5 Social Media Marketing Tips For Small Businesses And Startups

• Date: 20 May 2019
• reading time: 4 Minutes
• Blogger: Francisca Zimmermann
• E-mail: [email protected]

The challenges of a new business

You recently started a new business, or you are running a business by yourself? Then you probably feel overwhelmed. With excitement, with possibilities, with plans, but also with incredibly long to-do-lists.

Running your own business means not having one job, but having at least ten. You are a business owner, a finance specialist, a tax specialist, a designer, a marketer, and whatever else comes across in your company. This is challenging, but a lot of fun too. Organizing your time and money in a way that allows you to actually get your work done successfully is incredibly rewarding.

This time and money management is challenging. You simply can't afford losing time on things that don't benefit your company. You need structure, the right tools, and a clear strategy.

Social media management for startups

Although it may not be top of the list, social media management is most probably something you have been thinking of. And if not, we believe you should be. Almost every company uses social media for marketing their product or service, and the successes are enormous. Think about it; there are around 3.48 billion people in the world who use social media regularly. That is a massive possibility for businesses. And all you have to do is reach them with interesting content.

Social media management comes in many different forms. Some companies choose to post several times per day on every platform available, with their own content. Other companies focus on one social media platform and only share an update once in a while. Of course, different strategies mean different results and different time investment.

There are certain things all social media users should do to start with, but from there we can organize our ongoing social media management in different ways. Very time- and money consuming ways, and ways that will help you grow without spending your full workweek on social media.

In this blog we will look at a couple of tricks to use for start-ups with limited manpower, time and budget, can still make a strong start with their social media marketing strategy.

1. Use a scheduling tool

Planning social media content takes a long time, but luckily, more and more help, in the form of tools, pops up. The most well-known and also the most time-saving tool for content planning is the scheduling tool. With a scheduling tool, you can pre-schedule your content in advance. This means that the tool will publish your content at its given time, and you won’t have to log in and manually share your posts every time. This helps you to work more effectively, since you can choose a moment in which you create and schedule all your content for a week or even a few weeks. Once it’s scheduled, you won’t have to think about it anymore for a little while.

At Social Media Gids we use Hootsuite to schedule our content, but Buffer, CoSchedule and HeyOrca Are great tools too.

2. Reuse content

If you are creating your content wisely, you can use it multiple times. How? To start with, you can use your posts on multiple social media channels. All you will have to do is write a shorter version for Twitter (Twitter has a 280 character text limit), change hashtags according to the platform, and you are done.

However, you can take this further. A nice Facebook post can be turned into an Infographic, an infographic into an ebook, or a blog. A blog can easily be turned into a video. Did you share an excellent post on Twitter? You can reuse this for an Instagram post or Instagram story.

Think creatively, and you will find endless ways in which you can use your content multiple times.

3. Collaborate

The great thing about running a company is that you are not alone. There are endless companies around who do something similar to you. And although you may see them as competition, they can be great partners too. An easy way to reach a bigger audience without spending any money is by collaborating with a company similar to you. By sharing each other’s content, you also share your audience with your partner and get access to theirs. This may double your audience quickly. The larger your audience grows, the larger your social media partners can be. And believe us, this can result in massive growth.

A great place to look for partners is on Instagram. You can start with featuring each other in an Instagram story or a post, and you can even decide to host a contest together. Of course, you can do this on other social media channels too. All you have to do is message a company you like and ask them.

4. Don’t forget your analytics

Many companies work hard on their social media channels, post great content, and sometimes even invest in advertising, but avoid having to look at their social media analytics. Analytics can seem intimidating, but they are actually incredibly valuable. You can take your analytics as far as you like. There are many useful tools available that will give you detailed insights about your social media results, but the Insights tab in your social media channels can already give you a lot of information.

Using them is simple: By for instance comparing the results for each post, you can start to see patterns in the reactions to the different types of content you share. Are the numbers of likes, shares, and comments way higher for your video posts? Or are there hardly any likes on your company updates? Then you can organize your work and spend your time on the types of posts that actually book great results.

5. Learn from others

Enrolling in a long course may be too time-consuming and expensive for you at this stage, but there are many quick and easy ways to learn without investing a lot of time and money. Are you unsure about your target market? Are you planning to run an ad, but not sure where to start? Try to find others to help you out. There are many Facebook groups available where entrepreneurs help each other out. Also, LinkedIn groups may be a great way to find help.

Are you interested in several short masterclasses, courses, and discussions on social media management to learn from? Then the Social Media Gids Community may be a great place for you.

Need help?

Are you looking for more guidance or are you thinking or hiring a social media expert to get you going? We have a lot of experience getting start-ups set up on social media. Feel free to get in touch with us for a quick call to discuss what we can do for you.

Want to post a comment? Join the conversation in our community

• Blogger: Francisca Zimmermann
• E-mail: [email protected]
• Social media manager & content creator at Social Media Gids
• Francisca Zimmermann is a social media expert with a background in research and a love for learning new things. She travels the world looking for beautiful places and interesting cultures, while she dives into the world of her clients to be able to write about them and their interests as a real 'insider'.
• Other blog articles of Francisca Zimmermann