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Social Media Marketing for Startups and SME Tech Companies: 10 Tips for Quality Posts
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Social Media Marketing for Startups and SME Tech Companies: 10 Tips for Quality Posts

Publish date
August 4, 2020
Author
Team Marketechy
Category
Social Media
“Social Media is about the people! Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide for you," Matt Goulart
Table of contents
  • For: B2C, B2B
  • Channel: SMM
  • Recommended Metrics to track: engagement, conversion, landing page visits
  • Time investment: 30 – 50 minutes per week
  • Average budget: free, organic
  • Expected results: Growing engagement, new clients.

As a tech company, your first focus is your product, then your website with the demo request or product subscription landing page. But at some point, you’re bound to remember those social media icons placed on the footer of your website—or maybe next to your every blog post with the suggestion to share.

So, the time has come to think about your social media strategy. Why Social Media Marketing? The research has shown that 73% of marketers believe that their efforts through social media marketing have been “somewhat effective” or “very effective” for their business However, for tech companies, social media has traditionally been a secondary channel, up to the point when it causes some befuddlement: What kind of content should a tech company post? How often? Which social media channels to support? And how can you avoid the seemingly unavoidable self-repetition caused by auto-reposting your old same blog post (or worse—the landing page) over and over again?

In this article, we have collected some recommendations and tips to help you answer these questions and make your Social Media marketing strategy truly engaging.

How Can Tech Companies Use Social Media?

Social media are a great lead-gen channel for B2C, but for B2B companies they are most frequently used for the following:

  • Traffic boost
  • Customer service: FAQs, Support & Troubleshooting, etc.
  • Opinion leadership
  • Building an expert community
  • Networking platform
  • News aggregator
  • Recruitment platform

Actually, owing to their speed and ease of use, social media channels like Twitter can also be a great PR and lead-gen tool, helping you to connect with media, thought leaders in the area or tech executives, but—only if you’re tracking the relevant hashtags, brand mentions, direct messages, and relevant posts. Otherwise, if you’re not reacting fast enough, you’ll get lost in the social media noise.

Social Media for Tech: Goals and Metrics

Similarly to any other strategy, the social media one should be based on your corporate goals, which would determine your KPIs, metrics you are going to track, and consequently, the type and frequency of your posts. Here, we recommend the top-down approach that will help you calculate the required number of posts to achieve your goal while considering the recommended 60/40 posts type distribution (with 60 percent of content being useful or interesting to your audience versus promoting your own interests).

For example, your goal is to get 100 visits to a landing page per month. In this case, your formula will be:

The number of posts with a landing page link: 100 / avg link clicks per post

The amount of other content per week: make it more than the number you get above (you could follow the 60/40 distribution or even strive for a 70/30 one), and make sure different types of the content are well-distributed in your editorial calendar.

Note: Review the resulting numbers considering your team’s capacity, and if you have no dedicated social media specialist or an agency to help you achieve the goals you envisioned at the beginning, it might make sense to revise the goals accordingly.

Social Media for Tech: Profile, Schedule, Content

Now, that you have your strategy, identified your goals, and know the number of monthly and weekly posts you’re going to plan for, let’s move on to the tactics. The beginning stages of implementing your strategy include three key areas of notice: preparing your profile, preparing your schedule, and preparing your content. Here are some practical tips on each of these areas:

  1. Complete your bio
  2. Share your business news and updates
  3. Post 1-4 times per day
  4. Use automation
  5. Analyze
  6. Work on your content
  7. Monitor competition
  8. Repurpose
  9. Create videos
  10. Adjust the plan

Let’s have a look at each recommendation in more detail.

This is where Marketechy steps in to develop a plan of work tailored to your growth marketing, metrics, and budget.
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#1 Tip for Tech: Don’t Judge a Social Media Profile by Its Cover

Your profile’s look is very important for each Social Media channel. You should include as much information as possible. This helps visitors to get a better understanding of who you are and what you do. The more information you include, the more trust you gain from the customers.

Let’s have a look at Facebook. It allows users to provide both a long and a short description of your business. Usually, page owners fill out only one of these, which is a mistake as these descriptions would show up in different views for your audience. The same applies to personal profiles. Many look through not only the company’s profile but also it’s CEO’s/manager’s page (especially on LinkedIn). For startups, investors would check how many employees are linked to the corporate page and whether the corporate address, logo, and relevant details are all in place.

