How to stand out on social media as an upcoming entrepreneur?

Social media marketing isn’t something you learn overnight. It's not as easy as a post, pin or check in. It's much more than that - from strategy to scheduling and putting a well thought out calendar in place. I would like to believe it's like photography, you get the perfect shot only when you invest time.

So what are we talking about? The goal of social media marketing tools is to develop an interactive, online relationship with the customer or your audience. Social media marketing tools include blogging, tweeting, posting, sharing, networking, pinning, bookmarking, media sharing and commenting on social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit and YouTube help building levels in playing field for small companies and individual entrepreneurs by offering low-cost tools with potentially high returns.

As a startup or small business owner, you know there’s a lot to accomplish with limited resources. Here are some tips to optimise social media marketing.

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Master The 'Schedule': There are unlimited social media management apps and tools available in the market. With Hootsuite and Buffer you can always have a good start. It covers the vast majority of social accounts, easy to navigate. Tools like Narrow.io and Twibble serve based on your organization’s needs and objectives. Whereas, Quill Engage is a free tool that connects with your Google Analytics account and emails you a weekly summary of your data.

Engagor is a comprehensive platform that helps you monitor conversations about your brand and products across all major social networks, news websites, blogs and forums. Blogging helps establish your brand’s voice and share information. You could socialize your website with Rebel Mouse, an all-in-one, real-time publishing, advertising and analytics platform.

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Know your audience: Create brand believers and gain fans for everything you sell. Make a strategy to know your audience better. Remember your customers are not from a same age group or not from similar interests and profession. Based on your target audience, you need to strategize a few specific campaigns. For that you have to intimately understand your current and potential customers. Put right efforts to the right one.

Start small: Because only handling marketing is not your whole business. Once you know your target audience, get started with the right site you want to reach out with. Like photographers and food go with instagram, news with twitter and facebook and home improvement with pinterest. May be following some of these steps will help you out:

• Re-tweeting interesting messages on Twitter
• Mentioning other users in your messages
• Responding to direct messages
• Automating posts from another expert’s website
• Posting to LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook from another network etc.

You’re not alone: There are thousands voices all trying to be heard. Then how do you get noticed, how do you showcase your product? One simple method: don’t get confused. Be yourself and perform as if no one is your competitor. Ignore millions, focus on few. Few who are valued, who can and want to buy your product or promote your service. Mark your community or market first.

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Be attractive to customers: Tag along with Mention app which monitors the web, including the major social media channels, and tells you every time somebody mentions your name, brand or target keywords. When you get a chance, be fun and clever to pull your customers interests towards your site or product. Be always fresh and relevant.

What sells? If your site is an online story-based portal then impactful pictures is what you should go with. Shocking and sensitive photos catch attention. Remember to add a pinch of emotional tadka to what you share. It’s easy to grab attention and gets quickly shared.

If your site is a video-based portal and if your promoted video brings out the emotions in someone, you are likely to find more shares. Bring out the funny, emotional and fresh sides of a story. These are the factors people want to watch and want their relatives and family to watch.

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Exaggerating might cause harm: The business you have built, the image you have created to your audience, the reputation you have designed will be ruined with one lie. If you don’t have credentials, focus on building some. Do good work for them and that will lead to a second.

Other than these creating daily plans, social advertising will also help you get going. Keep track of everything that is going on around you and your business and follow some successful journeys for inspiration. Know how they started marketing their company on Social Media. Always remember behind every grown-up business there are exceptional social media campaigns and healthy researches.

Sources: Entrepreneur / Social Media Examiner / Business News Daily / Social Media Examiner / Forbes / Entrepreneur

Feature Image: Scottebales