The document provides guidance on developing an effective social media strategy for startups. It recommends determining goals, budget, available resources, and brand voice before creating a plan. Key steps include developing a content calendar, setting goals and metrics, and following best practices for major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Monitoring performance and adapting the strategy based on results is also emphasized. The overall message is that social media requires planning, consistency and measuring success to achieve business objectives.

1. Social Media Bootcamp for
StartupsBy Fox Theory
A branding and digital marketing agency based in New York City

2. First Steps
Determine Your
Goals
Determine
Your Budget

3. Assess Your
Resources
Define Your Brand Voice

4. Measure your
Results
Make a Plan

5. ATTRACTING
INVESTMENT
If attracting investment is your main
goal, then focus all of your energy
on tactics to increase followers.
BRAND REPUTATION
MANAGEMENT
If maintaining a strong public
impression of the company is your goal,
then less is required for community
growth, but closer attention should be
paid to consumer feedback
BRAND
AWARENESS
GROWTH
Growing awareness of your
brand requires spending more
time and effort providing value
content to your community,
engaging with your fans,
monitoring performance, and
promoting your pages.
DRIVING SALES
If sales is your main goal, then
more resources can be
allocated to target ad
placement and promotional
posts.
Determine Your Goals
Different Goals Have Different Strategies

6. Writers &
Designers
Ad Agency
Influencer
Outreach
Photography
Page/Post
Promotion
Determine Your Budget
There are many ways to spend money online. Spend it wisely.
● If you are unable to manage social media accounts on your own, then the best use of your money is to hire an intern or freelancer who
can.
● The next best use of your money is promoting your account and promoting your posts on Facebook.
● If growing your community quickly is a priority, then it will be worthwhile to pay bloggers and influencers in your industry to promote
your company.
● If you have approximately $3000 per month, or more to spend on social media, an agency will be the best position to take care of all
your needs
● Higher quality graphic design, blog writing, and photography

7. Promotional Budgets Work

8. Assess Your Resources
Time
Do you have a team
member who has 1 - 4
hours per day, seven days
per week to dedicate to
monitoring your social
media accounts?
Experience
Do you have a dedicated
team member who has
knowledge of social media?
Do they have perfect
grammar and writing skills?
Do they have photo editing
skills?
Time = $$$
Don’t forget to calculate
the value of your time. It is
often more efficient and
cost effective to hire a
professional who knows
what they are doing.
Outsource
If you do not have a
dedicated team member,
then outsource this job
to a professional or hire
an intern.
Does your staff have the time, knowledge, and experience?

9. Define Your Brand Voice
Once you have decided on the
company voice, use it across all
channels. Consistency is king.
Be Consistent
Fans respond best to genuine
personable content. This is social
media, not the Wall Street Journal.
If your company culture is casual
and fun then don’t be afraid to
show that on your social channels.
Be Real
Sit down as a company,
describe and agree upon the
persona and voice of your
company so that future
marketing and social media
managers can follow it and it
will be consistent, always.
Build a Persona
Think of your company’s social media accounts like yours. You most likely
use a similar voice across all of your social media channels. You may
keep things more professional on LinkedIn and a bit more casual on
Snapchat, but it’s always your voice. A company’s voice should also be
consistent. If you’re posting cat memes one day and posting corporate
sales promotions the next, your fans will get confused, annoyed, and
eventually will stop following you.

10. Website
Blog
Social
Media
User
Engagemen
t
Email
Valuable
Content
Shop
Share
Great Example of Consistent Brand Voice
@alohamoment

12. MASTER SOCIAL
MEDIA CALENDAR
All company events, product
launches, holidays, busy periods,
dry spells, conferences, original
content, and promotions should
go into a content calendar from
three months to a year ahead.
❏ Check Twitter/Facebook
notifications
❏ Respond to user comments
❏ Post 3X daily on Twitter
❏ Post 1-2X daily on Facebook
❏ Post 3 - 7X weekly on
Instagram
❏ Pin all new website images
Follow Daily Checklists
SET MONTHLY,
QTR & YEARLY
GOALS
Be realistic, but do set goals.
Nothing is impossible. Set
short and long term goals and
track progress.
SCHEDULED
CHECKINS
Meet as a team at least once
a month, if not bimonthly, to
go over the content and
events calendar,
responsibilities, and goal
SET ALERTS
Use Google Alerts and the many
social media tools to alert your team
when action happens on your social
channels
Notification!
New LIKE!
Make A Plan

13. Measure Your Results
Measure twice; cut once
Traffic to Website 80 %
Community Growth 90 %
Sales Leads 70 %
Engagement Rate 60 %
Close measurement of your brand’s
social media performance will help you
achieve your goals, keep team members
accountable, optimize for better
performance, and give you peace of
mind.
There are many tools to measure
performance. Google analytics and the
insights tabs from each of the social
channels are a good first step.
If you need a closer measure to what is
being said about your brand, then more
robust tools are recommended.

14. Monitor Your Brand Presence
Brandwatch, Digimind, Nuvi, and Social Baker are some of our favorite social analytics companies.

