Building an Online Presence - A New Social Media Strategy Framework for Startups

Sammanfattning: Social media is a field that is developing quickly. A field that brings both risks and opportunities for companies. It has become especially important for startups since using it requires only a small amount of resources. Even though many startups realize the value potentials with using social media, effective utilization of it still poses a daunting challenge to many of them. Based on a combination of the relevant existing academic literature and the findings from performed interviews with 8 Business to Customer (B2C) startups situated in Skåne, Sweden, a new framework is proposed. The new framework presented in this paper addresses and tries to solve the aforementioned problem by providing a strategic perspective on social media. It consists of two main components - The Seven Elements of Social Media Strategy, and the Internal Influencers. It also includes three Maturity stages that help with evaluating the social media strategy in place. One of the main findings revealed that startups can largely benefit from creating a loop that continuously reevaluates their social media strategy based on insights found from social media monitoring. It was further found that social media insights have the potential to act as an indicator for redefining the target audience and thereby affect the overall business strategy of the startup. In conclusion, social media is not only restricted to being a marketing tool and a medium for socializing anymore, it is becoming a vital part of any business.