5 Steps to Create a Social Media Strategy for Startups
- Measure Studio
- Feb 10
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 3
People are scrolling, engaging, and deciding whom to trust. Without a strategic business presence on social media, you’re invisible.
Worldwide, 5.22 billion people used social media in 2024, and that number is continuing to climb (Measure Studio). The GWI report also mentions that 54% of social media browsers actively research products on these platforms.
That’s a big hint for growing businesses: if you want visibility, you need to show up where potential customers are hanging out.
It all starts with defining why you’re here: brand awareness, sales, and community building.
A clear strategy turns random posts into growth engines.
It's time to build yours.
5 Steps to Create a Social Media Strategy for Your Business
Before you begin, it's necessary to know what you have available and what you can do.
It means auditing your resources (team, budget, tools) and analyzing competitors to define your position on social media.
Based on that, you’ll have the following steps.
1. Define Your Goals and Objectives
A clear set of goals keeps your social media efforts on track and helps measure success. Goals can range from boosting brand visibility to driving sales.
To get there effectively with a powerful social media strategy in place, you’ll need to adopt a SMART framework.
The example below will help you understand how these smart goals actually work in your social media strategy.
What are the SMART goals for a social media strategy? Let's look at some of the examples.
Brand Awareness
If you are offering a bug tracking tool, your goal might be to position yourself as the go-to tool for the QA teams. You may aim to come across as a thought leader in that space among that audience (technically brilliant QA teams).
To highlight a real-world impact, share quick, problem-solving tips on LinkedIn, host Q&A sessions, and highlight user reviews.
Engagement
Now, if you’re into a photo editor app, you may run weekly design challenges on Instagram and ask followers to share their creations using a specific hashtag.
Lead Generation
As a subscription service provider, you can use targeted Facebook ads to direct potential customers to gated content, like an e-book on your website (you can create one using an AI website builder if you haven't already.) You can also use website monitoring tools to check its uptime to track the number of signups.
2. Know Your Target Group
Your target group is the specific audience you have across each social media platform.
Drill down into understanding who they are, what they do, and why they would care about your product.
Below, we’ll take a look at different ways to identify your social media audience.
Create an ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
Mapping out an ideal customer profile for your social media strategy requires —
Focusing on attributes like company size, industry, or tech stack if you’re selling B2B.
Recognizing the audience's personal preferences based on their lives. For example, a B2C brand will have to consider household income, lifestyle, or stage of life.
Develop Buyer Personas
Creating buyer personas requires the following considerations —
Digging deeper into demographics (age, gender, location), psychographics (values, interests, personality traits), and behavior (how they shop, interact, or consume media).
For instance, for an online DIY craft kits seller, one persona might be “Mia, a 32-year-old teacher who loves weekend projects and buys hobby materials online at least twice a month.”
Collect Data
Analyzing your audience requires knowing them well through data. Therefore, you’ll need to —
Use Google Analytics to see which pages your visitors frequent and where they bounce.
Check social media insights on platforms like Instagram or Facebook to learn about follower demographics (e.g., top cities, age ranges).
Run quick online surveys or polls through your website or verified email list validated using an email checker tool. Ask short, direct questions about preferences or pain points.
3. Choose the Right Platforms
Next comes the choice of social media platforms.
With plenty to post and multiple options, the decision often demands knowing where your audience (as discussed in step 2) hangs out the most.
If your audience primarily comprises of Gen Z, Facebook might not be an ideal option, as only 34% of them use it.
Below, we’ll explore different platforms and have a quick look at what fits well on which platform.
Tap into a huge audience of 2.98 billion monthly active users. Good for building communities, running targeted ads, and sharing updates. For more, check out these Facebook stats.
If your product demands focus on visuals, like lifestyle, fashion, travel, etc., then this is a must-choose platform. Tap into the audience of 2.1 billion to showcase Reels and Stories to engage the audience.
TikTok
You can use this platform to promote short-form videos and a younger audience. A superb choice of your brand has a playful or creative angle.
For B2B brands and SaaS, LinkedIn is a gold mine. Ideal for professional networking through thought leadership posts and recruiting.
X (Twitter)
It is excellent for real-time updates and quick interactions. Though not suitable for customer acquisition and promotions, X is often used for customer service, especially because X(Twitter) stats suggest that 85% of customers are more inclined to engage with a brand that communicates with them.
4. Develop Content Strategy for Social Media Marketing
Content defines how you convey your messages on social.
Strong social media content strategies revolve around a mix of topics and formats that keep the audience engaged. People tune out if they see the same style of post repeatedly, so be cautious about your approach and work on the following aspects.
Define Content Pillars
When setting out to publish content on social media, consider creating categories based on the following to yield social backlink benefits:
Educational: Including tutorials, infographics, and tips about your niche. For example, a cloud ERP startup could post tutorials about how to use their different product modules about billing, inventory management, warehousing, procure to pay software, their employee self-service app, and so on.
