There are a few critical things that startups should do if the goal is business longevity. These few things are:
- Prioritizing investments.
- Learning from every source possible and getting feedback too.
- Having passion for the business.
- Spending on SEO and SMM.
SEO and SMM can also prove to be extremely cost effective and that is one of the reasons why startups, especially, should come up with robust strategies for the same.
SEO or search engine optimization is all about giving your website higher visibility in search engine results. SMM or social media marketing is promoting brand awareness across multiple social media channels.
Online reputation.
SEO and SMM allow you to create and sustain a great reputation. This is especially important when you are a newcomer in the space. When you invest time and quality into creating a fabulously interesting social media presence and a website that is of high quality you also get to enjoy positive reputation. Such a reputation will consist of:
- Your ability to answer even negative reviews or comments about your brand.
- Your voice as an industry leader.
- Your delivery of customer support and so on.
Opportunity to push great content.
One of the biggest strengths for SEO and SMM is great content. Your content can comprise of different things:
- Videos.
- Images.
- Text.
- Infographics and so on.
You also need to deal with the topics that this content will cover. On social media, for instance, it need not always be about your own brand alone. If there is some material that complements or strengthens your presence, then incorporate that into your content.
Cost effectiveness.
With smart thinking, you will realize that your strategies for SMM and SEO need not cost the earth. It costs absolutely nothing to start a social media account for yourself. You can maintain multiple accounts – Yelp, Google+, Facebook and so on. You only have to create content once and it can get shared across all your channels at once. Keyword research can also be done with the use of many free or ‘worth your money’ online tools. Once you have your set of keywords, use them smartly and use them across your website and content and watch the results boost your sales.
Lead generation.
Every business needs new customers and new customers can be generated only by leads. Both – SEO and SMM – will help in lead generation. Even when a customer knows nothing about you – he or she will be tempted to visit your website if it has popped up during a search. Similarly, you may find that a loyal customer has shared some information about you on a social media channel that you may not even be on – but this will get more people talking about you.
Strategy before implementation.
You should spend money on marketing and optimizing but before that, draw up your marketing strategy. All the tools for use on SEO and SMM are still going to be there – so flesh out your strategy and then get into the SEO and social spaces.
Thought before action will lead you to make the right choices of:
- Social media channels that you should choose.
- The keywords that you should incorporate.
- Whether you should invest more in local search engine optimization or not.
- What kind of content should you create and so on.
For instance, if your firm offers solutions to other businesses, then you should be looking at LinkedIn more than other channels.
There is no doubt that for a resource-strapped start up, investing money in social media marketing and search engine optimization is one of the best ways to gain more bang for their buck.
