How to Use Social Media to Pull in Customers for Your Startup: The Ultimate Guide

How do you drive massive awareness and sales for your products on social media?

It is not enough to open a Linkedin page and dump content there whenever you feel like it.

Also, hiring a dedicated social media manager may not cut it.

The answer is in creating a social media marketing strategy for your business. A simple social media marketing strategy will help you achieve your marketing goals without spending a fortune.

In this article, you’d learn the ten-step process to creating a social media marketing strategy for your startup or small business. You’d also learn which social media channel is best for your business. 

On top of that, you’d find seven ways social media can help your business grow, how to come up with content ideas, and automation tools that will keep your social media running while you sleep. 

Note: I wrote this guide for startups and small businesses that may not have hundreds and thousands of $$$ to pump into ads. So this post will focus more on organic social media.

Let’s dive in!

How do Startups do Social Media Marketing?

What is the step-by-step process to follow to kick off your social media marketing? 

I lay out 10 fast and easy steps below.

Step 1: Set Your Social Media Goals

Start with setting some goals. 

Why should you set goals?

Goals help you measure your performance and help you know if your efforts are working.

What kind of goals can you set for your social media marketing?

You can set engagement goals, impression goals, followership goals, conversion goals, and traffic goals.

For any goal that you set, ensure it is specific and has a specific timeframe. 

For example, below is an example of a social media goal I set for ContentSumo’s social media marketing.

For your business, it may be the volume of traffic you want your social media to push to your site. It could be an increase in followers or direct sales. 

Whatever it is, make it specific and add a timeline to it.

Step 2: Study Your Target Audience

Studying your target audience helps you to understand their goals and challenges relating to your product or services. This gives you the information you need to create valuable content.

That is not all, studying your target audience will help you uncover the social media channels they prefer. So you can focus on those channels and maximize your results.

For example, here’s a buyer persona showing where the customer loves to go online.

From this, you can see that the best place to connect with the customer is Linkedin.

How do you study your audience?

Here’s how to conduct audience research and create a customer persona.

• Study your target audience’s behavior on all social media channels to understand where they congregate.
• Interview a handful of your customers to know their needs and their social media preferences, firsthand.

After studying your target audience, the next step is to study your competitors.

Step 3: Know Your Competitors

Studying your competitors helps you to understand what they do, what they do not and what you can do differently.

How do you study your competitors?

• Make a list of your competitors and visit their social media page. 
• Study their posts for at least the past four weeks. 
• Take note of their best-performing content and how users engage with their content. 
• Take note of how often they post and the topics they talk about. 
• Take note of what they don’t do that you should do.

Your findings will provide you with fresh ideas of what to replicate and improve upon for your own business.

Sometimes you don’t have to do it manually. There are tools that you can use to study your competitors and compare their performance to yours.

Some of these tools are paid, like Hootsuite and Sprout Social. While others are free like Linkedin.

Step 4: Create a Brand Message

Your brand message will help you say the right thing consistently across all social media channels. It will also enable your audience to identify you everywhere and help you drive results fast.

For Apple, the message is creativity, innovation, and belief.

For Redbull, the message is energy and ability.

For ContentSumo the message is simple marketing strategies for SMEs.

How do you create a brand message?

Simply craft a one-paragraph statement that summarises your mission, your belief, and what you want to do for your target customers.

This will enable you to stay on brand in all the content that you share. On top of that, it will help you come up with content ideas fast and get more results from your social media.

Step 5: Pick a Social Media Channel

Now that you know your customers, have figured out what your competitors do, and have created a brand message to build your content around, it’s time to pick a social media channel.

The key is to start with one channel, get results from it before gradually adding others.

Why do you have to start with one channel?

Your customers are not evenly distributed across all the platforms. They are more in one channel than in the others combined. So figuring out where most of your target customers are will help you maximize results. It will also ensure you do not spread your limited resource too thin.

