50+ Entrepreneurs Share Their Top 3 Social Media Marketing Tips – Updated

We reached out to 50 startup entrepreneurs to ask them to share their top 3 social media marketing tips. Hopefully you’ll be able to use some of the advice shared here with your own social media marketing strategies.

Tom Tunguz , Redpoint Ventures

  1. Create evergreen content that you can recycle and resyndicate. The SEO benefits are substantial.
  2. At the beginning, quantity matters a lot. It’s critical to establish a cadence for your readership, so that they keep coming back and they are rewarded with new content.
  3. Network with the influencers in your sector and build rapport with them online. They can become a powerful distribution channel for you.

And

  1. Build anticipation and a large email list before the official launch by using a email and social referral strategy.
  2. Build your social networks from day one to create content distribution.
  3. Create great content on your site and also be active as a guest blogger on the top influencers in your niche to build your SEO and online authority.

Jeff Bullas , Jeffbullas.com

  1. Listen to advice, but do not always follow: Even though there are basic rules for the different social media networks, still what works very much depends on your own audience, message, reputation and much more.
  2. Do not expect the huge results after a short time. Most social networks take time to built an audience, a reputation – and they even take time to figure out what is the best strategy for each network.
  3. Test what works, build your data first. When you found something that works for you – scale it up.

Susanna Gebauer , exploreB2B

  1. Make something people want to share.
  2. Make sharing part of the flow, not an afterthought.
  3. Make becoming a user exceptionally easy.

Brenden Mulligan , Cluster

  1. Start from the beginning. Integrate social into everything you do. Build your culture with social in mind. Show everything. Give your community access to the everything from the start.
  2. Start building your email list. Create something of value. Give it away. Build your list from the start. It will be one of the most important assets in building your business.
  3. Make sure leadership gets it. They do not need to be ACTIVE on social to understand the value. If they (you) WANT to be active, even better. Companies with CEOs who are active on social are more trustworthy. Take a risk. Connect to your community. Make it real.

Justin Wise , Think Digital

  1. Be social – social media is not about advertising your business. It is about creating relationships that can in the long term help your business.
  2. Don’t be a link dropper and nothing else. So many people/companies share their message by social sharing tools and do nothing else. In order to be a social media winner you need to respond and interact with those you want to get the message out to. The best of the best in social react and respond to inquiries right away.
  3. Understand which social platforms work best for your business. There are certain platforms that will work better for some businesses than others. For example Google Plus is great for those in the social media/SEO industry. A large portion of the Google Plus membership includes these industries so it is a natural fit. Don’t try to force your business into a platform that doesn’t fit. Pinterest is a great platform for those in the real estate/home improvement industry because of the visual aspect of the platform. When you understand what platforms work best for your industry you can better manage your time and efforts targeting the appropriate places for your message.

Bill Gassett , RE/MAX Executive Realty

  1. Have a plan! Write it down. Don’t worry how it’s going to get done, just create the plan first.
  2. Curate content and always have reserves.
  3. Focus on the end result, where are you looking to drive traffic? Where is the profit?

Karen Yankovich , Uplevel Media

  1. Be Yourself.
  2. Find ways to use content & social posts to “#ShowUcare”.
  3. Focus on 1 to 1 Conversations not Communication when posting & engaging on social media!

Brian Fanzo , Broadsuite

  1. Many brands want to treat their paid social media advertising strategy like traditional media campaigns. Although there are some overlaps, advertising on social media is a completely different type of marketing. For the first time in history advertisers can communicate directly with their current and potential customers, don’t lose this opportunity with the wrong message.
  2. If you’re advertising on social media treat it like one big science experiment. Create a hypothesis about your customers, test different messages and creatives, and monitor your campaigns closely for performance.
  3. Remember the three F’s of customer service at all times: fast, friendly, and focused. People from around the world are talking about your brand, or communicating with you directly through your social pages. It’s important to take the time to provide a fast, friendly, and focused response.