And don’t forget about the visuals: optimize images for better SEO & sharing, but mind that different social media platforms have different size and logo placement requirements.

#2 Tip for Tech: Don’t Sell — Do Share

Share what you found interesting or thought-provoking, express your gratitude, and try to keep your content ‘useful’. Don’t shy away from a funny or an emotional post sometimes, your customers will appreciate a more human touch. A small review from a company event, a takeaway from your corporate communication that resonates with your values, or telling people about your (be them remote) rituals and traditions will put a smile on the faces of people who’d like to join your company as a prospective colleague, partner, or customer.

Share the news as well. Most probably, you have frequent product updates, so why not celebrate them on social media? Ask people about their opinion of the new update or hold a vote on the next feature to be added. To get engagement, be engaging: ask for feedback, ask questions, and don’t forget to follow up on all the communications.

#3 Tip for Tech: When to Post?

Firstly, the frequency mostly depends on your goals, but also use free Google Analytics custom reports to check the traffic to your website from social media and your followers’ activity trends. This will help you find the best times by day and by date/hour, so that you can identify your custom ideal timing for posting on different social media channels. Usually, depending on the social media platform and the audience size, tech companies plan around 1-4 posts every 1-2 days for the campaign/active engagement period, or 1-4 posts per week for the stages when they’re not focusing on social media strategy.

#4 Tip for Tech: Use Social Media Automation / AI Software

Use social media managing tools, such as Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, etc. to automate social media posts across all channels. If you are posting a lot, you may need another ‘hand’ to help you. Such platforms can provide you with an easy automated posting, trends analysis, content suggestions, social listening, and predictions.

#5 Tip for Tech: Analyze

Track social media metrics and utilize the in-built Insights / Analytics that these channels provide. With this analytics, you can see which posts bring more engagement, likes, and comments. You can assess what’s working, what isn’t, and test to improve in order to meet your business goals. Alternatively, if you’re using a social media automation tool, it will most likely offer additional analytics & reporting functionality. For example, SEMrush offers media tracking that you can combine with custom reports or brand alerts, Mediatoolkit and Salesforce have powerful social monitoring and social listening functionality, and Buffer specializes on reports and recommendations.  

#6 Tip for Tech: Content Matters

As already mentioned, your social media goals will define the types of content to share. Depending on the area you are working in and who is your target audience, choose the best ways to engage them and keep their interest. Treat your audience as your friends. Interact with them with the help of your posts in the forms of quizzes, surveys or collaborate with your customer service to start a series on Frequently Asked Questions. The sky’s the limit, and your key guidance here is: even when talking about your product, remember to be helpful and share useful information.

#7 Tip for Tech: Borrow but Don’t Steal

Monitor what your competitors are doing. You need to review your competitors’ pages and identify the gaps to help you build your own strategy and improve your SM page. And if you’ve seen a brilliant idea, don’t try to replicate, but use it as inspiration.

#8 Tip for Tech: Repost and Repurpose

Monitor other websites that your audience could be interested in. These might be publications from influencers in the industry, business blog posts, or other reliable sources. Share any good content that could be interesting, helpful, or engaging for your audience. These posts won’t bring you traffic or conversion but could be also a start for future partnerships with companies working in the adjacent spheres.

#9 Tip for Tech: Don’t Forget about Videos

One thing that cannot be overlooked in any social media strategy is creating (more) videos. Studies have shown that 85% of consumers have purchased a product or service after watching a video. It is a promising trend that will definitely bring more engagement to your page.

Use videos to make people feel connected to your business and to build trust. Show them the inner side of your business: make a video office tour or film work-in-process. Most social media platforms now support vertical video formatting (as most users hold mobile devices vertically for everyday browsing), so having a phone camera is enough.

#10 Tip for Tech: Follow the Plan, Adjust the Plan

Create an editorial calendar to fill in with SM posts for each day of the week. This way you can easily see what type of posts you’ve planned for each day, and where you have gaps or overpromotion. You will also never forget to design a nice holiday image in advance. You can also set up weekly themes, i.e. every-Monday career opportunities post.

Conclusion

We hope our tips help you with social media strategy and day-to-day social media posting. When done right, social media is a worthy place to invest your time and effort as these platforms were specifically made for communication and engagement.

At Marketechy, we know which components to mix in order to create the best market strategy for your tech business.

Ready to grow your online presence and quality leads? Drop us a line!
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