Beginner’s Guide to Social Media
For Founders, Startups and Small Businesses
Note: I wrote this post with a few specific founders in mind. It is written for people who are truly new to social media or, at least, are new to doing it on behalf of an organization.
These days, social media makes the world go ‘round. Journalists rely on it to get the latest news. Neighbors depend on it for vital safety information. Companies and individuals harness it to grow their audiences in remarkable ways.
There’s huge power in social media for you as an individual and for your company. It can help you move across the country, make a career shift, launch your venture and demonstrate your expertise.
Social media is crucial for three reasons. It helps you (and your company):
- Stay relevant in the conversation happening in your industry
- Find customers
- Engage and support those customers
If you are starting a company, growing a company, trying to find a job, trying to hire people, aiming to change the world — you need to be active on social media.
This is a post about how to get your social media machine going. My friend Andy, a marketing consultant, once told me that you should choose a social media cadence that you can sustain. However, it is not ok to abstain. We, the people of the internet, need to be able to find you somewhere other than your website.
The most important thing to know about social media is that it is a dialog, not a broadcast. Primarily, you should be out there providing value to the internet community in the form of advice, giveaways (discounts, events, free stuff) and honest information. As a side benefit of that, you’ll gain customers and employees. Better yet, opportunities you never chased will surface — namely, speaking engagements, press write-ups and worldwide networking with almost anyone you can imagine.
Getting Started
Start by writing down your goals for social media. What action do you want out of your social media efforts?
Then, if you haven’t done so already, make personas for your audience. These can help in targeting posts to your audience. Personas should represent the behavioral cohort you are chasing. Two or three is enough to get started. How does your audience behave? What motivates them? What do they need? What are their goals?
After you know your goals and the goals of your audience, you can research platforms where you’re likely to find them. I made a short list of the ones I’ve used with different startups and growth companies. It’s worthwhile to do some digging on these platforms to find your customers. Post more on the channels where you think you’ll get the most traction.
These are in order of which I have found them to be valuable to the companies I’ve worked with:
Why // The main value of Twitter is the speed of the conversation. Timely news travels fast and leaders emerge within minutes. Twitter is useful for sharing your expertise and for finding people interested in your expertise. It takes work to build credibility on Twitter, but it’s worthwhile. As a result, you’ll gain customers, potential collaborators and cultural capital in the form of followers. (People are very impressed when you have a lot of followers.)
Who // Twitter is home to technologists and early adopters. You’ll find many thought leaders, public figures, bloggers, journalists and event organizers on the platform in addition to us regular folk.
How // All founders should have a Twitter profile. You should use a real photo of yourself (or occasionally an illustration if it’s super awesome) and your real name. Your bio should clearly explain what you do and where you do it. It’s also fine to add some humor or personal interests. For example, Tristan Walker’s profile:
Other great individual tweeters are:
Your company’s Twitter profile should feel like it comes from humans. Try reading your tweets out loud to make sure they are informal and conversational.
A few companies that rock at Twitter are:
Scheduling // You and your company should be tweeting, replying and retweeting several times a day (ideally around 3–10x).
Why // Facebook is still a major social media platform despite word on the street that it’s not cool with the kids these days. Many people are still on Facebook and it’s an important channel for listening to customers. News spreads on Facebook through family and friends which can have more weight than from random internet sources. When people find your company, it’s more likely that they will follow you on Facebook than on other platforms. (Source: Pew Research) I also find Facebook ads to be the most effective social media ads, though results vary dramatically based on the existing engagement of a Facebook page.
Who // Everyone is on Facebook except for me and those mysterious kids who say Facebook’s no longer cool.
How // Facebook began as a network of college students and through the years, it continues to be a place of family and friends. Some Facebook users follow news organizations and brands, but it’s important to keep in mind that anything you post there competes with newborn babies, weddings, new jobs and cat photos.
Pictures and videos perform better than plain text on Facebook. Liking and commenting on other people’s posts from your personal account helps grow engagement on your posts. Same from your company’s Facebook page — responding to messages and posts from others will drive more engaged followers across the board.
Take a look at:
Scheduling // You and your company should be ‘booking (posting and commenting on Facebook) a couple times a day (ideally 1–3x).
Why // Instagram is the fastest growing social media platform (according to TechCrunch last year). There’s not much of a downside to Instagram except maybe that they’re owned by Facebook. It’s a place of positivity and aspiration that has managed to keep its rep on the up and up by not drowning posts in ads.
Who // Visual people — especially bloggers, artists, photographers, crafters, designers, the fashion crowd and Justin Bieber.
How // You can only post photos or videos (up to 15 seconds long) on Instagram. Text over images can work in small doses and you can write captions, though few people will read them. Humor and striking imagery get the most likes. The trick to Instagram is being known for a gimick and delivering on it often. For example:
Of course, these companies are stars on the ‘gram as well:
Consistency is key on Instagram. The more predictable your feed is, the more followers you’ll get. That said, incredible photos get likes.
One caveat to Instagram is that you can’t link to anything except in your profile. There are plenty of clever ways to get around this limitation, but the goal with Instagram is to get people so excited about your product that they just google you. And for gosh sakes, put your URL in your profile.
Scheduling // You and your company should post photos and like other photos on Instagram every day or every few days (ideally once or twice a day).
Why // LinkedIn is the reigning queen of professional networking. It’s mostly useful for spreading news about your company to potential employees and investors. However, its status update and blog features are highly underutilized. It’s likely more of your connections will see what you post than on any other platform.
Who // Your professional contacts in any industry except entertainment which likes to fly under the radar.