Andrew Torba , Kuhcoon

  1. Reciprocate. Empires are built with lots and lots of help from as many people as you can find. Follow, share, and be generally friendly even if you don’t see it helping you in the short term. You never know who will remember you down the line and reciprocate back.
  2. It all comes down to the product: Your product, your value, and your offerings to the world will determine success. You can try to put fun gimmicks in and all sorts of marketing speak/tactics. When it comes down to it, your content/service/product is at the core of your business.
  3. Schedule Your Posts: Social marketing helps an incredible amount, but it shouldn’t take up more than an hour of your day. Use Buffer, HootSuite or any others to schedule so that your day can stay productive. Use analytics tools to help optimize your sharing times also. Tools like Followerwonk can help analyze your followers for the best times.

Chris Sevilleja , Scotch.io Development

  1. Don’t just broadcast. Even for an account in a company name you can interact with people using a bit of personality. Ask questions of your followers, respond to tweets in a friendly way.
  2. Tweets about your product can be a great source of genuine reviews. We use tweets on the Perch site in the footer of each page and in places like our about page http://grabaperch.com/about.
  3. RT questions about your product to your followers. We do this a lot at Perch. If we see someone asking a subjective question for example, “Does anyone here use Perch?” we retweet it from the grabaperch account. Our followers then reply to the person with their honest feedback. Their responses are far more relevant than anything we could say as they come from other customers.

Rachel Andrew , Perch

  1. Be consistent so your followers know what to expect.
  2. Be authentic.
  3. Be present — engage with your audience.

Rachel Gurk , Rachel Cooks

  1. Everything revolves around great content. Add to the conversation by writing an insightful post, doing interesting data analysis, open soucing useful code, etc.
  2. Participate in the conversation. Respond, argue, agree, disagree. Take a position and join in on the conversation.
  3. There is no silver bullet to social media success. It requires a lot of virtual “legwork”, day in, day out.

Geva Perry , A bunch

  1. Build your personal brand first.
  2. Build relationships, they are key.
  3. Schedule quality content don’t just tweet rubbish.

Nat Schooler , Social Dojo

  1. View social media as a way to add value to your target audience, not as a way to sell to them. When you add value by sharing useful links, or replying with helpful tips, you begin building trust instead of coming across as spammy.
  2. Be comfortable with posting the same update multiple times. Only a small fraction of your audience will see each update, so by posting numerous times (i.e. once later in the day, once the next day, once the next week, once the next month) you will reach a much larger percentage of your audience.
  3. Leverage Twitter lists. Maintain a list of people that you’ve had face-to-face interaction with, as these folks will typically be your biggest supporters, retweeters, etc. By monitoring this list and engaging regularly, you’ll maintain these relationships and ensure they don’t get lost in the Twitter stream.

Ryan Battles , Harpoon

  1. Focus on your output, not your input. Use social media as a platform for curating and sharing not just your stuff, but your entire industry. You shouldn’t only use social for listening.
  2. Follow less people. There is a lot of noise on social. Instead of wasting time with people and companies that use it the wrong way, spend your energy on what actually matters: connecting with your target audience.
  3. Stay on topic. Yes, there are examples of companies that have done quick turnarounds on current events that really helped them on social (see: Oreo during the Super Bowl), but most of the time you should just focus on your domain. Talk about what you know more than anyone else and don’t jump on the “trending” bandwagon unless it makes sense to.

Caleb Wojcik , DIY Video Guy

  1. Use Buffer! – I tend to read a ton of great, sharable content late at night when there’s less chance of retweets. Buffer lets you drip feed content evenly throughout the day so as I’m running around in meetings or designing stuff, content keeps keeping pushed out without me having to remember.
  2. Give your audience a reason to follow you – if you only tweet about product updates then it’s going to be a pretty way one relationship with your followers. Tweet about useful tools, articles and things that will interest them.
  3. Pick one social network to start with – It’s tempting to make accounts on every social network but managing that is hard. There’s nothing sadder than looking at a Facebook page with no updates in 6 months. Just pick one to start with and grow that before moving onto another network.

