Launching Social Media On A Budget

While social media has only been around for a little more than a decade, it has become a significant and growing part of our daily lives. What a brand can achieve on social media with little to no marketing spend is almost limitless, but with new platforms popping up each year and ever-changing algorithms that determine how content reaches audiences, it can be hard to keep up with best practices. For startups and small businesses especially, it is critical to know exactly what you are trying to achieve on social media so you don’t waste any time or money trying to reach your target audience. Here are a few basics to get you started.

Not all social media platforms are created equal

Too often startups and small business leaders think they need to launch on every platform at the same time. But it is far better to do one or two platforms really well, and then build your strategy from there. As with any other marketing channel, find out where your audience is and build your strategy around them.

First, think about your goals for social media. Each platform presents content in slightly different ways, provides access to different types of data, and focuses on different types of engagement from users. If your startup is more focused on building brand awareness and affinity, Instagram might be your best option. If you need to drive traffic to your website through targeted ads, then Facebook is a better bet. Consider what you need to achieve first, then determine whether each platform will help you meet those goals.

Similarly, the user base and growth of the platform matters, but the average age and other demographics of active users are far more meaningful. Facebook is, without a doubt, the most widely used social media platform with nearly 1.7 billion daily users. But if you need to reach teens, it may not be the most popular or relevant platform. On the other hand, trying to reach retirees? They’re probably not on TikTok, so don’t waste your time. 

Consider what content looks like on each platform, too. Instagram and Pinterest are all about the visuals. Twitter is about bite-size comments and shared resources. Facebook is increasingly focused on community conversations. LinkedIn allows for longer-form content, while TikTok is all about short video clips. Which type of content will your team have the capacity and skill set to execute? Which type of content is best-suited to your product or service?

When it comes to content, focus on quality over quantity

Once you’ve chosen your platform(s), start with something as simple as a weekly content calendar. Think about a cadence you’ll be able to sustain over time. It could be one post per week or one post per day. It’s always easier to add more over time, but it’s harder to keep your audience engaged if you start out with heavy content that tapers off. Create initial content from assets that already exist: photos of your product, team members, or clients; press or testimonials you’ve received; questions you’d like to ask your audience. Develop 3-4 ‘themes’ of content you’d like to test - maybe related to your value proposition, product positioning, or calls to action. Ensure your content touches on each of these areas, and start testing! As you learn and establish trust with your audience you’ll be able to experiment more and increase your volume of content, but the whole idea is to start having a conversation and see how your audience responds.

A little organic growth is usually worth more than a large audience acquired through ads

When it comes to growing your social media audience, the good news is the time you invest is far more valuable than the money you spend. A small budget can go a long way in helping you test messaging and CTAs and even growing your audience, but don’t be lured into massive audience growth through ads. Most social media platforms favor audience engagement over anything else. As long as you are creating valuable content, engaging with your audience, and showing up in the right places, your following will grow steadily over time. There are any number of organic tactics you can use to reach new audiences - from branded hashtags to giveaways to Twitter chats, and those strategies will always generate a more engaged following than ads. Find a few tactics that seem like a good fit for your brand, and focus your time there.

A case study for consideration: Building an education technology brand through social media

When I launched social media at a small education technology startup, I focused on two core platforms: Twitter and Facebook. While many startups don’t necessarily need a strong Twitter presence unless they are providing customer service support, it was a critical platform for this company. As it turns out, teachers are highly engaged on Twitter both as a professional development network and as a source of new resources and ideas. It is also a low-lift platform in terms of content, so it was possible for our small team to develop a presence there while also launching multiple other marketing channels. At the same time, we invested in a minimal presence on Facebook to test content and drive traffic to our website through ads. We started out with just 2-3 posts per week on each platform, mostly focused on tests of brand messaging and visuals, and we also participated in Twitter chats and partner promotion to increase brand awareness. In the earliest days, success was measured through audience growth as well as the reach and engagement of our posts, and as we built awareness and trust we started to focus on more action-oriented goals like web traffic and product engagement through social campaigns. In less than three years we grew our following to more than 50,000 across multiple platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest) while maintaining an average engagement rate of 2-3% week after week.