Promotional: Can involve product launches, discount codes, or limited-time offers.
Inspirational: Think about sharing success stories, user testimonials, or industry highlights.
User-Generated Content (UGC): Leveraging reposting customer reviews, unboxing videos, or user-submitted photos.
Interactive: Running polls, quizzes, or Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions.
Plan Content Formats
After finalizing the pillars, you need to think of different content formats for social media posting, which include:
Short videos, Instagram Reels, or TikTok if you want quick, visual bites.
Carousel images or infographics for data-driven insights.
Stories or ephemeral content to share real-time updates.
Live streams for Q&A or product demos.
Set Up a Content Calendar
Begin by defining the frequency of posting (daily, three times each week, etc.) based on audience availability. Later, schedule each content type in a calendar tool (Trello, Notion, Asana, or a spreadsheet) and align it with upcoming events, promotions, or product milestones.
If you’re a JIRA user, you can also divide monthly tasks within the Jira workflow to efficiently organize and track progress.
Leave room for spontaneous posts if trending news or user-generated content (UGC) pops up unexpectedly.
5. Establish Metrics and KPIs for Measurement
Finally, you need to keep track of numbers that show the performance of your social media channels. It's one way to stay informed about what’s working and areas that need some tweaking.
With metrics, you can see if you’re meeting those SMART goals we discussed earlier.
Here are some key steps you should be taking.
Key KPIs
The essential metrics you should have access to are:
Engagement Metrics: Likes, comments, shares, saves. These show how interested people are in your content.
Reach and Impressions: The number of unique users who see your posts or how many times your posts appear on screens.
Conversion Rates: The percentage of viewers who take a desired action, like clicking a link or signing up for a demo.
Audience Insights: Demographics and behavioral data that indicate who’s most responsive to your content.
How to Measure
Once you know what to measure, let's pivot to the ‘how.’
Check your social platform’s native analytics dashboards (e.g., Facebook Analytics, LinkedIn Page Analytics, Instagram Analytics, etc.).
Use third-party tools like Measure Studio, which provides social media reports and dashboards that help identify growth drivers.
Compare numbers across different types of posts (videos, images, polls) to see which format best resonates with your audience.
5 Businesses with Amazing Social Media Strategies
Let’s look at real-world startups that boast some solid social media strategies for some ideas and inspiration.
#1. Glossier
A beauty brand that succeeded online through its expressive brand identity and deep understanding of internet culture.
They leveraged a community-driven approach, joined the meme bandwagon, and kept it minimal, carving a distinct identity.
#2. HubSpot
A well-known B2B brand that championed inbound marketing by consistently publishing educational content across social channels like LinkedIn and Instagram to attract and nurture leads.
Their posts often feature bite-sized marketing hacks, free tools, and blog snippets, driving higher click-through rates (CTR) while building thought leadership.
#3. MVMT (Watches & Accessories)
A fashion brand that maintains a stylish Instagram feed.
It features lifestyle visuals, influencer collaborations, and even UGC with #jointhemvmt as social proof.
A mix of different social media strategies resulted in a $100M exit in 5 Years.
#4. Casper
A mattress brand that used a blend of fun, sleep-focused visuals and interactive polls on X (Twitter) to drive their growth.
Again, it's one of the brands that went from zero to $750 Million in 4 Years.
#5. Slack
Slack gained massive traction through product-led marketing and an engaging social media presence. Here’s a quick snapshot of their social media following (as of 2/25).
Instagram: 88.7K followers
LinkedIn: 2M followers
Twitter: 440.80K followers
YouTube: 63.7K subscribers
Facebook: 130K likes & 137K followers
What clicks is their ability to humanize their brand by using a friendly, conversational tone on Twitter and LinkedIn. It encourages user stories and sharing quick value-driven tips.
Conclusion
Let’s be real—throwing random posts into the social media void and hoping for the best isn’t a strategy. But with a solid plan (like the five steps we just covered), you can turn your social presence into a growth machine.
And here’s the kicker: strategy is only half the game. The other half? Tracking what actually works. That’s where Measure Studio comes in. Get the insights, data, and trends you need to tweak, test, and totally crush your social media game.
Ready to level up? Get started with Measure Studio today.
Author Bio
Taher Batterywala is an SEO and Content Marketing Specialist at Ranking Bell. With over 7 years of B2B marketing experience and a diversified skill set, he helps craft winning strategies and execute end-to-end campaigns for B2B and SaaS companies to achieve scalable organic growth. Outside of work, he enjoys watching movies, photography, and dabbling in design. You can find him on LinkedIn and X.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is the easiest platform for beginners?
Instagram or Facebook. Both offer user-friendly tools and large user bases.
When do I know my strategy is working?
How much time should I spend on social media posting and comments?
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