For example, if you sell a software tool for HR execs, LinkedIn might be the best platform to start from. After which you can add Twitter, then Facebook, and Instagram. 

On the other hand, if you sell a video tool, you definitely want to start with YouTube, then Instagram, then Facebook, then Linkedin before Twitter.

Also, if you run an e-commerce business, you definitely would not want to start with Linkedin. Either Instagram or Facebook would be the best place to start.

How do you figure out the social media channel to start from?

Your buyer persona.

Also, you can look at your social media analytics. Your social media reports so far will show you where you get the most results from so you can focus your efforts there.

Step 6: Set Up Your Profiles

Now that you’ve picked a channel to start from, you need to make sure your profile is intact.

Whatever channel you want to start with, ensure you provide all necessary information to help your audience learn more about what you do, contact you easily, and go to your website.

For example, here’s Lemlist’s Linkedin profile.

With a ‘Learn more’ button that takes users to their websites.

Also, here is Semrush’s Instagram profile.

With a link that takes users to their LinkTree page. From there they link to their blog and other useful resources. 

Step 7: Create a Posting Calendar + Use the Right Hashtags

At this point, you’re ready to start sharing content. 

But there’s just one problem. Most businesses treat posting on social media as an on-the-fly project. They post whenever they feel like it.

This is not a long-term technique. Because it will fail you when you have a lot on your plate. Also, sometimes you may not know what to post.

A posting calendar will help you stay consistent and effective.

Creating a posting calendar is easy. 

Follow these steps:

• Get a spreadsheet with the days of the week on it.
• Write the topics you want to create content on for each day of the week
• Create the content at least one week in advance.

There are lots of free social media calendar templates that you can use. Templates can help you cut down the time you spend creating your calendar. 

For example, here’s Hubspot social media calendar template

You can download it here.

If that is too complicated for you, you don’t need to worry. Your content calendar doesn’t need to be as elaborate as Hubspot’s calendar, it can be as simple as the calendar below.

Whichever calendar you choose, ensure:

• You leverage trending topics in your industry
• Prepare for upcoming popular events (like Christmas, BFCM, etc)
• Always use the right hashtags
• Select topics that are relevant to your target audience

Step 8: Setup Social Media Automation

As a small business owner, automating your social media posting can help you ensure consistency in posting. It will also free up time to focus on other areas of your business.

That’s not all, social media automation tools help you post on all social media stress-free from one place.

There are lots of social media automation tools on the internet. Some come with a free version that has enough features for you to start with. Here are three you can select from. 

• Hootsuite
• Buffer
• Hubspot

Source: socialtalent.com 

Step 9: Build a Social Media Community

Create a Facebook or Linkedin group to gather your users in one place, build a community of loyal fans and customers.

Doing this on Facebook is very easy but the benefits are endless.

For example, Lemlist has a Facebook community of over 17K members. They organize webinars, special group seminars and share exclusive content with their group.

Using their Facebook community, Lemlist can answer questions about their products and help members figure out how to solve business problems. 

This can increase their customer retention, and acquire new customers for their products. Without ads or expensive marketing campaigns.

Create a Facebook group for your product or services. But do it a little better than Lemlist. Do not name it after your product or company. This may make it sound too sale-sy for your target audience. Instead, name it after your industry or the services that you offer.

For example, this is how Content Distribution (a content marketing agency) named their Facebook group.

Step 10: Measure Your Performance Consistently

To improve your social media results consistently, you have to measure your results.

I recommend carrying out weekly and monthly reviews of your strategy and performance against your social media marketing goals. 

This will enable you to figure out what does not work and make the needed changes.

You can see your results from your social media analytics and website analytics. Or you can use tools like Buffer to view your social media analytics in one place. 

There you have it, 10 simple steps to get started with your social media marketing.

How can you make the best use of everything you’ve put together for your social media marketing? 

Startup Social Media Marketing Best Practices

Below I share nine social media best practices for startups and small businesses.

1. Share Useful and Engaging Content

Share content that your audience would learn from.