Murat Mutlu , Marvel

  1. Decide if you want A LOT of “followers/friends” or if you want GOOD “followers/friends.” The former leads to… I don’t know, clicks and retweets and stuff. The latter leads to relationships, good jokes, a crew of people to build a thing for, and sometimes, just sometimes, a perfectly timed gif. Whatever you decide, put something on your wall to remind you of your decision… and hold steady.
  2. Be a real person. Be yourself. Be kind. Be useful. Gary V. does something? So what. Do it your way. Add a picture? If you feel like it. Always link to something? Up to you. Tweet something scandalous? If it’s in you. Everyone’s putting out a fake version of themselves, the way they want to be perceived. Put the real version of yourself out (if you know which version is the real one… that’s a whole other list post we need to make).
  3. Keep close to your audience. Don’t worry, you’re doing a good job, about not doing enough, or doing too much, or what this person or that person is doing. Keep your nose close to your audience, to the real people with real needs and ideas and hopes and struggles and desires and problems… If you can make stuff that’s valuable to them AND be real in your interactions with you over time, you just may have a career in social entrepreneurship or Mavening™ or whatever the kids are calling it these days. Break a leg.

Chase Reeves , ZenBusiness

  1. Think of community and the connections that you have and want to have, not just broadcasting messages. That way when you are ready to push you can leverage your strong.
  2. Be authentic and share who you are not just what you want to sell.
  3. Share ideas, relevant articles and what you believe. This is long lasting and makes you stand out amongst the rest.

Michelle Williams , Ideaction

  1. Choose one (only 1) social media channel to focus on. You can have profiles at all of em, but one where you’re actually active and engaged. For me, that’s Twitter.
  2. Share the articles you read & recommend. Sounds obvious, but most people just consume. Actually take time to curate the stuff you found valuable and pass it on. And DON’T share stuff that you didn’t actually read. That’s just noise.
  3. Turn off social media. Get back to work. I read a bunch of articles during breakfast and Buffer my favorites for posting later in the day. The rest of the day is for being productive, not consuming.

James Ewen, SEOtagg

  1. Consistency is everything when it comes to social media marketing. If I could share one tip, it would be to post daily. Sure, you might not get the greatest engagement, but turning up every day will help you to understand what does and doesn’t work and improve your copywriting skills!
  2. As a London based SEO consultant, a common error I see with my clients is that they don’t adequately link to their social profiles on their websites. This means that Google can get confused with their site, hindering their rankings. Put your social links front and centre on your site!
  3. Repurpose. Got the same piece of information? Try structuring it differently and repurpose it in other formats later. It’s rare that the first format you use will be the best one, so mix things up, and you’ll always have something to post.

Brian Casel , casjam

  1. Don’t be self-indulgent.
  2. Be honest.
  3. Share your journey.

Nick Armitage , Nonsense Ok, I’ll assume those are for people that are more advanced than “have a strategy” or “social media are about conversations, not shouting at people”. Here goes:

  1. Use Facebook’s dark posts – they are one of the greatest tools in the arsenal of a Social Media Manager.
  2. Tweets praising your product/service are like mini-testimonials that can be tracked straight back to their author. Use them appropriately.
  3. Learn why shortening your links might lead to flawed analytics and consequently making wrong decisions (i.e. https://megalytic.com/blog/dangers-of-shortened-urls-for-analytics).

Filip Mlody , Mimecast

  1. All too often founders think their words of wisdom automatically entitle them to social media attention. They do not. But, your hard-won perspective on your industry segment, your experiences coping with the same problems your customers and clients face, and your in-depth knowledge of the knowledge domain you inhabit are interesting and worthy of attention. Focus on them – and write from the heart, not from “marketing”.
  2. Quality and sharing real value beats noise and “message dumping” every single time. If you view social media as just a variant of advertising, you’re completely missing the point, and you will do your company more harm than good.
  3. Social media is about people – what they’re interested in, moved by, sympathize with – not “brand” and not “marketing”.

Bob Walsh , 47hats

  1. Share Behind-the-Scenes Stories: When launching a product, product-making peers and early adopters love knowing the story behind products they use. Sharing the story can boost traffic and signups.
  2. Big Beautiful Visuals: Visual posts preform better than text only posts. Optimizing images at 1200×630+ pixels for content on both Facebook and Twitter will ensure your images look great and get noticed in the busy feed.
  3. Charming OG Tags: Custom OG tags are often overlooked. Writing custom charming headlines and images optimized for awesomeness will help you attract more attention to shares on Facebook.

