I launched my startup this past summer and whenever someone asked me about social media I will tell them my hope was to find someone else to take this part of my company over. It wasn’t because I’m over 25 and don’t understand it or because I don’t see the value of social media. The issue was that I didn’t know what to do. Staring at my facebook page with my 50 friends, I was just at a lost of what to put on there. Oh sure, I made post every now and then but after I made it I felt like it was the stupidest thing to say.

So like any other startup owner, I scoured the internet for helpful tips on how to build my audience. There was always advice like “know your audience and who your talking too” or “make valuable content” or “let people know how you’re different from your competitors”. I’m sure these are great suggestions but I didn’t know who my audience was (I’m still trying to find it), my content felt very forced, and as far as differences, telling your audience that “you have control over your cards” just doesn’t really speak to anyone.

So where did I start?

I committed to posting to facebook three times a week. The first couple of weeks I’m sure it was all technical aspects of our designer app. But every other day I knew I needed to come up with something to write and that pressure made me conscious of posts ideas every day. Then after a couple of weeks I would be doing stuff with the company and I would think “that needs to be post”. Soon I started to have more than three posts a week.

Once the ideas started to flow, then I started to get more deliberate about what would make it to the facebook page. I committed to posting six days a week. I would keep posting my company doings but now I was going to post images of postcards you could make. Again, the first couple of weeks I had to search etsy for inspiration of what people wanted in a card. Then Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas came and the card designs started to flow. Soon I had too many card designs and now have some great saved ideas for future posts.

Finally, I started to be smart with other social media outlets too. I connected my facebook to twitter so my twitter feed gets posts every day. I shared my tumblr posts on facebook. I started making pinterest boards to be inspired. Making a “how to” youtube video is a post that can be used more than once as it is never out of date. Now I’m brave enough to start looking into other venues to see if it makes sense for us to be on there. Looking into instagram and vine.

It’s been quite a journey but in the end I’m so happy I didn’t give this over to someone else. I want to tell people who we are, not let someone else tell their version of our company.