By James Day, Ingenious Britain (@ingeniousbrit) – Check out this online resource for SME’s here

Let’s not beat around the bush here – growing a social media presence from nothing isn’t easy. It requires smart time-management, creativity, some really great, varied content, and a bit of luck too. For start-ups especially, it can be difficult to dedicate the necessary time to your social media platforms to build up leads and potential sales – but you can’t really afford to ignore this.

There are some solid benefits here – you can reach a wide audience with little capital expenditure, and with a little bit of nous, such little time spent too. So here are five of ten (part 2 will be with you shortly) top points for start up businesses to build exposure and influence:

1. Sort out a watertight strategy, and keep it consistent

It’s a fundamental for any marketing campaign. Ask yourself:

• What are my aims?

• Who am I aiming at?

• Which platforms should I be on?

• How much time can I commit to it?

• What existing resources can we use and leverage?

• What tone should I adopt?

• How will I measure a campaign’s success/failure?

…and try not to deviate from your answers. Consistency encourages brand identity and thus helps consumers to recognise your business among its competitors and the noise on social media.

2. Run competitions and contests

Customers are more likely to engage with your brand or business if there’s something that may be in it for them; people like to get something for nothing, and it’s no secret that competitions generally equal increased brand exposure. If you can’t offer something expensive as a prize (iPads are a particular favourite from our experience), then offer people free products, discounts or merchandise.

Here’s a great infographic with solid tips on running a Facebook contest; most of the same principles apply though for any platform.

3. …And enter competitions yourself

There are lots of small business competitions out there designed to highlight small businesses to a much larger community, which take very little time and could have an instrumental impact on your social media fortunes.

Have a look at Theo Paphitis’ #SBS (Small Business Sunday, which runs on Sunday afternoons), and Ingenious Britain’s own small business of the month.

4. Include calls to action in your posts – use imperative verbs

There is absolutely no shame whatsoever in asking your followers/fans to ‘please RT’, or ‘please share if you like’; neither is there any shame in asking visitors to ‘click for more information’ to a landing page on your website. As you’ll begin to find, people can be very accommodating on social media.

Another rhetorical tactic which works wonders with engagement is asking a relevant question to your customers. Don’t go down the cheesy, advomercial ‘Tired of never having any plungers?’ route – instead, pique their interest with a topical question; ‘What are your thoughts on the latest plunger convention?’ and work with responses from there.

5. Share external content as well as your own

One of the ‘rules’ of social media (and believe me, there aren’t too many), is that in every five posts, four should be sharing external content (industry blogs, relevant news, useful infographics) and engaging with your followers, whilst just one (around 20% of your posts) should be promoting your own content and brand.

Try to incorporate a mixture of different types of content. Facebook and Pinterest, for example, are very image-friendly (as are their algorithms), so use pictures & video; LinkedIn is more ‘professional’, so copy-based content is more appropriate; Twitter is very good for things which go viral quickly (motivational quotes, pithy tips, short content). Tailor your output across those channels appropriately, and you’re onto a winner.

It’s important to remember to engage – the term is ‘social’ media for a reason – so, ask your followers their opinions and take an active interest in what they do; in turn, they’re more likely to engage back, spread the word, and establish a loyalty to your brand.

Tips 6-10 will appear in the near future!