John Henry Muller , Pack

  1. Remember that the only way to maintain sustainable growth in your product is building something worth spreading by word of mouth – social media is just there to make those conversations easier to start.
  2. Timing is important. Think about where your audience is and when they will be looking at social media. Timezones matter.
  3. Successful social marketing is about the details – your headlines, the images in your cards, the placement of your links, everything. Remember to dot your Is and cross your Ts.

Jon Chan , Bento

  1. Don’t feel like you have to scramble to be active on *every* social network. Find out where your customers are most responsive, and focus on engaging and posting regularly to those networks.
  2. Don’t be boring. Posting only about your business or product is boring. Behind-the-curtain stuff shows you’re an actual, relatable, real-life person, so feel free to throw in some flavor.
  3. Never post when you’ve had a couple of cocktails, as the likelihood of accidentally posting photos of your junk increases exponentially.

Irma Olguin Jr. , Buildicus

  1. Engagement on social media is key. Don’t underestimate the value of a “like” or “favorite”. It’s a simple, subtle way to get others attention and can help you gain a relevant following.
  2. No one can create original content all the time, and you don’t want to continuously post without contributing to the conversation. Focus on curating relevant and helpful content to position yourself as an informational hub for potential customers.
  3. Learn the rules, so you know how to break them properly. It’s good to imitate those who’s style you admire on social media. But once you get the hang of it, don’t be afraid to try something new, no matter how “out there”. It could just be crazy enough to work.

Cody Beck , Enstitute

  1. Claim your name on every social media platform you can, even before you start posting and try to be consistent with the unique name. “/startupname”.
  2. Make sure you research where your target market lives. Instagram is no good for a B2B business application.
  3. Try and create unique content for each, i.e. don’t blanket post to all your accounts as it may look spammy.

Guy Pearson , Practice Ignition

  1. Lists are great! Build lists for your key stakeholder groups – partners, investors, team members, star clients (or vocal clients), key media folks you want to keep in touch with, and those who inspire you.
  2. It’s ok to recycle content, like a really great article that was written about you, content that you’ve published on your blog, etc. The key is to space it out. A tool like Buffer is great to help schedule those.
  3. Be sure you have a good mix of content – don’t just promote your own blog posts, whitepapers and webinars. Ask questions, retweet, reply… be human.

Janneane Blevins , KA+A

  1. Take the time to work out which social channel will give you the most traction. Start with a broad range and measure which ones are working best, and focus on those. You should end up with 1-3 different channels.
  2. Build relationships. Make sure you’re adding value to your audience, not just selling. Investing time to help potential customers out at this stage will increase brand awareness and encourage them to return to you when it’s time to buy.
  3. Connect with influencers. Use tools like Followerwonk to find the big hitters in your industry on Twitter and engage them. Suggest content that they might enjoy and build a relationship – don’t just reach out cold when you need something.

Ben Slater , Seed Jobs

  1. One thing I did early on with Lean Domain Search, a domain name generator I built, was to incentivize people to share the site on Twitter. When users performed a search I showed them 150 search results for free but also gave them an option to tweet about the site to get an additional 150 suggestions. The code for this was fairly simple: I asked users for their Twitter user name and then used Twitter’s API to check their last few tweets for a mention of Lean Domain Search. If they had mentioned it, I added a cookie that enabled them to see the additional results. Day after day people would take advantage of this feature to view more results and I benefited from the extra exposure.
  2. On that note, I’d recommend using software like Tweetbot or TweetDeck and set up lists that show only mentions of your service’s name. For example, I had one list for “Lean Domain Search” and another for “leandomainsearch” and this enabled me to constantly monitor what folks were tweeting about the site.
  3. Finally, when people do share your service on Twitter or any other social media platform, thank them for it. It can be as simple as favoriting their tweet or responding to them and thanking them for the mention. Not only is it the polite thing to do, but it never hurts to delight the people who you already know are apt to sharing your service with others.

