Top Social Media Marketing Strategies for Your Startup

Looking to take your startup a step forward? Want to reach out to more people and spread the word about your new business and its offerings? Look back a few decades and you will find that this task was, no doubt, extremely difficult for any startup. The times, however, have changed. With the arrival of social media, it has become much easier to reach out to people across the globe to spread the word about your business. However, being a startup, you need to use social media prudently. The social media strategies of your startup need to be completely different from those of an established brand.

Select the Right Platform Prudently

Want to plan the social media marketing for your startup? You have all the social media platforms at your disposal that any established brand can use. It is always difficult to decide, which social media websites to use. There are quite a few of them and many of these, such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and others are quite popular. In fact, the trick lies in selecting the right social media platforms for your startup. No matter which one you are using, try to get the most out of it. And to do this, it is important to coordinate the activities on all the social media sites. Keeping the activities as standalone on some of these sites will hardly be of any help.

Optimize the Website and Blog for Social Media

Don’t have any website or blog of your business yet? You need to develop one immediately. These days, you cannot spend even a day without a website for your business and yet think of marketing it among a large number of people. A blog is equally important for the prospects of your business. Make sure these are properly optimized for social media. The icons for different social media websites should be properly displayed in the pages of the blog. This is expected to increase the number of shares of these pages across social media and thus, extend the reach of your business.

Participate in Conversations and Answer Queries

When your business is new, you should take extra steps to let people know about it and answer their queries. Social media is the best platform to do this. Participate in different conversations about your business. Remaining active on social media is probably the best thing you can do. Reply to all the queries and comments, which are made on your posts on these platforms. However, it is important to take a balanced approach to your activities on social media and focus on the minute details. It can come in handy in the long run to help your business perform better. However, being a startup, you need to keep an eye on whatever you are saying. It is important to ensure that none of your comments have any negative impact on your business.

Make Full Use of Groups and Communities

Social media platforms usually have numerous groups and communities. In each of them, different types of topics are discussed. When you are planning to use social media for your startup, try to make full use of these groups. Join a relevant group with large number of members. Post about your business on these groups and communities to ensure that all the members can see your posts and come to know about your business. Engage in these communities to start a discussion about your business. You can also create a page of your business on social media and post information about your business there. This will ensure that people who are connected to your social media profile on that specific platform will be informed about your business.

Go for Visually Engaging Updates

Gone are the days of text-based updates on social media. Always remember the old adage: a picture speaks a thousand world. Use the latest social media platforms, such as Pinterest and others, which allows you to share pictures. They surely offer the shortest way to drive your idea home. Use bright and colorful images to attract the attention of the viewers. You can even create small videos and spread the word about your business, which is the in-thing now. No matter what you do, it is important to be visually engaging to fetch results. They can even go viral on social media, thus making your business familiar among a large number of people. This is likely to help increase the shares of your posts on these social media websites, thus helping you reach out to more number of people.

Social media appears to be the perfect marketing tool for today. It offers the opportunity to reach out to millions at one go. Hence, it can be used to spread the awareness about your startup and reach out to the maximum number of people within the shortest possible time.

[Image Courtesy:
http://ridiculouslyefficient.com/

http://www.thebrainchildgroup.com/blog/2013/07/startup-social-media-marketing/]

DESIGNING A STARTUP WEBSITE: TOP 5 MISTAKES YOU SHOULD NOT COMMIT

These days, when you tell anyone that you own a business, what is the first thing they ask? It is surely this: “What is the website address of your business?” Well, the fact is: in recent times, if you have a business, you need to have a website. But it is not an easy task to set up the website while you are busy establishing your business. There are a few steps that need to be followed while designing the website of a start up business. You need to identify your target audience and cater to their needs. Besides, when you are planning to build a new website for a startup, it will be quite different from what you would have needed if you had wanted to redesign an already successful website. Want to fail miserably with your startup's website? Here are a few mistakes that you can commit.

Going for a Highly Complicated Website

Want to drive away visitors from your website? A complicated site can be of great help to you then. Well, to be frank, you will always want people to know about your business and spend some time surfing your website. For this, you need to have a simple website. The navigation needs to be planned properly. You should always try to ensure that people can move from one part of the website to another without any hassle. You can keep a stationary navigation tool bar, which is in vogue these days. It can add to the site’s simplicity and yet, make it easy for the visitors to use.

Not Concentrating Enough on Logo Creation

Include a logo for your company. While selecting it, look for multiple options. Choose a company color and include it in the logo. Make your logo unique. Think of something, which will help you stand out in the crowd. Ensure that it has a great brand recall value. Use the logo to build up the brand value of your business. It is the major component, which will build up the identification of your business. In short, the logo is going to be the ‘face’ of your business. It will also help to make your business appear unique in a crowd. Hence, you should focus properly on building the logo. Design it yourself if you have relevant experience, or else go for a professional service provider.

Creating a Non-responsive Version

Planning to create a website that has only a PC-compatible version? If you are eager to see your business website fail miserably, then go ahead! These days, you will find almost everyone roaming around with an internet-friendly mobile device in their hands. And when you are creating a website, most of them will use that device to view it. If you have only a PC-compatible version, the site will appear distorted. This will also come in handy to increase conversion and retention rate of your website.

Designing the Whole Thing Yourself

Have you ever been involved in any designing task? Do you have any experience of working on the designs of a website? If not, it is better not to take up the task yourself. Always go for a professional help for this purpose. You can appoint a design cofounder. Find someone who is as passionate about designing as you are about the business. Remember, many of the websites that became popular with time, such as Square, Pinterest and others started with design cofounders. However, even if you have a design cofounder, you need to keep an eye on how the appearance of the website is turning out to be.

Not Collaborating Even When You are Inexperienced

It is possible that you might not want to employ any design co-founder. The only option you will have then is to outsource the work. Appoint an individual designing freelancer or an agency for the purpose. You can find a large number of designers who are capable of creating innovative designs. You can collaborate with any of these freelancers to give a great look to your website. Always remember, collaboration is the key to achieve success.

While designing the website for your startup, keep a simple target in mind: do not end up being just another startup. Do not take ages on planning and end up never creating a website. Rather, it is better to jump into the project and find a direction while on the job. Make a visually attractive website with easy navigation to ensure that the visitors stay for a long time once they land there.

[Image Courtesy

http://www.theventureedge.com/2011/08/25/common-mistakes-startup-design/
http://www.alleywatch.com/ ]