How // You can have a profile, a company page and blog posts on LinkedIn. Make sure your personal profile links to your company page. You should definitely post your own achievements as LinkedIn updates to build your personal audience, which you can always leverage for your company. Other than that, I haven’t found a big return on investment for posting on a company page but I still do it because it doesn’t require much effort. I usually repurpose content created for Twitter or Facebook. If you are recruiting or want more professional validity, focus more time on LinkedIn.
Worth looking at the LinkedIn pages of:
Scheduling // You and your company should be post and like posts on LinkedIn every few days (ideally around 3–5x a week).
Vine
Why // If you want to use videos but you don’t have a lot to say, Vine is the perfect platform. Vine limits videos to six seconds for the highly distracted internet population. The bonus being that it’s highly likely someone will watch the whole thing:)
Who // People who are good at the internet, people who want to discover the next Justin Bieber, comedians, actors and snake people.
How // You have to be creative with Vine because it’s only six seconds. Watch several Vine videos before attempting to make one. Or read Inc’s article on brands that get Vine.
Check out these Viners:
And corporations using Vine:
Scheduling // You and your company should Vine when you have good stories. If you want to become a regular Viner, every day or a few times a week (consistently, on the same days) will get you there. If not, post whenever you have a good video (up to twice a day).
YouTube
Why // YouTube is the most ubiquitous video platform. (Source: Ad Week) If people are looking for videos, they will search YouTube before anywhere else, partially because of that annoying auto-play feature.
Who // I don’t know the answer to this. My guess is that the only people who check YouTube feeds are YouTube contributors, but if you link to your YouTube videos from other platforms, you can reach your audience there. Also, YouTube links can be embedded on most social and blogging websites.
How // Videos should be short — ideally 30 seconds to 2 minutes, unless they are meant to be entertainment or target a cult following (e.g. Reading Rainbow). You can make YouTube videos with advice, demos or as a way to show off the people behind your company. Again, you’re competing with cat videos, prancercise and old TV shows. But if you have something worth sharing in video form, YouTube is most likely to be the right channel. Be sure to ask people to take an action in the video if you want more than just followers on YouTube. Also, YouTube has a whole Creator Academy if you want to become a pro.
Here are a few YouTubers for reference. Be prepared to not understand why these people are so popular:
Companies on YouTube
Scheduling // You and your company should post on YouTube based on your interests. If you want to become a YouTube sensation, post videos at least once a week (on the same day). You could post up to about three videos a day.
Vimeo
Why // Because YouTube is full of ads and nonsense and you want a professional looking video player.
Who // Filmmakers and designers. Again, if you link to a Vimeo from another platform, other people will watch it. But all of that stuff that makes YouTube annoying to look at is why it’s powning Vimeo.
How // Same as with YouTube. You’ll need to do more promotion with Vimeo videos than with YouTube videos because there’s less of a social network. You can customize your page with paid pro tools if you get serious about video.
Scheduling // Same guideline about posting for YouTube (see above).
Quora
Why // People look to Quora for expertise. If you are an expert, you should be posting answers there.
Who // Right now, Quora is mostly technologists but it is quickly growing beyond tech into other industries. Take a look and if you find decent engagement around your industry, it’s worth answering questions there.
How // Make a profile for yourself as an individual and add your company as a topic. Then, search for questions you can answer. It’s best if these are the questions your customers are asking, but it’s worth answering questions around your field if you have the answers. It’s not worth answering questions that already have strong answers. Be specific and explain your credibility in your bio and your answer. Make it easy to find out more about you and your company but don’t sell anything in your answers.
Scheduling // You can post pretty often on Quora but the amount of answers you’ve written matters much less than the quality of those answers. Review Quora weekly or monthly and see if there are places you can truly add your expertise. Look for questions followed by a couple hundred people with weak answers.
Building a Social Media Plan
So, now that you know as much as I know about all these social media platforms, the next step is to write out your strategy.
Timing
It’s more important to post valuable information than to post often but it’s best if you can do both. Each platform has different ways of surfacing content to your audience. Tailor your frequency to the platform. Facebook and LinkedIn posts will stay around longer than Twitter or Instagram posts. I keep a list of social media platforms, times and post ideas in Hackpad.
In my experience, posts on all platforms get the most attention in the early morning (6–9am) unless they happen around an event. Blog posts seem to get the most attention when released and promoted on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursday early mornings. It’s barely worth posting on the weekends. However, if you build up a captive audience, you can get engagement at any time.
Content
I find the best approach on social media is to have one clear area of expertise and post 75–80% on that topic. The rest can be relevant world events and personal posts (hobbies, friends, life events, etc). Obviously, you should vary your content. Don’t post the same message three times in a row. And definitely show off your personality and the culture at your company.
To figure out the types of content, I start by writing out all the kinds of posts I could generate for an organization. For example:
Articles, news (industry-related)
Advice, quotes or facts (industry-related)
Questions
Jokes, videos
Comments, replies and reposts count as content. They are instrumental in propelling your message farther. Please only comment on posts where you can add information or a valid perspective.
As you build your audience, social media will become a key channel for customer support. Pay attention early on to people who follow and write you back (unless they are spam bots).
Scheduling and Tracking
At Carbon Five, we use Buffer to schedule posts and SumAll to track engagement. We find it useful to go back and review which posts were most successful in getting likes, shares, retweets, etc. We review these metrics alongside our end goal of getting traffic to our website.
Buffer makes it easy to post and repurpose content across most of your channels from one place. Make sure not to include hashtags or @ mentions on a platform that doesn’t use them (e.g. LinkedIn).
And You’re Off…
The number one thing to remember about social media strategy is to be a good citizen of the internet. Be nice to the internet and the internet will be nice to you.
Happy posting.
Published in Carbon Five.
