Tailwind - Serious Startups

Which Social Media Platforms Are Best for Your Startup?

From Tailwind

In this new age of social media marketing, many make the mistake of posting the same type of content on all of the different forms of social media platforms. In actuality, the different social media platforms have differentspecialties and setbacks that make them unique. While we don’t recommend just using one form of social media, we do recommend knowing each platform and their strengths well so that you can choose the best form for your particular message and/or content. Here, we’ll review many popular social media platforms, along with what is unique about them and what they are good for.

Facebook

Facebook can be an ideal platform for businesses because of its huge user base. While people have taken notice to the fact that many younger people no longer prefer Facebook as their first choice regarding social media platforms, it still holds the vast majority of users with over 1.19 billion, making it a great source to get the word out with an awesome reach.

Facebook is ideal for longer messages- perhaps big news about your company, due to status updates allowing larger amount of characters than any other platform. One thing that Facebook is usually not a good fit for is actually selling items- save this for some of the other more immediate, actionable platforms. Instead, use Facebook as a platform for branding and displaying personality. Use Facebook to let consumers see news about your company, topics that you’re company is interested in, your company culture, etc. This is the platform where followers will come to love your company/brand for who you are, in turn causing loyalty.

Instagram

Instagram is a newer and more contemporary platform that more and more businesses are beginning to use. It’s a fun and extremely visual way to show off your brand, especially if you have eye-catching products to offer. Instagram is a remarkable way to create interest and curiosity about your company and getting people to want to know more.

When posting pictures, make sure to provide a caption with information about what is going on in the picture. If it’s a product, provide a link to where they can find it. However, your Instagram shouldn’t be all products. Show fun things going on at your company, relevant and intriguing images, etc. Instagram is also a great way to show usage situations- show people actually using and experiencing your product; followers will be able to see what the experience looks like, further peaking their interest. The rule of thumb here is to make sure that whatever you post is eye catching and appealing. Don’t post boring or fuzzy photos.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an often overlooked platform by many businesses, but its purpose is to create something invaluable that everyone needs- social networking. In these modern times, LinkedIn is vital to create and maintain business connections in order to take advantage of them when relevant to do so.

If doing any B2C or especially B2B marketing, LinkedIn is a great way to reach out to others and get onto their radar for when they may need your product/service. Because of its emphasis on copy rather than visuals, LinkedIn is more prevalent of those offering a service rather than a product (not to say that those offering products can’t see benefits from the platform as well).

Another helpful aspect of LinkedIn are the social groups/discussions that it provides, based around common interests, industries, communities, etc. This gives you the chance to get involved in discussions where you can both contribute and learn more about anything that you may be having trouble with. LinkedIn is THE platform to establish your authority and show others that you really know what you are talking about and that your company holds value. LinkedIn is an ideal place to post links to your company blog or other such informational links to provide further information on your company and what you do.

Pinterest

Of course, here at Tailwind, we are partial to Pinterest and are very aware of its enormous potential, but we promise to remain unbiased for the purpose of this blog post. Pinterest is renowned for its content sharing format. Using Pinterest, you can post videos, photographs and additional images to various boards based on subject. Whereas LinkedIn is a copy oriented platform, Pinterest is quite the opposite, with an emphasis on visuals. This makes it ideal for businesses with products whose main appeal is their imagery (for instance, clothing).

Pinterest is one of the platforms where sales can be a main goal, due to its aspirational nature. Those visiting Pinterest are typically looking for ways to improve their lives, and they often even conduct specific searches to find particular items that they are searching for. Additionally, people can click your pins, which will lead them back to your website (or wherever you would like to take them), making for a good conversion rate. While sales is a sound goal for Pinterest, it shouldn’t be the only goal kept in mind when pinning content. Pinterest is actually another great platform to show off your company’s brand and personality. Don’t just pin items from your website- pin items that you are interested in and know that your customers would be interested in as well. You can also create boards centered around your company and its culture- maybe even one centered around its employees- without it being all about the product/service that you are offering. After all, customers do love to get to know the company that they are doing business with.

