Social media marketing is a crucial element of success for startups as the public shifts more and more attention online. Startups with great technology and leadership go unheralded and ultimately daily due to a lack of marketing all the time.

Avoiding this clustered calamity at all costs is paramount in making a startup that not only survives but thrives. To take full advantage of the major social media platforms your startup will need to create a brand that stands for something relatable or achieves an individual level of entertainment. 

The difference between Geico and Gerbers isn’t methodology so much as it is the brand stories they are creating for their target demos. 

Build a Startup Brand on Social Media in Several Simple Steps

1. Craft a brand voice

Before you do anything — build your brand. Before tweeting your first “hello world” or liking your first Insta inspo, take a moment to think about what you mean to say and how you mean to say it. Once you know your brand story, you can start to tell it on social media.

2. Pick your platform

Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit are all great places for startups to directly connect with their users and potential customers. 

Any company that takes the time to engage with their customer is far more likely to gain meaningful conversions as opposed to those who strictly market using ads. Savvy startup owners know that enlisting the help of social media influencers is a great boost to your online profile. 

 3. Invest in content marketing

Content marketing via microblogging is a great way to draw in attention and create massive amounts of interest in your industry. Instagram and Facebook make it easy to microblog for companies and them to gain customers as a result of their various business services. 

Another key factor in creating effective social media campaigns is interacting with customers and fans directly through the platforms of their choice. 

4. Engage with your customers

Social media marketing isn’t just about self-promotion. Social media marketing is about how your brand interacts with others and is also about company culture. Collaborating with other startups, entrepreneurs, and influencers is a great way to start creating your social media presence.

Inbound marketing requires your brand to interact, not just monologue. Outbound marketing foisted messages onto others, tacked on to media and real estate. Inbound marketing consists of thought leadership, personality, and cooperation. How you create content and interact with readers and customers shapes the overall perception of your brand.

5. Build a social media support system

For this reason, it’s vitally important that you create a social media support system. Find influencers, design freelancers, marketers, clients, customers, and other startups to collaborate with. 

Make meaningful exchanges and work together to create engaging conversations on social media. Transparency, honesty, and openness go a long way on social media platforms.

6. Run targeted ads

Small businesses should focus on only a few social media platforms to start with. Use one platform to test your brand voice and marketing messages. This focused approach will pay dividends, helping you distinguish between marketing missteps and messaging problems. 

Even if you’re only using one platform, you should consider integrating your social media marketing with a customer relationship management platform. 

CRMs can help you dynamically target and retarget customers. Using artificial intelligence, CRMs can also provide meaningful insight into customer profiles, backtest market research, and supply predictive behavior models of your target market.

Appealing to certain audiences is vital in creating a company that stands the test of time. Startups that create authentic and convincing brand stories are much more likely to gain customers that revisit the site many times over. Recurring fandom and customer loyalty are how startups survive the best and worst times in their financial lives. 

Creating a brand story requires that you use a relatable personality that can be used to draw in customers. Think of companies like Progressive or Frosted Flakes, both of these brands use easily identifiable characters to create connections for the audience which, in turn, creates customers.

However, a good brand story is only part of the solution as true exposure to your brand will come in the form of active marketing.

Social media marketing is one of the most crucial factors in determining the success of any startup. The major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram drive most of the new retail space and are responsible for exposing billions of people to thousands of brands. 

One of the most critical factors of social media marketing is the brand story that your startup creates. The brand that is projected will be the portal through which potential customers will find your business.

7. Brainstorm ideas for your brand

Your brand story helps shape the perception of your business. In marketing, perception is everything. Having the most ad spend doesn’t translate to high conversion rates. Outbound marketing is a useless activity if you haven’t worked to create a brand identity.

By aligning your brand with certain causes that your customer supports you can drive further interest to your brand while simultaneously expanding the mythos of your brand. Most importantly, these brand stories should be professional but shouldn’t be without some form of personality. 

8. Create a brand story

To craft a brand story, you’ll need to assemble the parts that make up your brand identity. What is your brand voice? This can simply be a tone or mood. Is your brand funny, chic, sophisticated, somber? What’s your message? Does your business want to send the message of quality, dominance, eco-mindedness? 

Finally, you’ll want to ask who your target market is. What do they relate to? What are they buying? When are they buying it? What do they want to be improved or changed?

Once you’ve answered those questions, you’ll be ready to master social media marketing with a solid brand voice in tow.

9. Keep it professional

Remember to keep discourse and ad language on social media on brand. More importantly, keep it professional without being disingenuous, placating, or bland. 

Increasingly startups and even established companies are asked to take a stance on social, political, and economic issues, so a brand that sticks to a company line, doesn’t take risks, and lacks empathy will be criticized or, worse, ignored completely.

10. Create content consistently 

Mastering a social media platform is next on the list. It’s recommended for small businesses to stick to one or two platforms, mastering one channel before moving onto the next. This will help focus your marketing efforts.

One form of communication somewhat unique to Instagram, for microblogging. Images are usually followed by micro-sized blog content rather than just sales language. Emojis are used creatively and hashtags are placed aesthetically. 

You’re only aware of these nuances if you concentrate on a single platform at a time. This maximizes your marketing efforts by homing in on nuanced strategies unique to your selected social media channel. It’s far better than using a shotgun approach to social media marketing.

11. Maximizing microblogging

Content marketing is key in the new era of online marketing and should be created at a consistent pace across several internet channels. 

Microblogging is the most effective and is a surefire way to improve your startup's online profile as sling as the microblogs are produced at a steady rate. A few a week would do more than enough to dramatically affect your startup. 

To attract the right customer base to your startup your brand will need to reflect your values and the values of your hopeful constituency. Crafting a brand that is befitting of your target audience is a crucial step in creating an impact social media presence online. 

No matter the strategy, it is important to express personality and create a unique identifier with which your audience can relate. After a brand identity and story is firmly cemented it will be time to start pumping out content that refers to your industry while still offering quality information. 

Using Instagram, startups can create social media stories that are picked up and circulated by users online, immediately affecting their startup for the better. There are other effective social media strategies as well as using beautiful imagery to capture the attention of your audience and move them to action. 

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