Social Media Marketing: 5 Key Principles Every Start-Up Should Follow While Promoting Its Business on Social Media

A business is able to survive and sustain in long-term only if it creates adequate and apt awareness about the products and services it offers. Enterprises all over the world have been increasing investing in widening their market and customer base. One way of reaching out to the potential customers is through social media. According to Satistia, nearly 50 per cent of the world's population uses social media. That's over 3 Billion users worldwide. It has become indispensable for businesses, both established and start-ups to increase their social media presence and attract people. For start-up owners, creating an online presence should be of utmost priority. Each person spends an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes on social networks and messaging, as per Global Web Index.

Mere creating accounts on various social media platforms won’t suffice. Every start-up should emphasis in creating a comprehensive, well-researched and flexible social media strategy. Different social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube,  LinkedIn, among others have been proved useful in promoting, advertising businesses and generating awareness about the product. However, strategy should be in compliance with the functioning of the respective platform. 7 Strategies For Getting More Business From Social Media.

Here are 5 Key Principles all Start-Ups Should Follow While Promoting Their Businesses on Social Media –

Choose Your Platform Wisely:

All social media platforms have their own reach and users, however one should be careful in choosing the digital platform used to advertise the products. One may choose multiple platforms as well, but careful prioritisation will be needed in that case. Usually one should start with a platform he/she has complete knowledge about. For instance, if the start-up is youth-centric, one should go for a full-fledged promotion of Facebook and Instagram, both of which have huge young followers.  According to data 7 4 per cent of users check Facebook daily, with an average of 8 times a day. LinkedIn is a better platform to promote research-based or KPO-based products and services.

Post Attractive Context:

One of the most important elements of any marketing and advertising strategy is the content. On social media, especially content is the king. One should try and incorporate various multimedia components in the post. Making the content attractive and unique is important so that it doesn’t get lost in hundreds of things being posted online every second. Several multimedia elements like audios, videos, graphics, images, interactive media, infograms, GIFs etc can be used to make the content attractive. Avoid writing in bigger texts as no one on social media have the patience to read and respond to it.

Collaborate with Social Media Influencers':

The biggest gamble in the social media game is to get followers, likes, shares and clicks. One of the tried, tested and easy ways is to collaborate with social media influencers and personalities.  According to Fourcommunications report, 49 per cent of consumers claim that they depend on influencer recommendations on social media to inform their purchasing decision. A consumer feels confident in the recommendation from an influencer, and he or she will be more likely to purchase the product. Top Trends To Remember Before Planning Digital Marketing Strategy.

Use of SEOs and Hashtags:

Making an account of social media and posting content is not sufficient, one’s content should be visible to the target consumers as well. Scores of content is being generated and pushed on various digital platform every passing second. It is therefore necessary to create SEO-compliant content. SEO or Search Engine Optimisation are basically those keywords that are most searched online. When someone tactically puts the SEOs in its content, the probability of it being fetched by search engine increases. Similarly the use of appropriate ‘#’hastags is also important while promoting posts on digital platform.

Social Media Analysis:

It is important to have a regular monitoring of the performance of various social media posts, so that the firm knows what the customers want. Several social media engagements including number of likes, shares, retweets, quotes, comments etc,. There are various tools that help to analyse the social media, for instance Google Analytics, Snaplytics, Sprout Social among others. It is important to keep a note of social media performance, and receive the policy as and when required.

Promoting the start-up on social media is the need of the hour. As more and more people are drifting away from physical market place to digital ones, robust and detailed policy on social media management is important. 321 million new people joined social media in 2019, which brought the total from 3.48 billion to 3.8 billion social media users (an increase of 9 per cent) in 2020, as per a recent data.