SMM for start-ups in 2020

5 tips for those who want to take the first steps to advance their business on social networks

Printed 2004-02-20

Every year, at the SMM agency in Moscow, we analyze the previous year and use this data to create new SMM strategies.

Social networks blur the line between industry leaders and startups, between corporate executives and small business owners. All users are equal participants. Is it great? Sure! And yet this outward impression can be deceiving. Remember George Orwell's Farmyard? All users of social networks are equal, but some are "equal."

So what is the global difference between accounts with 500 subscribers and 500,000? While celebrities have an obvious advantage over most others, many companies have built up their subscriber base more organically, and you can learn from their strategies.

The following are five key moments that were selected from the current methods of promotion on social networks so that it has the maximum effect for business development.

1. Quality content

If you want to be visible on social networks, you must first give quality content. “Content has two parts,” says Marie Smith, an expert on social media marketing and author of “Marketing New Relationships: How to Create a Large, Loyal, and Profitable Network Using a Social Network” (Wiley, 2011). First of all, this is your own content that you invented yourself. Secondly, this is the content of other people that you can share (in particular, rethinking it).

Yes for example, one famous person who successfully combines both types of content is an entrepreneur, investor and author Guy Kawasaki. He has the ability to create a fascinating mixture of other people's content and his own thoughts and opinions. In addition, according to his Twitter feed, Kawasaki repeats each tweet four times to cover all time zones.

Of course, quantity does not mean quality, but what is surprising is its ability to process such a volume of information.

2. Be open

In social networks, it is important to be accessible to the audience, and few people better illustrate this principle than the entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. On Twitter, he constantly communicates with subscribers, treats everyone as equal and reacts with amazing speed.

What is the use of all this laborious work for Vainerchuk? Faithful and dedicated subscribers to his business books and huge reach for his consulting business. When they get a response from Gary, even if it's just a selfie with a smile, they say, “Oh my god, Gary wrote me back!”

3. Focus on a specific niche

In social networks, you can either become a generalist, creating tons of content for many different niches, or choose a specialization in one or several areas. It's easier for specialists to find an audience than generalists. Social networks are extremely informative, and you should be able to stand out. The best way to do this is to own a specific subject.

Jessica Norte, the founder of boutique marketing agency Finger Candy Media in Arizona, is a fan of country music. Norty organizes a weekly chat on Twitter and Google+ for fans of this music. This year, Forbes put Norte at number 3 on his list of the top 50 influencers on social media. She has over half a million followers on Twitter and over 700,000 on Google+.

4. Social networks for business and vice versa

For an entrepreneur, time spent on social networks may seem like a waste, a distraction from more important tasks that are critical to business. Since this activity is time consuming, you should contact the cmm agency , which will take over most of the work. In addition, activity in social networks should sooner or later begin to make a profit. Chris Brogan, founder and CEO of Human Business Works, a US business training company, is one example. He constantly makes presentations around the world, and he finds many clients on social networks.

In other words, Brogan demonstrates his experience and competence in the blog, uses social networks to broadcast these messages, and then uses the obtained coverage and popularity to attract organizers and audience for speeches, trainings and much more. This, in turn, further increases its reach on social networks.

5. Features of each social network

Each social network has a “unique culture”, and the most successful companies and bloggers take this into account instead of posting identical content on all platforms. Take, for example, Corey Booker, the mayor of one of the American cities. He uses the image of Twitter, where he has more than 1.2 million subscribers, and Facebook, and uses each platform in such a way as to get the maximum effect from its own capabilities.

On Twitter, he retweets other people, which helps subscribers to connect and find interesting accounts. The booker uses hashtags to tag tweets of a specific category for wider discussion.

On Facebook, by contrast, Booker publishes posts much less frequently. Because you don't need to spam on Facebook! He, for example, finds more sophisticated ways to engage his audience. For example, it downloads photo albums from various events where he performed.

For beginners, SMM promotion is usually enough for one or two platforms. Now, for 2019, it will most likely be Instagram and Facebook or Vkontakte, depending on your niche.

1. Video

You might think: “Stop, the video was in trend last year, again this year or what?”. Yes! That's right :)

For most marketers and SMM-specialists, video is a familiar format of work. However, it is important to have the right strategy for using videos in 2019. Here are some of the “video strategies” that you should pay attention to:

“Live” (life) video. More and more companies will collaborate with bloggers, opinion leaders to create videos that look like part of the blogger's daily life and allow better contact with the target audience.
Vertical video. Instagram is expected to actively promote IGTV in 2019 to capture part of the YouTube market.
Interactive video. Spreading quality promotional videos is no longer enough. More and more SMMs and marketers create short videos in the format of stories to display ads in the format familiar to a particular social network. In particular, the interactive elements of stories on Instagram make advertising much more effective.

In order for a video to go into social networks, a professional approach to its creation is required. This includes setting goals and creating storyboards in conjunction with videographs. It turns out that it is not so easy to create capacious and informative videos lasting 30-60 seconds, which can be posted in news feeds of social networks.

Video content remains a growing global smm trend for several years

The story format is important: a video of 15 seconds can give a lot of traffic and expand customer base. It is important that the content is adequate to the format: you need to make every effort to fit the gist in the first 10-15 seconds. No matter how interesting the clip is for the target audience, people often lose concentration after watching 15 seconds.

