Jump to Comments

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with @Rodney. As can be expected of two people sharing the same passion we started talking about  social media and realized quickly that we both think social media provides the best ROI for all 4 of the basic marketing P’s–promotion, product, price, and distribution.

It is surprising that both large and small companies do not leverage social media beyond customer support and customer research. The reasons? For large companies it is often an unwillingness among top executives to blur the lines between personal and professional, which they see as very  common in social media. But Rodney and I are most surprised at the limited usage of social media by startups, even technology startups!

Rodney’s current startup Tweetphoto demonstrated the power of using social media to develop and launch a business.  Here are some results of Tweetphoto’s prelaunch social media usage:

• 5000 registered beta users before launch
• shelf life of a tweet photo is 10 days longer than competitors
• crowdsourced logo design
• people feel ownership of Tweetphoto brand

Here are Rodney’s pointers for success.

Build a passionate network

Building a passionate network of customers, evangelists, and talent is important for all businesses but for startups who don’t have millions of dollars for broadcast TV advertising (viewer growth of which is flat by the way) IT IS CRITICAL! There is no other promotional behavior startups can engage in for as high an ROI.

You should start building this network before launch. Remember to do the following:

1. seed your startup’s early network from your own social media and offline network. Even if these people are not the ideal user they will tell others on board and together they will help you begin a lively conversation.
2. so you seeded your startup social network. That’s great! But keep their attention with good content and high interaction.
3. explain what you are doing–the problem you are trying to solve, the pain points you want to solve [twitter is especially good as it forces you to be clear, interesting, and concise].
4. find passionate consumers and content generators–this is the key end result from all your work in steps 1 to 3

Build in social elements to your product

I hear a lot about the viral loop. In fact when I ask entrepreneurs how they plan to get their initial traction they almost always respond by saying that they have in-built virality. However, few mention building in microengagement–this means being able to engage in actions like favoriting, voting, and sharing it with one’s twitter stream.

All of this should be done in a way that is so easy for the user that the user does not even have to think about the action. Remember the purpose of the sharing is to allow users to extend the shelf-life of any content by them or others in the community as long as possible. Think of all the possible ways you can do this and don’t leave a single opportunity! Tweet photo utilizes 4: sharing, viewing, favoriting, and commenting. It even lets you know what others are doing at the moment you visit the site in each of the 4 categories. Now that’s making virality obvious to everyone right on entry!

NO, your college intern CANNOT do all this!

Just because someone uses social media doesn’t mean their usage patterns are right for your product. It is critical that the person using social media for your startup:

• keeps their eyes and ears open to listen
• responds to concerns
• directs and shares messages

If all that sounds simple–do it. I find it curious that despite the success lauching TweetPhoto completely launched via social media not a single startup has contacted Rodney for more information on how he did this.

Similar Posts:

• Interview Rebecca Watson: talks about Divine Caroline’s low cost social media outreach
• How to launch your product with Social Media, talk at Haas School of Business
• Clear value+call to action=Good product
• Importance of listening to your social media strategy
• What to listen for with your social media listening strategy

Popularity: 9% [?]