This would mean cutting down on brand promotions, motivational posts (except that’s what you sell) posting about your team’s awesomeness, or bombarding your social media platforms with announcements. And focusing more on content that will help them solve their daily business problems.

Whether text, graphics, or videos, your content should be useful and engaging. Video is gradually becoming the king of content. So consider creating video content for your social media. You can use tools like Vidyoze to make good videos and animations.

2. Engage With Your Followers

Don’t just post and leave it. Respond to comments, shout out to people who like, and share your content.

Engaging with your fans can get people who do not follow you to follow you. It makes your audience know you care about them, draws them closer to you, and always anticipate your content.

It can also help you build a strong relationship with your audience that can lead to sales and more revenue for your business. 

For example, here’s ClickUp engaging with every comment in their LinkedIn post.

3. Engage With Other Companies’ Content

Don’t only engage in your content, engage with the audience on other companies’ social media pages.

Follow the leaders in your industry and keep an eye out for their content. When they post content that relates to what you do engage in the content.

If you do this consistently, they may reciprocate and engage and share your content with their followers. Also, followers of the brand you engage with may click through to learn more about you, follow you, engage in your content, and become customers in the long run.

4. Share User-Generated Content

You do not have to create all the content, you can leverage user-generated content to spice up your social media marketing. 

One way you can do this is to run a contest or ask customers to make a post about you, your services and then share it on your social media handles. 

Sharing user-generated content makes your social media more about your customers and less about you.

For example, here’s CoSchedule posting a customer review on Instagram.

5. Post on Industry Social Media Groups

Consistently post on industry social media groups. 

This is a great channel to reach out to your target audience, get them to see you, know you, and eventually become customers and fans.

To get it right, here are some mistakes you should avoid:

• Using your company’s page: Don’t use your company’s page to engage in groups. Instead, use a personal profile.
• Always pushing your brand: Focus on answering questions and helping people in the group. 
• Not doing it consistently: Devote time every week to answer questions and help people in groups. Do this long enough and they would reciprocate your effort.

For example, the screenshot below shows me engaging with content on a Facebook group. Engagements like this have helped me close a lot of long-lasting clients.

6. Don’t Make Your Posts Salesy

Follow the 80/20 rule. 

80% of your post should be directed to help your target customers and 20% should be directed to promote and market your product.

If you make all your posts sale-sy, you’d turn your social media page into an e-commerce store and drive your future customers away.

For example, here’s a post from ContentSumo’s Linkedin page that was full of value from top to bottom.

7. Most Times Your Personal Account Is More Effective

Do all the normal posting on your company account but do not neglect your personal social media profiles.

The reason is simple. If you want people to trust your advice, they’d love to see a human face and name instead of a company’s logo. Also, a corporate entity engaging on a post that is not on their social media page might look fishy and suspicious and may not get the best results you need.

8. Use Stealth Closing to Convert

Whether on your company or personal page, you can push traffic to your website using what I call stealth marketing.

Here’s how it works.

After every post, leave a link to a useful resource, and offer or a promo in the comments. Because the link is in the comments, readers will not see it as a sales move. 

Also, Linkedin or Facebook algorithm will not reduce your post reach (they hate it when you send people out to other sites). This helps you turn every post into a marketing machine for your business.

For example, here’s how Nick Jordan or Content Distribution uses stealth marketing to push traffic from Linkedin to his Agency’s Facebook community.

9. Be Consistent

Posting and engaging on social media only when you feel like will not cut it for your business. 

You need consistency for weeks and months to get any significant organic results from social media.

Automation tools can help you stay consistent with your posting. But you have to get on your keyboard and type away to engage with your followers and other social media posts.

Do Startups Need Social Media?

Yes.

Your customers are on social media. Waiting for you.

About half of the world’s population is on social media and the numbers are growing. Because people find social media platforms easy to use, they now rely on them to connect with brands and make buying decisions. 

