Why the social media marketing hat is one size too large for startup founders

Yes, the startup founder and founding teams are in the best position to handle their social media outreach and online marketing. However, whether they have the time and the bandwidth to do justice to an additional role as social media marketer is another question entirely. Statistics say that Facebook has over 800+ million users, Twitter over 100+ million and LinkedIn over 140+ million members. Question is ..are you a part of these social platforms? If you are (assuming you are not living in the stone
age), then:-

Do you have a consistent daily outreach, content plan and interaction across the social web? Or is it sporadic where you spend half an hour on Twitter one day and the next time you check your Twitter feed, a week has passed by. Or you have 3 blog posts go out one week and the next one follows two months from then?

Let’s say you are a Start-up and have a product or service ready and going. How would you market it? Let’s talk online. You have a website and you want to drive traffic and ultimately have a successful conversion rate. Bottom line is SALES. Social Media has become priority when it comes to marketing, getting the word out and driving more traction for your start-up and brand (at least it should be).
That means, it needs a dedicated long term invested effort regardless of whether it’s done by you, a colleague, other founding members, a dedicated employee or a third party agency.

Here’s a typical 8 hour day for someone that’s part of building a startup (not that such a thing exists):

Check emails
Respond to emails
Meet with coding team and go over what needs to be done
Interview time with a new candidate
Put together some design plans
Another candidate interview
Quick lunch
Go place an order for the new chairs needed
Create 2 proposals for partnership inquiries
Review some of the product development work
Check emails and answer them
Meet with a potential investor
Day is over!
Here’s the typical 8 hour day for a dedicated social media marketer-

Check Facebook, comments, updates, replies and statistics
Come up with a creative and action provoking Facebook update
Check Twitter account, reply to Tweets, search related tweets, respond to them, greet followers, retweet them, engage with some of them directly and trigger conversations
Research facts and structure for a great blog post that can connect with people putting thoughts and ideas together.

Then draft the blog post, review, edit, optimize for keywords, add tags, links where applicable,format, add images with alt tags, proof read and publish (easily 2 hours from start to finish)
Start promoting the post, sharing to the Facebook page, LinkedIn Updates, Twitter. Use social bookmarking accounts to submit the post to. Re-share to communities and groups.

Reply to comments, track for relevant links, posts ,analyze results and traffic
Work on creating other interesting content like images that can be shared, polls, videos and original content that could be shared drive interest

Reply again to comments, address issues or brand related discussions, post updates, reach out to new followers. Work towards growing all social accounts.
Day is over!
The startup founders and employees life is a hectic one that implies you need to wear many hats. Social media outreach can be one of them and it’s possible to squeeze in a few minutes or even an hour into the busy schedule but execute on a consistent and dedicated social media marketing plan?

One must understand that regularly posting content and managing social media accounts is time consuming. And being a Start-up means you already have a lot on your plate. Of course, you can be Superman and manage it all, making Google your accomplice. Or probably have other employees multi-task and contribute some of their time. This is perhaps the best way to go about it if there are budget constraints and hiring a full time employee is out of the question. However, when the time comes to put together and execute on a social media marketing plan not just on the side but as a priority to build a more structured engagement..hire, delegate or engage a dedicated resource / agency that can work on it exclusively without the effort being a burden or relying on your own time because when it comes to this stage, it’s a hat that’s just too large to fit in with the rest.