7 Basic Social Media Strategies for New Businesses

Everyone’s gotta start somewhere! There’s no shame in launching a brand new social media account where the only two follows are that Instagram page you made for your dog once, and your mom.

Most people start a business because they love their craft; not because they excel at business.

Thankfully, the business side of things can be learned. And while there are plenty of things you need to have worked out, a strong social media strategy is a good place to start.

Your business’ online presence is its virtual storefront, where people will stop by, browse your products, learn more about the company, maybe make a comment or two, and otherwise just get to learn about what exactly it is they’d be buying from you if they decided to. It’s important to do it well in 2021 and beyond.

This week, I am launching an all-new social media account for a new client, and we’ll be starting with a whopping zero follows! Here’s some of what we’ll be doing, and what you should be considering too.

1. Post daily, if not more often

You’re no longer just a consumer of content: you need to be a producer. People won’t follow you unless you give them a reason to, so get posting fast. In the beginning, you should definitely considering posting 2 or even 3 times a day. But longterm (anything more than 6 months), posting once a day is a more aggressive strategy than some businesses can maintain. You’ll be more prone to success if you can keep it up.

2. Let people know what to expect when following you

Just because your business has a specific industry, product, or service, doesn’t mean that it’ll be alike your competitors. A realtor, for example, can share photos of homes they’ve listed and sold, or they can share lifestyle content that promotes the area they sell in. Another thing they can share is educational content that helps home buyers with maximizing their profit and winning bids.

As you can see, in that one profession alone, there are 3 wildly different approaches you can take. Sometimes you can mix it up or pendulum back and forth depending on the season, but consistency allows your followers to know what to expect from you, and is more likely to earn a follow. On social media, people like to know what they can expect.

3. Follow like crazy

To the best of my knowledge (and I do this for a living), there are really no honest shortcuts to a social media following. If you want to be big on social media, you need to be big in return. Find potential clients and follow them en-masse. Depending on you and your industry, you may earn yourself a follow back, especially if you’re adhered to the first 2 principles outlined above.

4. Like and comment on everything you can

This goes hand in hand with #3. If you want comments and likes on your content, you need to hand them out as liberally as you’d like to receive them. The bonus here is that you’ll genuinely start to enjoy the platform because, over time, you’ll be building up authentic relationships with your followers. This is key to ensuring your followers aren’t just casual ghosts that will be unresponsive the bigger you get. Quality is just as important—if not more—than quantity here.

5. Like + share contests

Caution: the newest scam trend on social media is spoof your account by creating an account that looks identical to yours (they take your profile photo, bio, and top 12 posts) with a similar handle, with the addition of an underscore or period usually. Then they message your followers saying, “Hey you won the contest! Just give me your credit card info and I’ll give you your prize”. It’s frustrating, so only do contests with caution and forewarning.

If you can get past the pitfalls, like and share contests are a great way to get your content far quickly. Every time someone shares your content, it’s being exposed to their network. This is why it’s honestly a really beneficial thing to run a contest.

6. Ask people for shares

You can’t run contests every day of the week. But what you can do is encourage and quite literally ask the few followers you have (likely close friends or acquaintances in the beginning) to share your content to their feeds and stories. The principle is the same as above, only you’re not giving stuff away. This is less likely to get you the same mass amount of followers, but can be an honest and good way to start reaching beyond your initial social circles.

7. Use hashtags in more ways that one

Everyone understands the idea behind “post a bunch of hashtags and hopefully people will stumble upon my profile and follow it”, but I’m going to wager that some 95% of Instagram users don’t do the same in return. You should be doing the same for hashtags that are relevant to your business (or, more importantly, your clients or customers) in order to try to get your business in front of the people that might be purchasing from you.

…

Make no mistake: starting a brand new social media profile from scratch can feel exhausting and difficult, especially if you’ve never actually done a lot on social media. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be bad for long.

Follow these pieces of advice and get more involved on social media. None of this will hurt! You have nothign to lose.