How B2B Startups Can Get Jiggy With Social, Even With Limited Budget And Time, Part 1
There is something very exciting about stepping into the den of shiny-eyed, start-up wolves ready to tear at the world, conquer its peaks, and firmly put their stake in the ground.
They’ve got the vision, the technology, the go-to-market, and now they want the world to know all about it. There are many ways of ‘letting the world know.’ Today I want to focus on the social way.
Namely, how can a small start-up with little resources, get rolling with social? It can be daunting. There are so many different channels: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram . . . and there’s Snapchat and even Periscope.
How can we know what’s right for our audience? What should we say to them that will make them pay attention?
Start with the Who
The first step, as always – in any content deliberation – is to start with the ‘who.’ You don’t need to go through a several-week and expensive persona mapping process. But it is critical to understand your persona:
What is their role?
What are their needs?
What are their goals?
What are their pain points?
What drives their decision?
What are they measured on?
What would they object to?
Why would they care about what you have to say?
And . . . where online (and on what channels) do they consume their professional content?
Based on your answers to these questions you will then be able to work on the ‘where’ and the ‘what.’
Next – The ‘Where’
For B2B companies, the traditional go-to network is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is great for sharing thought-leadership driven content and starting discussions with like-minded professionals whose day-to-day is comprised of the same content that drives your solution – whether it’s big data analytics, project management effectiveness, DevOps, or what have you.
Map the forums and groups your main persona participates in, join them, track the content that generates the greatest engagement, and:
Participate in those discussions with original and valuable thoughts and recommendations;
Post original thought leadership content (more on this in a moment)
Share interesting third-party articles, videos, infographics, and ebooks that you found on the web (i.e. content curation)
Create a list of these topics and write blog posts around them with valuable content including how to’s and trends.
That was a bit of ‘where’ and ‘what’ rolled up together.
Next time, we’ll share more ideas on nailing down the ‘where’ and also some tips for building a killer pipeline of content (the ‘what’), and how to leverage one content creation effort for multiple channels.
Stay tuned.
Want to get jiggy and streamlined with social? Get in touch and let’s do great marketing together >>