But don’t just take my word for it. According to Hootsuite, 53.6% of the world’s population is on social media. And according to Sprout Social after following a brand, 91% of consumers will visit the brand’s site or app, and 89% will buy the brand’s products or services.

How can Social Media Help Startups?

Why is social media marketing important for your startup and what are the benefits of social media to your business?

Here are seven ways social media can benefit your startup or small business.

Increase Brand Awareness 

You can use social media to spread the word about your business, fast.

For example, below is a post from Dollar Shave Club that gathered close to one thousand likes and lots of comments. For a post like this, my guess is the impression will be in tens of thousands with lots of shares.

With this post, Dollar Shave Club will get in front of more people who never knew about them or haven’t paid any attention to them. Calculate the impact 100 posts will have. Now make it 1000.

Over 2.9 billion people use Facebook every month. On Linkedin, the number is 310 million active users. Not mentioning Instagram and Twitter.

These are people ready to receive your message. And because social media users interact with one another, a single share, like or comment of your post can reach thousands of more people. Helping to increase the number of people who know about your brand.

Increase Site Traffic

Social media is a great source of free traffic to your site.

For example, below are posts I published on Medium in 2017 that got thousands of views and reads in less than a week just from sharing them on Reddit.

From social media, you can direct thousands of traffic to your site, for free. So you don’t have to rely on Google to bless you with search traffic or throw in thousands of $$$ to get traffic from paid search or paid social.

Increase Trust in Your Brand

Customers trust brands that have active social media accounts.

An active social media account is a signal of seriousness to your customers. And before making any buying decisions, buyers research brands on social media to ensure they’re still active.

Increase Conversion 

You can rake in sales directly from social media through organic posts.

For example, here’s another post by Dollar Shave Club advertising their products.

This can be a fast way to increase your sales and boost your company’s profits.

Also, with the added benefits of increased brand awareness and trust from social media, your company gets and converts more leads to buyers.

Better Customer Support 

Customers now prefer to engage with brands on social media. Either through DMs or by calling out to them in a public post.

For example, here’s Domino’s Pizza responding to a customer’s complaint on Twitter.

Your customers find it more convenient to contact you via social media instead of opening a request ticket or waiting for you to respond to emails. According to Statista, one in every three customers has communicated their complaint with a brand using social media.

When you properly respond to complaints privately or publicly your customers love you. 

Also, their satisfaction with your product or services increases and you improve word-of-mouth marketing.

More Cost-Effective Way to Market

As a startup, you may not have the $$$ to pump into ads, but with social media, you can grow your brand awareness and grow sales organically.  Without breaking the bank.

Faster Way to Build a Community

Community is the new marketing and social media can help you build a strong and active community that will be ready to buy your product or services. 

For example, Consulting.com uses its Facebook group, Consulting Community to engage its customers and help them use its coaching products better.

A community like this consolidates their customer base, helps them serve their customers better, and helps pull in more users for their product.

Which Social Media Is Best for Marketing?

The best social media for your business is not Facebook or Instagram. Neither is it Linkedin or Twitter. 

The best social media platform for your company is the social media channel where most of your target customers spend their time online. And it can be either Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, Instagram, or Twitter. Or a combination of them. 

What Should I Post on Social Media Today?

And how do you know what to post each day?

Answer: your social media posting calendar. 

How many times should you post in a day?

Once a day should be your minimum. But you can go upwards and post as much as you can.

What Should I Post on Social Media if I Have no Content?

There are times when you do not have content ideas. This rarely happens if you have a calendar. 

But when it happens my technique is to look for an influencer’s posts and share them on my social media account with personal notes. You can do that.

You could also scroll through to previous posts to find content that had lots of engagement and reshare them with some tweaks. 

Now It’s Your Turn

Social media is a tough game, but you can win if you always prioritize your audience and their needs, consistency, and engagement. Follow the steps and best practices you learned in this post and you wouldn’t go wrong. 

By the way, I help startups figure out their brand messaging, you can reach out if you need help with this.