A Guide to Launching Your Student Business on Social Media

Starting a business right when you are at college? In today’s digital world, the business environment is very flexible, which makes this not only possible, but actually quite simple! These days, pretty much anyone can start an enterprise. All you need is an idea and a knowledge of how to promote this idea to the world.

Just to give you a few prompts, students can consider some of the following simple opportunities to start their own business before even graduating from college:

• Photography;
• Videography;
• Academic writing (similarly to how you can find an essay helper at https://essayhub.com/);
• Online tutoring;
• Blogging;
• Design;
• Delivery, etc.

And there are tons of other ideas!

However, while it is not that hard to find a suitable niche or idea, starting a business is never a piece of cake. Most issues kick in when it comes to promoting your services or products. Luckily, this can be done through social media. Want to learn how? – In this guide, we will tell you everything about it!

Launching Student Business on Social Media: A Step-by-Step Guide

Social media has plenty of benefits for startups, especially those run by students who need to cover their own expenses. First of all, using social media for promoting your idea is not as hard as it may seem. Secondly, it is relatively cheap. And thirdly – in 2020, about 3.81 billion people are active users of social media. This means that your potential customers are out there somewhere. All you need to do is to reach out to them!

Build a Plan

Regardless of whether you decided to launch a student blog or want to offer any kind of services, the first thing you should take care of is a well-thought-out plan. A detailed plan will give you a clear, SMART goal. Which, in its turn, will help you define the right metrics to track the progress.

To create an effective social media plan, take the following steps:

• Set your goals (e.g. to acquire customers, to boost brand recognition, etc.).
• Research the competition and define what SMM tactics they use.
• If you already have business accounts on social media, conduct an audit to see what holds you back from reaching the set goals.
• Think of the right visual and written content that will complement your strategy.
• Create an SMM calendar.

Pro Tip: at the beginning of your path, you might want to make it through with organic posts for free. That’s totally fine. But, you have to do this right. If you are not planning to invest in advertising yet, you have to make your pages interesting for users. For this, try the 80-20 rule – post 80% of engaging, informative, and entertaining content, and only 20% of marketing content. This will help you gain some followers and raise the bar!

Get to Know Your Target Audience

One thing we love about social media in terms of business is that it allows entrepreneurs to micro-target their prospects and, thus, achieve better and faster results. However, to make this benefit work for you, you must first identify your target clients!

Here are a few tips on how to do this:

• Analyze profiles of your current audience (clients)
• Look at your competitors
• Conduct surveys
• Experiment
• Monitor the engagement

All these tricks will help you get to know your audience better and, eventually, create content that is perfectly tailored to their needs.

Define the Most Effective Platforms for You

Once you know your target audience, you can decide which networks should work best for you. But, don’t make any guesses! To make the right decisions, be sure to check out the demographics of different platforms to see which ones are used most by your prospects.

To give you an example here, we can assume that your student business will be targeted at students as well. Checking the demographics, we can see that:

• Facebook use: 76% of people of 18-24 years; 84% of people of 25-30 years.
• Instagram use: 75% of people of 18-24 years; 57% of people of 25-30 years.
• Twitter use: 44% of people of 18-24 years; 31% of people of 25-30 years.

Based on this, we can see that Instagram and Facebook should be much more effective for your needs. If you’re on Twitter, you can also use a service to buy Twitter followers. 

Build Authority

Here is one thing to keep in mind – the authority of your startup brand is vital for success! It is what makes prospects trust you.

How to build authority? Show others that you are an expert in your niche. For example, if you are launching a design startup, make sure to notify your audience that you have a design major, share your professional knowledge, showcase your skills and portfolio, etc. This will help establish credibility and evoke trust. And this, eventually, will help you transform prospects into actual customers!

Experiment & Track Results

So, you already know who your potential customers are, have chosen the best platform, and have an SMM plan. What’s next? – Next on, get out there and experiment! Chances are you won’t get immediate success. It takes time to promote a business. But, what you can do now is experiment with content and strategies and track outcomes to eventually find a tactic that brings you the most benefits.

Good luck!