Social media experts: Start early on new social networks, reach out to influencers

NEW YORK–You won’t find a meetup that dissects each social network these days but last April 20, AlleyBoost did just that in its talk, “Social Media Done Right” featuring Courtney Spritzer, co-founder and COO of Socialfly; Jeongwoon Eun, founder of Tigerwon; and Pavel Konoplenko, co-founder and CEO of Spoiled Media at Workville near Times Square.

http://www.meetup.com/AlleyBoost/members/128386582/

On Facebook

• If you are just starting on Facebook, use paid advertising as it’s hard now to grow organically
• Tryt Blab.im hangout for Facebook
• You need optimal time and frequency on Facebook
• Only way to tell it’ working for you is by experimenting: Post one a or five times a day
• Test ad buys worth $5 dollars a day
• You might as well work with Facebook (as big as it is), not against it
• Try Instant Articles
• Start Facebook Live now
• Post inspiring quotes
• Video does well

On Twitter:

• Still good for reaching to journalists and publications
• Twitter is important for political figures
• Twitter is becoming more of an aggregator
• Twitter is good for breaking news
• Used for complaining
• Make use of Twitter’s Periscope for live streaming
• Too noisy of a platform

On Instagram:

• Try Instameets; communities in all those networks can be very big
• When you do the ads, you can have your link
• Any brand that is visual should be on Instagram
• Fashion brands should be on Instagram
• Use it as recruiting tool
• Influencer marketing is good for instagram
• With algorithm, (photo) can be curated better

On Snapchat

• Influencers are active here
• You will see more branded content
• Use ghostcodes.com to find influencers on Snapchat
• Snapchat videos are difficult  to discover
• Snaps only take a brief period of time before they disappear
• You can’t flaunt number of followers because there’s none, which means you can’t buy followers
• It’s a whole new world for  cultural immersion

Overall:

• You need content and influencer strategies
• You need to adopt early to new social networks to have organic growth
• You will want to test out that content against a  different audience
• Always measure results
• Looking to market to China? try Wechat
• Good storytelling is a good way to sell your product
• Use Periscope for live streaming events
• Social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk uses all the different platforms
• YouTube and Pinterest are still relevant

The meetup also had two presentations with Parisa Wang of Parisa NYC and Craig Ettinger, founder and CEO of Tastebud talking about their startups. Wang showcased her handbags, lining them up on the floor, as she talked about how each bag represented a story, from breakup to independence, in what she called a “relationship journey.”

Wang showed how one handbag’s clever conception; it can be slung on her arm, so “I can free my hand to hold his hand. She is launching a Kickstarter campaign in May to produce more of the bags pegged at $200 to $500.  

Ettinger opened his presentation by talking about how the US spends $60 billion in entertainment every year and how his iOS app, Tastebud, is about sharing their recommended entertainment choices–books, music, movies, podcasts.

“These are for people who like to sift through the entertainment haystack to find these needles, he said, referring to good entertainment selections. Tastebud filters feed and follows other tastemakers as well as read curated critics’ picks.