Matt Mazur , Lean Domain Search

  1. Don’t put too much effort into social media before you are sure about what you’re really offering and why people should be interested. Focus your initial social media activities on finding those crucial early adopters and invite them into the process of improving your product/service.
  2. Play the long game. Don’t be too eager to quickly gain tons of followers and press.Take your time to get to know your audience on different social media platforms, monitor their activity, follow relevant people and engage in conversation with them. Offer value to them. You will earn your followers, press and customers, without having to pay for advertising or spam journalists’ inboxes.
  3. Have some personality! People don’t like faceless brands that do nothing but try to convince them to buy. Tell people about your start-up and why it’s the greatest thing, but do it casually, not all the time, and with some self-perspective. Introduce the people behind your start-up. Focus on building relationships with your fans and customers, asking them for feedback and giving away lots of value. That way, people will not only buy from you, they’ll act as ambassadors because they truly -like- you.

Louise Stigell , Playify

  1. Know your audience: Find out where your audience spends their time – target specific communities on larger social networks like Twitter or look for niche social networks, blogs and discussion forums where your ideal customer goes for their daily dose of inspiration and knowledge.
  2. Be a Mensch: As Guy Kawasaki recommends, try to be helpful to people without any expectation of direct return. Share links to useful information, answer questions – engage and pay it forward. Good things will happen in ways you never expected.
  3. Keep it up: It pays to have a bit of a strategy in mind to help you maintain a constant presence on social media. Get to know your ideal customer, pick a few basic themes of interest to them, and find or create interesting content to share with them. I use tools like Buffer for scheduling tweets and posts, Feedly for collating sources of content, and Google Alerts to help me find new stuff relating to my chosen themes.

David Kelly , Shareflow I have no “special” tip. Just following the well-known rules:

  1. Try to provide as much original, interesting content as possible. Make your posts rather shorter than longer.
  2. Reply to the comments / private messages. Be fair.
  3. Try to get followers/fans e-mails whenever it is possible to build your mailing base.

Franciszek Migaszewski , Efneo

  1. Quality over quantity. Don’t add to the noise, cut through it.
  2. Not all social networks are created equal. Know where you’re audience is and engage them there. If your base isn’t on Pinterest, don’t spend your time there.
  3. Social Media is an engagement tool, not a broadcast one. Build relationships.

Dan Fonseca , Amino

  1. Focus more on people than the channel itself. Always cite their names when publishing about their work, and cherish conversations through social media.
  2. Do not overspend time on social media. PR and other contacts with influencers might be as important or more important.
  3. Focus on your objectives. If a strategy hasn’t been working for a while, contrast it with people you trust and consider getting rid of it if pertinent.

Conrado Lamas , MailTrack.io

  1. Go where your audience resides. If you have a product/service geared towards teenagers, you better be on Snapchat and Vine. Conversely, if you’re targeting women in their 30s and 40s – you should be on networks like Pinterest and Facebook. Do demographic research as well as experimenting first when deciding where to dedicate most of your social media energy.
  2. Respect the platform. Once you’re on the right platform, abide to the unwritten rules. Personal example: I typically unfollow people on Instagram who post more than two photos in a row. This is Instagram, not Twitter. I want to see everyone’s photos as I scroll down my feed, not just yours. If you’re unsure of the unwritten rules, look at what people with a lot of followers/likes/interactions are doing.
  3. Interact with others. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve Tweeted at a product or service and no acknowledgment. In 2014 (soon to be 2015), this is unacceptable. (Especially for the larger startups/companies with more funds to dedicate to community managers.) It’s called SOCIAL media for a reason. Talk to your users! Reply to their Tweets/comments! Acknowledge their existence!

Laurence Bradford , Learn to Code With Me

  1. Don’t let your updates go to waste. Most of your followers won’t see any given update that you share – in fact, the majority of Twitter users don’t even log on once per day. Not only that, but you’re gaining new followers all the time, and they won’t have seen the updates you’ve shared in the past. Save your evergreen updates and reuse them from time to time, so that each one can be exposed to as many of your followers as possible.
  2. Don’t feel pressured to do everything live. While live engagement is an enormously important part of any social strategy, a significant portion of your posting can (and should) be automated. Multitasking is a productivity killer, so every time you jump onto social throughout the day to post a live update, you slow yourself down. Instead, upload your updates into a scheduling tool ahead of time, so they get posted automatically throughout the day. Then you can just check in periodically to monitor live activity.
  3. Pay attention to your analytics. It might sound boring, but monitoring your analytics can make a huge difference when it comes to posting the right thing at the right time. There are plenty of free tools that will help you determine when your audience is online and when you get the most engagement – pay attention to those stats so you aren’t wasting your time (and wasting your updates) by posting at the times that just don’t work out for you.

