the long run.
1. Nobody plans to fail, but fails to plan
This cliched statement has always held abundant wisdom. Startups often lack the understanding to meticulously plan a campaign, its design, the captions to go with it and the schedule to publish it. Merely posting once every now and then does not prove to be effective unless a strategy is in place. Question your strategy before launching it and put a action plan in place.
2. Posting so much, it turns into spam!
Do not ‘over’ post, it simply makes your content redundant. Your brand loses its value and thus followers as well. Determine a lifetime for each post and be very selective what you post about. This will allow you to invest greater efforts and time to make each post effective, in turn bringing you better audience engagement.
3. You cannot be everywhere
Do not try to build a presence on every other social media platform. Analyse user demographics of the market segment you are penetrating and determine accordingly which platforms to use. At the end of the day, even if you are targeting all the platforms it is highly likely your major user engagement will be deriving itself from two or three specific platforms. Therefore, focus on specific platforms and assess how they work and will boost your promotions.
4. Quality over quantity, any day!
Another statement whose wisdom we still fail to grasp. Numbers always look fancy, especially if they boost a greater value. However, startups need to determine if a promising number of followers are actually bringing in profits? Startups should know a smaller authentic following that engages with your brand is greatly valuable than those followers who scroll past your posts.
5. Not be selfish, support the community
It is important that you engage with the community by participating in conversations, retweeting collaborative content, and appreciating their efforts. This will mark you as a competent player. If you selfishly hijack Twitter trends, thinking it will build an audience for you then you are mistaken. It is highly likely, other professionals will label you as a selfish promoter and will not facilitate you to spread your campaigns.
