4 Tips To Build Your Social Media Presence
In a world where anything and everything is online, it’s important that your business is alive and present for the digital world to see.
If you’re setting up your startup, or in the process of planning, first, congratulations! Starting is the first step to bringing your idea to life. Second, you’re probably wondering how to make your business present online.
You’re probably thinking, “I’m no Digital Marketer, I don’t even know how to use social media most of the time!”
Social media is a mainstay of marketing nowadays, and everything you need to know when starting out is online... You just have to know how to work your way around it.
Here are some tips and tools to get your business off the ground and onto the digital stage!
Know the Field
If you want to make your business present online, it’s important to be familiar with how to use the different social media platforms. Yes, we may deal with these apps and websites on a daily basis for fun or for our leisure, but using social media as a marketing tool is a whole other ball game.
As I mentioned earlier, all this information is available online. The following websites and services provide free step-by-step lectures on how to use different social media websites, and even give you some tools you can use as a business owner.
Facebook Blueprint offers lectures on a variety of Social Media Marketing related topics, helping you navigate the ins and outs of Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Messenger. Whether you want to learn about how to set-up your startup’s business page or how to amplify your reach through Facebook ads, Facebook Blueprint has an online class for you.
Note: While taking these classes are free, if you’re like me and want to get certifications in any of these classes, Certification Exams are available for some platforms [and may have Application Fees that go with them].
Facebook and Instagram Insights helps you monitor engagement once your social media set up. Engagement is any form of action towards your page or profile, be it likes, clicks, comments, or shares. This way, you can check if your page and content is getting traction and plan how to increase your reach.
Note: You can only view Instagram Insights if you register your account as a Business Profile, which can be done for free.
Google Academy for Ads provides quick programs and classes that teach you how to set apart your online ads from the rest. It gives quicks courses on topics such as Digital Marketing that help you adapt to the modern consumer, set up different types of Google ads, and lots more!
Know Your (Online) Audience
Photo by: rawpixel.com
You’ve probably already finished this step as you thought about who your product or service is for, but you may need to think differently when it comes to how your audience behaves online.
One way you can do this is to personify your online audience.
You’ll need to think of how your audience not only behaves, but how they go about the online world as well. It helps to build what we call an “Audience Persona.”
To help you brainstorm, you may ask questions like:
If you were to describe your audience as one person, who would they be?
What time are they online?
What sites or apps do they frequent?
What do they like doing online?
What kind of content do they like searching or seeing online?
Do they like reading long, thought-provoking articles, or do they prefer videos and simple captions?
Top Tip: Observe the people around you. Survey some friends. When are they on their phones or laptops? What do they usually do?
These are some of the things you should consider when thinking about your audience.
Know Your Competition
Whether your brand is a product or service, it helps to know what similar brands are doing. It will help to know what your business can do or express differently in order to stand out.
If you’d like, you can personify them the same way as you did in your Audience Persona and compare all of them!
Some other questions you can ask when making your Competitors Persona:
What kind of content do they post?
What is the overall vibe of their content? [Is it fun? Serious? Informative?]
How often do they post?
How do they interact with their audience? [e.g. How do they reply to comments, if they do.]
Tip: Sometimes your competition isn’t necessarily an established brand, it could be a mindset or behaviour. If you were thinking of selling a soft drink, for example, your competition may not just be other soft drink brands out there, but the mindset that soft drinks are unhealthy. Knowing that, you can then strategize to show your audience how your product may be different or introduce a different mindset they can focus on.
Know Your (Online) Voice
Photo by: Bejamin Dada
As you build these personas for your audience and competitors, you can start forming one for your brand as well. Apply the similar persona framework you did previously and create your own brand’s “Online Persona”!
Feel free to think about these while you brainstorm:
How do you speak online? [Is it happy? Serious? Hip? Do you use emojis?]
What kind of content are you posting? [Is it more on the informative side? Artsy? Funny?
How often and when are you posting?
Top Tip: At the start of your business, it will help to post frequently to make your mark online. Observe which days get you more Engagement, then limit your posts to those peak days.
Note: You probably already know your audience inside and out, but having your personas fleshed out and written down will help you make quick decisions. These personas inform a lot of your marketing materials in the future, such as the sites you will be more active on or the type of content you create online. As you consider these personas on your own, it helps to pitch these ideas to your team or even other groups for an outside perspective.
Want to know more about these tips in detail? Bookmark the Startup Lady blog, and stay tuned for more marketings tips and tricks!
Looking for somewhere to share your newly created personas and get feedback?
At our bi-monthly Startup Lady Mastermind Session, you can present and brainstorm your different audience, competitor, and brand personas to a group who can give you feedback and suggestions to improve your plans further!
About the Author
Dana helps manage Startup Lady’s Marketing and Operations. She is currently studying Japanese at a language school in Tokyo. When she’s not busy attending classes, Dana’s out trying to explore the world of digital marketing one copy at a time.