Laura Roeder , Edgar

  1. Don’t neglect the importance of earned social. Yes, social has largely become pay-to-play (especially facebook), but that doesn’t change the fact that word-of-mouth is still the most powerful form of marketing. When creating social campaigns, always include ways for your fans to spread the message to their friends on your behalf.
  2. One size does not fit all. Social won’t get you very far if all you are doing is participating and sharing the same message across social channels. Each social channel will perform best if your marketing is created specifically for that platform and audience. It is more time consuming, but worth it.
  3. Don’t be satisfied with surface level engagement metrics. You are participating in social marketing to grow your business, so you should hold it accountable to your most important metrics. Be sure to measure how social impacts sales, signups or whatever metrics are key for your growth.

Joey Kotkins , Inside Social Social media is all about building trust and respect, to grow your audience and fan base. You must focus on this, first and foremost, because of the temporal nature of social media. People will abandon your twitter feed or facebook page at the drop of a hat, if they don’t trust you.

To that end, there are several tactics and strategies that I’ve come to use with my SignalLeaf (and WatchMeCode) twitter accounts. Here are three of them that I find to be of the utmost importance:

  1. Don’t just be a pushy advertisement company. Yes, you can run ads and talk about your own stuff. But you need to engage people, as a person, and talk about things that are relevant to your audience. That includes more than just *your* products, blog posts, etc. Retweet, repost, like, share and otherwise engage other people’s content within your social media accounts. It will pay off when others see you promoting their stuff or the stuff of people they follow and respect.
  2. Be open and honest. When your service goes down, tweet about it, update facebook, etc. People respect honesty, and twitter and other social media services are often the first place people go to see if there is an issue with a service. The last thing anyone wants, is a service that is not open and honest about downtime. I regularly tweet the problems that SignalLeaf and WatchMeCode are having. I have yet to receive any negative feedback from these tweets.
  3. Don’t expect people on twitter to buy anything. Twitter is great for engagement with your audience and can generate a lot of leads if done correctly. But don’t expect people to buy, from twitter engagements. You need to earn trust and respect first, and that happens through your mailing list and other methods of engagement. Use twitter to grow your mailing list, and to get people in to the 1st step of your sales and marketing funnels. It will take weeks and/or months to convince people that came from twitter, to buy anything. But gathering a loyal fanbase in your email list and other methods of staying in touch, will be worth it in the long run.

Derick Bailey , SignalLeaf

  1. It’s all about the quality, not quantity of your audience. A handful of industry leaders support your brand-building much better than thousands of followers who will post spam on your Facebook or retweet you to the wrong circles.
  2. Don’t make your posts too sales-focused. If people see spam from you in their feed they will unfollow or unlike you and you risk damaging your brand’s reputation.
  3. Use analytics tools to see what time of day your posts are most effective. Platforms like Hootsuite allow you to schedule your posts so you can even send things out on the weekend or overnight if your target audience are in a different time zone.

Bonus tip for Financial Services Startups: Check FCA regulation before you post anything, you may well be required to use #ad when promoting a product.

John Goodall , Landbay

  1. Encourage all employees to become brand ambassadors and get them excited about how they can engage their own communities (engineering, design, etc.).
  2. Establish one of the founders of the company as a thought leader in the industry by engaging in relevant communities on broad topics without pitching products or services.
  3. Research and identify how your target audience is using the different social media services and spend time getting involved in the right conversations on the right platforms – Facebook and Instagram are not the right platforms to target potential customers for every business.

Brad Murdoch , Prevoty

  1. Make sure it makes sense: You are juggling a lot of balls in the air, and need to budget your time on the most important things for your business. First things first, ask yourself if it’s worth your time investment to even be on social media. And if it’s a must, what are the most important channels that will give you the biggest return on your time investment?
  2. Keep it fresh: The worst is when a company has social media accounts and doesn’t provide content (such a blog). At least keep fresh content posted (1x/week).
  3. Share your opinion: When something happens in your industry, people expect you to have an opinion on it. Use your social media to speak about what’s currently going on in your industry.

