How to Increase Social Media Engagement for your Startup?

Did you know that 78% of consumers report being willing to purchase from a company after having a good social media experience with them? This statistic alone helps to explain why so many startups want to know how to increase social media engagement.

Having a social media strategy for startups typically ends up being pivotal in driving sales, increasing reach, and communicating with customers.

We’ll cover ideas for how to increase social media engagement, as well as key considerations to keep in mind.

​​Source: Unsplash

Why Does Social Media Marketing Matter?

Social media marketing matters for startups, and established businesses, greatly. Here are just a few reasons why:

Brand awareness

Many brands come to be known via social media. This is especially true of startups and local, small businesses. With billions of people using social media platforms, businesses leverage the marketing tool to get in front of eyeballs and capture the hearts, minds, and ultimately pockets, of those who they can reach.

Customer communication

Social media platforms also serve a deep purpose for businesses when it comes to being able to directly communicate with customers (and even suppliers). Brands get to contact customers directly via these channels. Additionally, social media can be used as a listening tool to get a sense of how customers are relating to or experiencing products or services since people leave comments and interact on these channels.

Increase traffic and sales

When you’re a startup, one of your primary goals is to use your likely limited resources wisely. Social media can provide a way to drive traffic to your website or convert prospective customers into paying customers for a relatively low cost.

How to increase Social Media Engagement

One of the biggest questions that big and small businesses alike face is knowing how to increase social media engagement. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. In fact, for many companies, it comes down to a game of trial-and-error.

However, there are some crucial considerations to take into account (no pun intended) when you’re setting up social media accounts and strategies!

1. Set SMART Goals

To start off, set SMART goals. SMART, in this case, stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. By doing this, you can ensure setting goals that are realistic, timely, and effective in reaching what you hope to accomplish. Over the years, most people have come to realize that it’s less about the number of followers that you have, and more about the engagement levels of your followers (i.e. likes, comments, the intention of buying). Some common social media goals for startups include increasing brand awareness, growing website traffic, and boosting sales.

2. Focus on Specific Platforms

With your SMART goals in mind, you’ll want to figure out which social media platforms are best to prioritize. While it can pay to be on every platform, you’ll need to decide how to allocate funds (for campaigns) and content based on any time constraints you may face. Social media platforms tend to have their own kind of identity and purpose. For example, LinkedIn is a professionally-focused platform, so it’s best for thought leadership content and polls. Instagram is highly visual, so it’s best used for e-Commerce shops and visually-appealing content.

3. Create Profiles and Content Strategy

Once you know which platforms you care to be on, you’ll need to secure the handles and sign up for accounts. Try to keep your handle name the same as your business name and consistent across platforms. This way, if people were to search for your brand, you would show up. Each platform requires its own set of items to create profiles, so check out what you will need in advance so that you can be prepared (i.e. website URL, business address, profile picture, header image, cover image, company bio, etc.)

4. Schedule Posts

Rather than posting on the fly or whenever you feel you have a moment, take some time to develop a consistent strategy. This way, you can test out your posting times and gauge how much interaction it receives. With consistency, you can start to figure out what works versus what doesn’t. Additionally, you can keep your content up-to-date, which will inspire more engagement and follow as no one wants to follow stale pages.

Pro Tip: Don’t post the same thing on every platform. If you have a customer who follows you across platforms, you’ll be increasing the chance of an unfollow if you don’t add value for your audience on different entities.

5. Promote Social Channels

While social media platforms are used to promote your website and products, you can also make the equation work the other way around. For starters, be sure to link out to your social channels on your website. Additionally, market your social media accounts in your marketing efforts such as on email newsletters.

6. Analyze and Monitor Results

Keep track of engagement analytics on a daily or weekly basis so that you can see what’s working in your favor. Depending on your goals, you can select which metrics to monitor more closely than others, be it likes, mentions, follows, shares, conversions, etc.

7. Optimize

After you’ve collected enough data, you can start to optimize your strategy based on the high-performing content that left its mark.

Source: Unsplash

Things to Consider: Social Media Strategy for Startups

When you’re building up your social media and audience, the primary need is to remain authentic to your brand and its goals. You’ll want to attract and retain customers who are proud to be your customers based on your products, quality, service, and values.

To align your social media strategy with your brand identity, be sure to:

• Define Ideal customer profile or personas
• Outline your core values
• Focus on organic growth
• Think outside the box (include efforts like email marketing, augmented reality, SEO, etc)

Social Media That Sells

There’s no single way to explain how to increase social media engagement because what works for one brand varies from another. The entire point is that your social media strategy should be one that is in tune with your overall business goals and overall look and feel.

When you remain true to your brand, honest with your customers, and consistent with your social media efforts, you will naturally see positive results!