how to get started in social media: first steps.

One of the best strategies to publicise your business and reach as many potential customers as possible is to advertise your brand on social networks by creating an account as a company.

But the problem before starting in social networks is the uncertainty, hundreds of questions go through our heads, where is better to create an account, what contents are better for my company, in which formats? Don't worry, in this post we will solve all those questions that don't let you sleep and you will be able to start your experience in social networks.

There is a list of things you have to take into account when starting in social networks, we show you it:

what to consider when opening a social media account?

1. Competition
   Within social networks, absolutely everyone is competition, not only do you have to look at what content other companies in your sector upload, but any other account is competing for the attention of users. You are not only competing for sales, you are competing for attention. And this is much more complicated when you start, when you don't have any followers and you are not yet known.
   
   
2. Objectives
   

   As always, in any marketing strategy, what you have to take into account before you start is that in order to be successful you have to set goals, so you can always know where you are failing and correct it. In order to set goals you must first know who you are targeting and how you want to reach them. If you know what you want to achieve in the short and long term, all the actions you carry out should be aimed at achieving it.

   A very effective marketing technique that helps a lot in social media is the SMART technique:

   S: Specific

   If you want to define your objectives well, it is essential to detail everything as much as possible, having set your objectives and those derived from them. For example, if your objective is to reach 10,000 followers, the sub-objectives you set could be: "before X day", "at least half of them interact", etc. This way you will be very clear about the steps to follow and having them so clear, the commitment to achieve them will be greater.

   M: Measurable (Measurable)

   From my point of view, this is the most important characteristic of the SMART method, as the objectives you set yourself must be measurable, you must have KPIs and know how to optimise them. It is much easier if you can measure your results, as knowing that you have to reach X number of followers, you will know how far you have to go to achieve your objective.

   A: Achievable

   You have to be ambitious with your goals, but also realistic, if you start with your instagram account as a small little known brand and the first goal you set is to reach 10,000 followers the first week, the only thing you will get is discouraged, if you set more realistic goals, you will achieve them and you will see your growth. Encouraging you to continue optimizing your strategy. Therefore a good step in your strategy is to observe what your limitations and weaknesses are, to strengthen them and not to set impossible goals.

   R: Results

   The next step after having correctly followed the previous ones is none other than achieving results. Once we have fulfilled everything we have planned, it is time to analyse the results achieved in order to continue optimising the strategy.

   T: Time

   These objectives achieved in the previous point must have deadlines, when setting the objectives, you must do it within a calendar, it is important to know where we want to get, but if we do not set a deadline, the rest of our strategy will be useless. It is often important to divide a strategy into phases, for weeks or months to always know where you are in your strategy.

   Having explained the SMART technique and understood the goal-setting phase, let's move on to the next point on the list.

3. Channels
   You must choose very well the channels through which you are going to move, you will have to analyse which one suits your online business best. For this, the first thing is to have very well defined your buyer persona, once you know your potential customer, it will be very easy to find out in which social networks they move, if your buyer persona is "young people between 15 and 24 years", TikTok or instagram would be a great bet, if your audience is more mature, maybe Twitter would be a good choice. Each social network has its own personality and you have to keep in mind that this personality should at least resemble the personality of your brand. If your business is a coffin shop, it would not fit much in TikTok, a fun and dynamic social network.
   
   
4. Visibility
   The most important thing to achieve your goals is to make yourself known and gain visibility within the networks, because starting from 0 is very difficult and even more so if your brand is not yet known. For this you have to invest time and effort to make your social networks worthwhile. How do we achieve this? With the next point on the list.
   
   
5. Valuable content
   In order to achieve your goals and make your potential customers know you, it is necessary that the content of your social networks is not only attractive and visual, but it has to be worthwhile for the user, the first thing is that everything you share is focused on the brand image you want to convey. And that your content not only entertains the user but it is content that educates or helps him in something, content that the user himself will find quality because it is just what he needs. With this valuable content what you want is the interaction of users, if you capture their attention and get them to interact, these users will end up becoming potential customers.
   
   
6. Interact
   This is not just about creating good content and waiting for your objectives to be met, you not only need your users to interact with you, you need them to see you as an active account, that they can count on you when communicating and that you are a brand that is grateful to its customers (by liking comments, re-uploading stories of the products they have bought, replying to direct messages and comments, etc)

To achieve your goals and make a name for yourself on social networks, it is very important to have a good Social Media strategy and be very rigorous with it, with extreme discipline and perseverance, a lot of perseverance. So if you want to have a good positioning and presence on social networks, don't wait any longer to follow our advice and optimise your Social Media strategy.