Twitter

Twitter’s appeal comes from the fact that it is quick-paced and in the moment. It has become extremely popular due to this and the interactivity that it provides. Businesses who want to have real-time conversations with consumers will enjoy using Twitter. Using Twitter Search or tools like HootSuite, you can even conduct searches on people tweeting about topics or companies that would be relevant to your company and contribute to discussions going on about them in Twitter. It shows consumers that you’re taking notice of what they’re talking about, you want to communicate with them and you can provide help.

Twitter isn’t just for replying, however. You can makes your own posts requesting feedback and opinions, and like Facebook, you can also post (short) news regarding or relevant to your company, as well as any quick updates that you would like your followers to immediately know.

Vine

Vine is another new platform that many businesses have implemented into their social media plan. Its appeal is the personality and fun-side of your company that it can reveal, along with the fact that its videos are 6-second loops- in today’s society people are impatient and won’t sit through much, but almost everyone has 6 seconds to spare.

Like Instagram, Vine is also great to show (quick) usage situations, so people will see your product/service in action. We think the most important thing that Vine can do is to show consumers that you are a fun, interesting and dynamic brand that is willing to keep up with the times to please their consumers.

Now that you know a little bit more about many social media platforms, next time you post on social media, you can think to yourself, “Which one of these platforms will best help me get across the goal that I am trying to accomplish?”

This post originally appeared on the Tailwind blog.

8 Tools for the Startup SEO Rookie

A Rookie's Overview of SEO Part 3

Hopefully, by reading parts one and two of this blog series, you guys are feeling more and more comfortable with the idea of SEO. In this final post, we want to make to make this SEO overview a little more actionable for you. We will go over some of the many tools that SEOs use and how to measure and evaluate your efforts.

Tools/Services

The great thing about this whole process is that you aren’t completely on your own. There are several different elements offered that will help you along the process. Because search engines want to be able to easily access websites’ content, they encourage SEO and provide a variety of tools to do so. They also encourage certain practices that website creators can use to make SEO easier, as stated below.

Sitemaps. Sitemaps are files that you can create that give search engines directions on how to navigate through your website as well as to find areas on your site that they would probably miss on their own. In order to learn more about sitemaps you can go towww.sitemaps.org, and you can create one of your own atwww.XML-Sitemaps.com.

Robots.txt. This is a file that you can find on a website’s root directory that instructs search engines how to navigate your site. Site owners can use the robot to indicate which parts of their website they would not like automated web crawlers (search engines) to travel to and where to go to find the sitemap. Interested in knowing more? Moz can help you out.

In addition to these and other such robots, both Google and Bing offer webmaster tools to assist with search-friendly pages. Here are the links:

Finally, Moz has a website that can also provide similar assistance for your website. It’s called the Open Site Explorer.

Measuring and Evaluation

The key to successful SEO is being able to track and measure certain aspects and evaluate what is going well and where you need to improve. When evaluating SEO, there are specific things that you will want to measure:

The Traffic Sources to Your Site. At the end of a certain time period (it’s best to evaluate at the end of each month), you will want to take note of all of the different traffic sources to your site, whether they be from referral traffic, direct traffic or search traffic. If you know where all your traffic comes from, you will be able to determine where you need to improve. In addition, you will be able to track this traffic over a long period of time. If traffic temporarily spikes but doesn’t remain high in the long-run, this didn’t do much for you.

Both Visits and Conversion Rate By Specific Keywords. It is obviously very important to determine which practices are actually getting you the results that you desire. Not only will this tell you what is working, but it can also help you further improve these rankingsfor conversions, as well as help you to determine the best possible landing page for these hot key words.

The Amount of Your Site’s Pages that Receive Search Engine Traffic. By knowing which of your site’s pages are drawing in traffic from search engines, it will give you an idea of how many of your pages are included in the search engine’s index. The more pages you have included, the far more successful you will be (especially if you have a large website).