Lexi Gordon , exaqueo

  1. Who – Where – How. As usual, the cornerstone is to determine who you’re targeting. Then, you need to be where your audience is. Choose your channels, also considering less known networks with a potentially strong community. Once this base is established, you will naturally know how to express yourself, and adopt the appropriate tone of voice.
  2. Content, content, content! Share it or create it, focusing on a few core subjects. This expertise is a key to become a valuable source of information for your followers. But don’t forget: social media is like real life, and a conversation is better than a monologue. Create interactions with potential customers to build trust, and with other users to help each other grow!
  3. It may seem less serious to you, but social media can create real Return On Investment – like, strongly impact your sales. Don’t hesitate to fix quantitative KPIs, even out of a more qualitative approach. Evaluating the reach and conversion of your actions will help you interpret their limits and eventually improve them.

Rebecca Menat , The Assets

  1. Be creative and create your own unique and atypical content.
  2. Adopt a consistent strategy on multiple social media platforms.
  3. Leverage your influencers.

Florian Delifer , LittleBigCity

  1. Use the best practices you’ve got from the social networks you’re aware of: whether you’re a Facebook “power-user” or have hundreds followers on Twitter – use it. People there already know you, know what you’re doing and, of course, they’re ready to whatever your occupation is and to the product it is resulting with.
  2. Your friends and comrades would always be the early-adopters of your product, your first happy customers, and, sometimes, your first employees. Think about it – people you need in order to start generating something, are already around you. So, why don’t take a chance and approach them with whatever you’re doing? You would be probably surprised with the outcome.
  3. Don’t overestimate yourself – use the channels you’re only satisfied with. Your efforts are priceless, your time is even more precious. It means, that you can’t waste your power on something, that doesn’t work for you. No one could give a “universal” advise on this one – you have to orient yourself in what’s going on with your social marketing activities. Don’t close your eyes, analyze every bit of data you got, and I hope you do well.

Alex Kozlov , Subject

  1. When you share some information to social networks share not “just a text” but your keywords or brand allowing people to remember you. For example, on Truthly each person can ask personal, anonymous feedback from their friends on Facebook. We have a concept of Truth key (if you know my Truth key that means you are allowed to give me feedback). The way people on Truthly ask feedback in Facebook is: “Hey there! my Truth key is #some_truth_key#. You can tell me something that you can’t say to my face”. People loved the new phrase “Truth key”. They started to post it in social networks ?r their blogs “My Truth key is …”, “Do you want to know my Truth key?”, “Now I have a new Truth key ..”, e.t.c. When people see the phrase “Truth key” they understand that it’s about Truthly. In this way when we entered the Russian market, we got 2000 new users in two days. The Russian Facebook was filled with “Truth keys”, it became our brand.
  2. Keep your social network’s pages updated and use more images instead of text. To be more engaged people must see that you are active. Post something related to your product at least 2-3 times a week. Use images. People get the information visually more easily. Nowadays we don’t want to spent 7-8 seconds to read each text we see in Facebook. But when we see image it can immediately be imprinted in our minds.
  3. Post stories, results, facts but don’t spam! Don’t post how cool are you or how great your product is. Post only small, interesting “stories”, results and facts! (you won the contest, you got the investment, Tom Cruise uses your app, e.t.c). Don’t post your link in different pages and groups – in the minds of people you will get a negative image. Post only valuable information.

Hrachya , Truthly

  1. Social media can be a great customer service channel: Not only can you easily answer questions from your customers (and potential customers) but you’ll find that your audience will actually perform some customer support for you.
  2. Use your channel to highlight the achievements of your audience: If you expect your audience to share news and information about your company, you should plan to do the same for them.
  3. Ask “Why would someone share this?” for each of your posts: Whatever you share should be informative, funny, or interesting enough that your audience will want to share it wider.

Evan Jacobs , Authorgraph

  1. Engage in Conversation and Community.
  2. Be personable and understanding for peoples needs over social media especially if your a company thats offers services.
  3. Always be neutral in a reply on Twitter.

Josh Furtado , Your Social beat

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