2. Artificial Intelligence

Machine learning is becoming increasingly useful in monitoring social networks. It is expected that this will affect the trends in social media promotion in 2019 and especially in 2020, as many large companies are struggling to overcome market competition with the help of new technological opportunities.

The advantage of artificial intelligence, that its algorithms can understand pretty confusing data. This is something that is usually beyond human capabilities. Therefore, in 2019, more social monitoring services using AI (in particular, machine learning technologies) are expected to appear.

On the other hand, thanks to artificial intelligence, the ability to fit your habits, interests and favorite topics improves. All this works imperfectly and the algorithms of the “smart tape” of the same Facebook are sometimes annoying, but their quality is growing rapidly.

3. Transparency

In 2018, Facebook faced privacy and personal data issues. This year, the GDPR law (as well as its Russian counterpart, the law on personal data) entered into force, forcing companies to more accurately process, store and use the data of their customers.

According to Sprout's research, more than 55% of customers believe that companies now behave fairly openly on social networks. Most likely, in 2019, the business will show even more openness. Openness and transparency is a tendency that will persist and even grow.

It must be remembered that if a company wants to be successful in promoting on social networks, it needs to start by giving its target audience what it needs, listening to feedback. The result should be changes in the product and services, business processes, as well as company values. You must give your users access to the information that underlies the business; sounds strange, but it's worth the effort.

4. Reliability and sincerity

One of the assumptions about social networks for 2019 and 2020 concerns the issue of the "reality" of what is published in them. This is not about posts, but about stories, which are usually more vital. By showing your target audience more reliable, lively stories, you will be able to gain her trust and ultimately build a longer relationship with her and, accordingly, a strong brand.

In order for your brand to attract the attention of the target audience, you need to think about what value you carry for these people. 2019 is the time to share information that is important for people, not for your company! Reveal secrets that are interesting to people, not boring boastful thoughts about your own brand.

Which stories are important and interesting to people? The simplest thing you can do is enhance the effect of useful posts (hope you have them). Just grab your useful content and create 15-20 short videos based on topics that matter to people. Then share them on different social networks.

Another tip: you can take your best posts and turn them into articles. You will make the content work not only on social networks, but also on your positions in search engines. If you have old live videos, podcasts, articles, or other content, you can reuse them. What worked for your target audience on one platform (social networks) will most likely work on another platform (your site).

5. LinkedIn

Unfortunately, in the Russian Federation this social network is blocked by a court decision. However, to understand global trends it is important to know the following.

Banned in Russia (in 2019, at least) LinkedIn is one of the most effective effective platforms for SMM promotion

Compared LinkedIn's Facebook is about 10 times more likely to watch videos (even though Facebook has a significantly larger audience).

Even if you only have a few followers on LinkedIn, your posts can be viewed by many people. The advantage of this social network is that you can easily reach any demographic group you want.

It is also worth noting that thanks to LinkedIn, a younger demographic group has a chance to find work and gain experience before they begin to study at a university.

6. Content from employees

For some reason, most companies do not involve their employees in creating content. There is no better way to strengthen your brand than through company employees. According to studies, content created by employees is 8 times more likely to lead to active actions than content that the company officially posts. Moreover, this content is able to expand coverage by more than 500%. Incredible, right?

Employee use is a powerful strategy that also “humanizes” and personalizes the brand. It makes it easy to scale content. Want to beat your competition? Use your employees to create content and watch what happens with marketing.

7. Landing pages for target

Obviously, the use of smartphones and mobile applications has become widespread. In 2019, for smm promotion , it is important to do high-quality, flexible and user-friendly digital marketing on mobile devices.

Landing pages that you prepare for targeted advertising on social networks should be made with care for users of mobile devices. In other words, if you want people to click on a button or link, it should be large and visible on a mobile phone.

8. New Social Media

Facebook has added many new features to the groups. These features include posting videos, updating stories, and adding a business page to a group.

Many bloggers began to use closed Instagram accounts to “trick” his algorithms (in particular, to avoid massive unsubscribes after giveaway).

By adding features such as "Close Friends" to Instagram Stories, companies can create personalized stories for the selected portion of the target audience. In 2019 and 2020, additional functions related to groups and lists of friends are likely to be added to social networks. It is worth using for business.

9. Chatbots

Last year was the year of chatbots: some companies have learned how to use this feature effectively by adding Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp or another messenger to their site ( or, for example, in the Instagram profile via the link). But, according to one US study, only 0.5% of companies in the US now have chatbots.

The main reason for this is the fact that the technology is still fairly new, and its implementation is slow. In addition, people still prefer personal communication rather than chatting with a chat bot. Nevertheless, despite the low pace of introduction of chatbots, when promoting social networks, you need to remember that using these new features can improve interaction with customers and increase both customer service and sales.

Potential customers are more interested in personalization and "humanity." Therefore, it is important that marketers and smm agencies promote on social networks find ways to interact with the audience, not necessarily trying to make a sale in each case.

10. Disappearing content

One of the leading trends in social networks is the use of the stories format, and it is expected to continue in 2019. According to statistics, stories play a leading role in achieving the billions of daily video views that Facebook and Snapchat boast of. This means that in the coming years, such content will become increasingly important and will attract the attention of smm-specialists.

In 2019, marketers are expected to come up with more attractive ways to use a combination of images, videos, and bloggers in the story format. With this in mind, companies should turn their attention to reprofiling their “video strategies” to this format.

The stories format, in contrast to the usual posts, creates a sense of urgency, and this makes it a more effective marketing tool.