These are just some of the many things you can look at and measure. For a more complete list, you can visit this blog post: Choosing Web Analytics Key Performance Indicators. Wondering where exactly you will find these analytics? The truth is, there are many services online that offer great analytics, but we are particularly partial to Google Analytics.

This post originally appeared on the Tailwind blog.

3 Easy Tips for Your Startup’s Social Media Strategy

It’s a new year, and you know what that means- the perfect time for New Year’s resolutions! When setting your resolutions, think larger than yourself; perhaps it’s time to better your business. What’s a better way to start than to begin your social media scheduling for the year?! We are sure that your brand has some sort of social media presence (we don’t know many who don’t), but why not make it great by planning killer content AHEAD of time? While this may sound overwhelming, it’s a lot easier than you may think. Given that social media scheduling is something that we have recently begun to do religiously, we believe that we can give you pointers for the task, so sit tight and stay tuned for some of our advice.

Designate Days

In order to make sure you are posting meaningful, purposeful content, we recommend designating particular days around certain subjects. For instance, maybe on Wednesdays you will post things centered around your company, while on Mondays, you will want to post more fun things or things that would be of interest to your target audience as they are easing into their week. Tuesday could be dedicated to things going on within your company’s industry, Thursday could be centered around people that are in communication with your brand and giving thanks and feedback to them, and Friday could be about what is going on in your company’s home city. Of course, these are just suggestions- use your own discretion about what is good for your unique company when designating days. In addition, you may also choose to continue posting throughout the weekend, if you’d like. The idea is to create a blueprint of what you would like your week of social media to look like so as to make finding content easier as well as providing relevant and useful information to your target audience.

Optimize Your Schedule

There are certain hours in the day that are better for engaging with your audience than others. In other words, just by choosing a particular time, more people will not only see your posts for themselves, but they are also more likely to interact with it and share it with even more people. These times can vary according to your business and your audience, but according to an infographic by KISSmetrics, titled “The Science of Social Timing”, here are some helpful guidelines:

Twitter:

5 pm is a good time to tweet for an optimal amount of retweets
You are most effective when you tweet between 1-4 times an hour
The best days to tweet tend to be during the middle of the week and on weekends
To increase click-through rates, noon and 6 pm are the best times to tweet

Facebook:

The best day to share is Saturday
The most effective time to post is noon
The best sharing frequency tends to be .5 per day

Of course, as we previously mentioned, these times and days are not set in stone, and they can vary from company to company, so use these as guidelines, not absolute rules.

Choose A Program

Now that you have an idea of what you want to post as well as when you want a post, you’re ready to actually begin to schedule. The good news is that there are many programs out there to help you with this task. We are fond of HootSuite, but here we will provide a list of additional programs you may want to look at for your scheduling needs:

For even more options, visit this site.

Hopefully these tips will help you get the start you need for a great year of social media content!

This post originally appeared on the Tailwind blog.

How To Build Your Startup’s Social Media Brand

Tailwind

When it comes to a successfully marketed business, a consistent brand is key. If you don’t have a distinct brand and brand voice that distinguishes you from others around you, you are just another face in the crowd. Social media brand building doesn’t have to be hard if you know what you’re doing, and we’re here to help! Here are some tips to help you with your own social media brand building.

Develop a Brand Voice

In order to implement a strong brand image in your online marketing, it is important to determine the voice that your brand will convey and establish a tone across all of your online channels. This will help others to really get to know your brand and what it stands for. In order to develop a brand voice, you will need to keep several things in mind. First things first- you should consider the qualities and attributes that you want to be associated with your brand as well as words that you would like consumers to associate with your brand. For example, here at Tailwind, some of the qualities that we consider important include ease of use, affordability and specialization. The next thing that you will want to consider is what your goal on social media is. Is it to drive trial? To increase sales? Gain feedback? All of the above? The way you communicate online should reflect your goals, and different goals call for different sorts of communication.