15. SOCIAL MEDIA
BEST PRACTICES

16. - Largest social network
- Most cost-effective, and targeted
promotion options
- One of the top ways to send traffic to
your website
- Most trusted social network by
users. Your true fans will follow you
here.
- Great for brand awareness
- Bad for bringing traffic to website
- Good for Google search results, so
don’t ignore it
- Post same content as you would on
Facebook.
- Great at long-term community growth
- Great for sending traffic to your website
- The BUY button makes this platform
essential for ecommerce companies
- Good for posting about news and events
updates
- Good for flash sales
- Expensive for paid promotions
- Good for building community
- Good for posting recaps of your events.
Top Social Media Channels

17. Top Social Analytics & Management Tools

18. FACEBOOK DO’s
Always post images
- Images get more interaction on Facebook.
- Any time you have the ability to add a quote, or brief text copy on the image is a win!
- The exception is sober news posts (ex: our thoughts go out to the families who lost ….)
Write short, witty copy
- Posts should be no more than two sentences.
Tag me!
- By tagging pages, famous people, holidays, etc. in posts, you’re accessing their fan’s news
feed.
Did you see that video?
- Native video is Facebook’s newest project that they are determined to take over!!
- Native videos will auto play and get up to 10 times the reach of any other post.

19. Links? We don’t need no links!!
- After you add a link in a post, wait for the website image to pop up, select your image, and then
REMOVE the link from the post. Facebook is pushing content with links in the copy down because they
feel it is too promotional.
- Your bitly links will still continue to track even though the link isn’t in it.
- If you’re doing an image only post, do NOT put a link in!
- This goes for native videos as well -- utilize the end of video “watch more” button instead of putting
more videos in the copy.
Don’t post GIFs
- Although Facebook make a big huff about working with giphy.com to add GIF capability to posts, the
reality is the user experience is still poor
Article titles aren’t copy. They are article titles
- Get creative!! Don’t post copy that mirrors the article title. Thats boring and sounds like a robot.
FACEBOOK DON’ Ts

20. Always Use Link Shortener.
- Put your links in bitly (go to www.bitly.com)
- It looks more professional and allows you to track activity, like how many people clicked.
Tweet Images
- Same as facebook; when you’re scrolling through a feed, your eyes are drawn to pretty
things!
- Crappy photoshops destroy your twitter. anything real time that you can take advantage of,
please do so! Ex: https://twitter.com/ekaycbs/status/549279817032794112/photo/1
Watch What’s Trending
- When hashtags are trending, use them in your posts. But only when its brand appropriate.
Use Lists
- Create lists for your different influencers. Ex: Epic DJ’s People can see when they’re put
in a list and they tend to follow back more
TWITTER DO’s

21. You’re a human. Not a robot.
- Don’t just use the title of an article to post a link. Then it just looks like an RSS feed and you
look like a robot.
- Tell people WHY that information is worth clicking on. “Why we loved this year’s Reggae Fest”
Instagram and Twitter don’t play well together
- If we were in the schoolyard, Twitter is the bully who relies on its strength, and Instagram is the
smart artsy type who hates posers. They don’t get along.
- Don’t post directly from Instagram to Twitter -- it gets less engagement and weakens the user
experience
Don’t let the haters get you down!
- Trolls on twitter can be tempting to respond to, don’t do it. For example please click HERE.
- If someone has a specific grievance that you can help with, respond with a calm, nice answer.
- Try to respond (or favorite) to all positive tweets instead and reward the positive behavior.
TWITTER DON’Ts

22. Phone photos
- Instagram’s charm is that it allows normal people to be fantastic photographers through amazing
filters!
- Images that do better are behind the scenes photos that show how a company is run.
#Hashtag
- When you’re posting images, search for popular hashtags that can help get your images seen by
more eyes. Put all the hashtags in a second comment so that people can read your real
comment. In the beginning when an account is small, use as many relevant hashtags as you can
Tag people in the photo -- not the copy
- By tagging in the image you’ll have a higher chance of getting pulled onto the “DISCOVER” tab. It
also will show your image on the users page as an image they are tagged in
Always Geo-tag the location
- Geotag your images to show people you’re really there! Tag your location so it will come up on the
geomap
INSTAGRAM DO’s

23. What is that...a novel?
- Keep your copy short and simple. No one wants to read your life’s story on instagram., that’s
what blogs are for.
Links? What links?
- Instagram doesn’t allow links to be clickable in copy. So don’t try.
- Links in the account page should link to general blog pages or official websites.
Promotional graphics, great.
- As mentioned before, Instagram is a social device of the people! Since you can only upload
images mobily, they want to see cool, real images, not marketing content.
- A few marketing images are fine, especially if they are showing fans about a deal or a
promotion that's only running for a short time. But the overall look of your feed should feel
organic.
- Save the marketing for Facebook where people can actually click to your website.
INSTAGRAM DON’Ts

24. PINTEREST
DO’sPin all Images From Your Website
- This sounds obvious, but a lot of people don’t think about this step. This is a great way to
send traffic back to your website.
Utilize Your Friends
- Ask all of your friends to pin the images from your website.
- Send out an email campaign requesting this. Say: “Hey Friends, it would be really helpful
to us if you posted any of the pictures from our website on Pinterest. Thanks!”
Make boards
- Make boards with similar stuff to what you guys make.
- Make cool influences boards like:
- Places we want to travel to
- Rad patterns from around the world, etc.
BUY BUTTON
- This JUST came out. Use this. Consult a Pinterest rep or us to learn more.

25. Follow the Cool BrandsFollow Social Awards Attend ConferencesFollow Social News
Stay Up To Date
Most of this information could be obsolete in a few months, so stay up to date!

26. Thank You

27. +1 303.217.3873
www.thefoxtheory.com
Facebook.com/thefoxtheor
y
hello@thefoxtheory.com
115 W 18th Street, Floor 2
New York, NY 10011
Please contact us if you
have any questions, or
need help with social
media marketing or