4 Ways That Startups Can Win With Social Media

For startups, one of the most crucial things to focus on is how much money is being spent in the initial 2-5 year period when a business launches.  It’s important to get as much value as possible out of each dollar that is being spent.  Social media is giving a lot of startups the money saving techniques that make that possible while still delivering high amount of value to customers.

There is a common thread that’s being discovered among businesses, both established and startups that are paving the way for new business models and concepts that were at one time completely out of reach.  Cost saving through marketing.  While many businesses open up their doors with some manner of partnership and investment capital, there are a number of businesses that start from day 1 with no outside investment.  There’s nothing like fighting an uphill battle, pulling yourself along the entire time by your bootstraps.  It builds character for any business owner to make it through a struggle, but it makes anyone handling your finances sweat bullets.

Thankfully, social media is giving companies, especially startups, the ability to market themselves in new ways.  While these take some time to develop commitment and build rapport with the customer, the hard cost is minimal and allows for a renewed focus of financial resources.

Here are some great ways that social media is having a profound impact on business.

1. Customer Service

Twitter is creating change in the way companies are doing business.  The service, along with several other platforms in social media, has become a launch pad for new and creative customer service methods.  Companies like General Motors are rolling out the use of Twitter to tackle and simplify internal processes as well as customer interaction, setting examples for new businesses on creative ways to make contact.

They’ve begun utilizing Twitter in order to respond to customer issues, managing contact within just a few minutes of a Tweet being made and are able to get the customer on the phone within 10-15 minutes.  With social media, companies are able to assemble the right people, at the right place and time in order to improve the customer experience.

What’s better is that in working with customers on the net through service like Twitter, a startup will begin to quickly brand themselves.  The exposure can snowball on the web, especially when you consider the state of search engines that are now beginning to index Tweets and show them in real time search engine listings.  A search that turns up a company tweet handling a customer issue has a lot of power behind it to win new customers over.

Building Community:

When building a business, it’s important to focus your efforts on where your customers are and where they’re going, not on where your industry is.  Social media can be utilized to take your business to your customers and make it easy for them to interact not only with you, but with each other.  It’s a fantastic way to generate customer evangelists.

By developing and reinforcing communities surrounding products, services and your market then you begin to rapidly build rapport among your customers – Not just any relationship, but organic relationships that can more strongly stand the test of time.  It’s not a relationship based on materialistic things like coupons and free samples but a relationship based on the customers knowledge that you will indeed take care of them.  The customer has seen the people behind the business interacting with customers in the community through social media – answering questions, providing general support, delivering additional services, educating customers and more.

Social media allows any business, in any location, to develop that small town relationship with customers.  Any you know what?  Customers are eating it up.

Marketing:

Social media is leveling the playing field.  It’s never been easier for a company to be more in touch with customers or the market.  Social media use has become centered on thought leadership and content marketing that builds remarkable relationships with customers in order to create new business opportunities.  Potential customers (and even journalists) now have immediate access to information about products, services and industry news.

Too many businesses make the mistake of using social media merely for direct marketing without educating their customers.  Social media has a far greater impact when marketing practices are used to draw in customers who want to hear about a company through compelling content, news, information, product demonstration and general conversation.

Despite what many think, people don’t like being sold to.  They’re particularly turned off by fast, rapid sales tactics with no relationship building.  When a business begins marketing, they need to be in it for the long haul.  When you start to leverage social media for marketing, you’re making a commitment.  You form a web of ties that has a direct (and almost immediate) impact on your customers, your employees and the whole of your business.  This is not a campaign, and this certainly isn’t a generalized strategy.  When you break a commitment, you lose.

Imagine standing in the middle of a group, with all eyes on you as you talk about a new company.  You continue delivering an award winning demonstration as the people around you become more and more interested.  Suddenly, in the middle of sharing some stellar information, you stop talking and walk away.  The group is left dumb-founded with no explanation, and most of them will likely hold a negative view.

Even if you run a complete marketing “campaign” through social media, and the campaign runs it’s course, you still can’t stop.  Those people that are following your business have grown to expect regular content.  Stopping at that point would have the same result as the example above.  You must be ready to make a commitment.

Stay Organized:

Social media is making it much easier for companies to manage internal operations and provides methods for employees to stay organized and more connected.  The internet has allowed individuals to partner that rarely work face to face.  A number of startups work without any office at all, so social media networks are supplying valuable tools.

The ability to supply attachments through social media services and manage discussions with complete access to history and tracking provides small business and startups with ways to save money on time tracking and project management software.

Without offices, being able to collaborate online is essential.  With access to messaging, chat, document sharing and more, companies are able to save significant amounts of money while improving communication.  This has allowed decentralization in small and big businesses, generating more horizontal organizations that require far less micromanagement.

With proper management, a new startup could have the same success as a large company running marketing campaigns with a professional agency.  The reason is because they are putting their efforts where customers are at, in a location where the majority of customers are already looking for information.  Social media is making business easier and more efficient on a global level.  It has allowed businesses, regardless of size, to individually rest an arm on every customers shoulder and say <”insert customer winning, love inducing, awe inspiring company pitch combined with a virtual slap and tickle”>

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