Social Media Tips for Start-Ups & New Businesses
Social media management can be one of the things new business owners or start-ups struggle to get on top of or do consistently. For those who decide to take time to plan and create a strategy - it can pay off in dividends. These are three main reasons for giving it due attention.
It helps with Search Engine Optimisation (ie. How you show up on Google search results) – you can rank higher if you put some effort and link back to a website you are driving sales from
It builds a stronger brand – by taking time to plan every week you will bring consistency into your posts
It’s one of the best ways to grow and engage with your customers
Ready to get stuck in? I’ve outlined three steps below to help you get on top of your social media.
Step 1: Planning your social media posts
Ask yourself these questions to plan what you might share with your network and followers:
How much content you can manage to post on a weekly / monthly basis? And how much does your audience want to hear from you?
What social media platforms are your customers using? And what are they using them for?
What events are on that you can tap into – eg. Industry events, local events, changing seasons etc.?
What do you want to promote? For example – a new feature, service, offer?
What are your customers asking for – eg. Solutions to some of their painpoints etc.
What do you want to get feedback on? Do you want to engage your audience as a research input into your product or service?
What is the right format for your post? Is it a video, a link to a blog post, an image, a poll?
What kind of posts have gotten the most shares or likes in the past? Can you do more of that?
What days and times are best for you to engage with your followers?
Who do you want to see your post? Does it make sense to tag them or an influential person in it?
Step 2: Creating your posts
Write out your posts in a tone that represents your brand.
Use a hashtag generator like Sistrix to find the best hashtags to add to your posts
Consider using a tool like Canva – it offers a lot of creativity and efficiencies for creating posts. It starts from €9.16 per month and allows you to do lots of things that will make creating posts quick and consistent with your brand. You can set up your brand colours, use pre-existing templates and set up your own, animate text, use video and still images.
Spend half a day learning Canva with a course like this one on Udemy or get the basics with this half hour video on YouTube. If you don’t have time – get one of your team to learn…they will probably enjoy it!
Step 3: Scheduling your posts
If you are using Canva you can plug the social media platforms, you manage straight into it and schedule from there.
You can use a planner view in Canva or on Meta Business Suite if you are not using Canva.
If you want everyone to see a post – the only way to make that happen is to boost it and spend a little money with Meta.
An alternative tool to try out for scheduling is Later – very popular for Instagram because of their visual planner!