Other items to keep in mind when developing your brand voice include the strengths of your product or service as well as what your followers and customer base already have to say about your offerings. Once you have a complete idea of all these factors, you can develop your brand voice by considering all of these aspects and speaking in a voice that reflects them with consistency.

Be Authentic

Staying true to your brand means being honest about who you are at all times. Do not post anything that would be deceiving or misrepresent your brand just to grow a following or get likes. Post relevant items that your brand truly cares and knows about. This way, people remain clear on what they should associate with your brand and look to you for help with. Anything that does not remain true to your brand will just muddy up others’ ideas of your brand and what value it has to them.

In addition, if your brand has made a mistake that it needs to own up to, don’t be afraid to apologize or right the wrong publicly. This lets your public know that you are conscientious, willing to improve and willing to be transparent with them about all items of interest, and in turn, improves your brand image.

Persistency is Key

A strong brand will remain active on social media over time and stay prevalent on their social media channels to stay on top of their consumers’ minds. It is easy to develop a brand voice, curate content and get really excited about your online presence in the beginning. The more difficult part comes when you realize that you have to actually maintain and upkeep your brand online and constantly put out fresh, new content as well as respond to those interacting with your brand online.

The good news is, if you have a strategy, remaining active online isn’t too hard to manage. Take the time to develop a calendar for content that you would like to post in the future. Schedule Facebook and Google+ posts, tweets, blogs, etc. ahead of time, so that you are not overwhelmed with having to come up with something on the spot. If you are always one step ahead, your brand will maintain an active and ever ready online presence. In addition, set aside a designated time several times a week that is strictly devoted to interacting with your followers and likers, as another aspect of your brand is the amount of attention paid to its consumers.

While social media branding can seem like a complicated and overwhelming experience, it just takes some care and thought. By utilizing these tips, you are on your way to your own strong online branding experience.

This post originally appeared on the Tailwind blog.

Is Your Startup Investing Well In Social Media?

Tailwind

There is an old maxim: “You value what you measure.” For many companies, this has translated into a philosophy of rigorous adherence to specific company-wide key performance indicators (KPIs), such as revenue, lifetime value of a customer or time to serve. There are endless KPIs companies may select from, but when it comes to investing in social media, your standard KPIs probably don’t apply. And even if they do, you probably can’t measure them well.

That’s our fault- and by our, I mean the ecosystem of social media marketing companies such as PinLeague- we haven’t helped establish those KPIs well enough. Unfortunately, it’s also YOUR problem, because without commonly accepted KPIs, your Executive team looks at social media investment and asks the same questions they ask of everyone else. “How much revenue did it drive?” “Did it reduce our time to serve a customer?” “Is it increasing lifetime value?” and so forth.

The problem is, you – and we- don’t have those answers yet. And the answers we do give often underestimate the impact.

For example, at PinLeague we offer a Pinterest ROI Tracking feature. For many brands, this is a big win. You can now say to your boss “we earned $X from Pinterest this month.” Great. Revenue question answered.

There’s a problem though: You’re selling yourself short!

The true revenue impact of Pinterest is far greater than the revenue you see directly from Pinterest. For example, in our socially targeted email product (PinMail), we work with clients to help them measure not only revenue from Pinterest, multiple sources of revenue:

Revenue from Pinterest
Revenue from visits directly from the socially targeted email campaign
Revenue influenced by Pinterest as a channel
Revenue saved/gained by providing better customer service via social networks

And so on…

As you grow on Pinterest (or any social platform), all of these sources of revenue tend to grow together. For example, our PinMail campaigns have delivered as much as 8x as much direct revenue as they have revenue through Pinterest. In our own marketing, we’ve seen that social tends to influence purchase decisions but rarely are the last point of contact before a user joins PinLeague.

It’s difficult, if not impossible to quantify all of these impacts today. And if you did, the investment in that social media analytics would probably outweigh the profit impact to begin with.

In lieu of these metrics, CEOs often determine Social Media is a cost center, not a profit center. As a result, they fail to invest adequately. They simply hire their proverbial daughter Becky and check the “Social Media” box.

So, How Do I Get My CEO to Increase Social Media Investment?

Here are a few strategies to try:

1. Start investing in social media with targeted, measurable campaigns

PinMail has taken off for us because brands can see results with small budgets. We’ve run trials as low as $1,800 in budget that have generated $10k+ in revenue. Doing a simple trial like that puts little budget at risk and can be used to justify higher spend later.

2. Show there are benefits to investing in Social Media beyond Social Marketing

Go sign-up for a free pinterest analytics account now. Do it. Then, add a few competitors. In a week, log-in and pull down those competitors most popular content or products (“Brand Mentions” in PinLeague terms) and e-mail that report to your editorial team, content team, merchandising team, etc with a single question: “How would you use this data if you could have it for any competitor on an ongoing basis?” Boom. You have an ally who can help you get budget (or give you budget) so you can invest in social media tools.

3. Ask for Budget in Terms the CEO Can Understand

Most Social Media teams default to scaling through more people. How about if instead you make your current people more effective. Your CEO will hear: “By spending $100,000 on social media tools and campaigns, we’ll double the efficiency of our 4 person team this year.” CEO then does the math: 4 people @$100,000 each (with benefits, etc) can double their efficiency. That’s $100,000 of investment in social media tools vs $400,000 of additional headcount expense. Sounds like a deal!

This post originally appeared on the Tailwind blog.

How To Get Your Content Shared

Tailwind

What’s one of the best parts about marketing and sharing content online? This content has the potential to go viral, which means you have a chance at some free publicity plus the chance at reaching users that you wouldn’t normally reach.

While that sounds great, it’s a lot easier said than done. You may find yourself wondering why the awesome content you’re creating isn’t getting as many shares as you would have hoped. Obviously, having solid content that is worth sharing is important, but there is more to it than that. We’ve provided a few tips that you can follow in order to get a kick-start on getting your content shared. Keep reading to get the ball rolling!

Draw Them in With Your Visuals

There’s a reason you keep hearing that people are drawn to visual content online. Time after time, it’s been proven that people interact most with posts that include great visuals. So go ahead and add big, high quality photographs, infographics, and other great images to your work. Even if your company isn’t a part of the most visual industry, you can still easily pull quotes from your content to create graphics for users to pin, tweet or share. Just make sure to combine the right amount of text and graphics so that your audience is drawn in, while knowing what the content has in store for them. If something is able to catch your audience’s eyes, they’ll believe that it will catch their friends’ eyes as well.

Encourage Feedback

Any time that you share something, encourage feedback from your fans on what they liked, what they think you could do differently or any other comments they might have. Not only will this encourage more buzz and conversation centered on you and your topic, but also it will make your fans feel like they have helped you and been a part of your thought process, as if they have a stake in your brand. This makes it much more likely that they will want to share the things that you generate in the future with their own audiences.

Volunteer to Write Guest Blogs

A great way to introduce yourself to a new audience, is by creating content for other sites. Reach out to other companies, create alliances and offer to produce a guest blog here and there. This will be a great chance to network with other brands and create connections that can lead to more helping and shares in the future. Plus, as we said earlier, it will get your information out to a broader audience, while providing the potential for even more people to see and share it.

Show Appreciation

So, someone has interacted with your content… your job with them must be done right? Wrong. Marketing online is about more than getting one share or like. It’s about fostering long-term relationships with your audience. One share is great, but developing a relationship with your audience members that compels them to share even more of your content is better. You’d be surprised how far a simple, well thought out comment or thank you goes with someone who has interacted with your brand. It provides them with the incentive to interact more and more. Another great way to show appreciation? Check out their website or profile to see if you can share anything of theirs to return the favor.

Remember, all of these items are important, but don’t ever sacrifice the quality of your work. Whatever information you put out there should be correct, helpful, and consistent with your brand voice. That (along with the tips above) will give your content a great shot at reaching all types of people.

*This post originally appeared on the Tailwind blog.