Social media for startup founders: A practical guide to building an online presence

People compare spending time on social media to satisfying a sweet tooth. But for most startup founders, building a social presence is a staple. The platforms we choose can help us research our audiences, drive organic growth, build brands, and get the word out — the argument for building out a social media strategy is pretty straightforward. Putting together an effective, realistic plan, on the other hand, is not.

The best creators make it look easy — a shitpost can get 1M impressions, a single blue dot emoji can build months of hype — but mastery is challenging. For one, the meta is always changing. X can downrank posts that link to external sites; Instagram can start prioritizing new types of content; and, although we think crypto can help here, rules inevitably change in ways that undermine even the most future-proof plans. 

Algorithms evolve, trendy platforms emerge, new viral content types catch on. There will always be another account to create or experiment to run. So, how can resource-strapped startups figure out where to start? And once they do, how can they tell what’s working? This space is dynamic, but there are a few practical pro tips and best practices that apply, no matter what’s happening in the meta.

This post covers time-tested guidelines for starting from scratch, and taking a social presence from 0 to 1, including setting goals, identifying a target audience, and measuring success. Plus, tools and frameworks founders can use to know how, when, and what to post, especially if time is their biggest constraint.

Like any big product undertaking, it’s important to set realistic goals before diving in to drive momentum and build confidence. These will vary widely from startup to startup and founder to founder, but here are a few questions to start:

• What role will social media play? Social presences oriented around customer service will look a lot different than a founder’s personal account. And accounts focused on distributing content will require a different approach than those managing a distributed community. It’s important to define all of this before jumping in.
• What is the end game? Companies may want to build a social following before their project is public to have a high-intent audience ready at launch. Or they may want to reset perceptions around their brand. As a founder, what are you working up to? And how will a social presence support your plans?
• What is the timeline? Create short-term goals with specific dates attached to build momentum. For example, growing an account’s followers by 100 people the first month, 200 people the second month, and so on. Be realistic and stick to the plan.

Let these goals serve as a foundation for grounding everything that follows. Once they’re in place, teams can move from what they’re trying to accomplish to who they’re trying to reach. 

Posting to a new social account can feel like yelling into a black hole. It’s important for teams to start building an audience as soon as reasonably possible, even if their product hasn’t launched yet. 

Before sending posts into the void, first consider the target audience: Who do you need to reach in order to achieve the goals laid out above? Are they prospective customers, crypto degens, investors, or someone else entirely? 

Many crypto teams often need to scope out entirely new audiences — particularly when launching first-in-class or experimental products, or still pursuing product-market fit. This is all okay: Target audience isn’t everything, but it is a helpful input when for which platforms to prioritize, and what kinds of content to create.

To start honing in, try using this six-question framework:

1. Which accounts are part of the target audience? Tie this answer to an overarching strategy: For instance, crypto startups who are early in their journeys — even those with broad, consumer products — may want to prioritize a select crypto-native audience first. A savvier, bought-in group of early adopters can help refine a startup’s product roadmap before an even broader launch.
2. Which social platforms do they use most? Going all in on Instagram is clearly a mistake if the conversations a team wants to be part of are all happening on X. But answers to this question aren’t always straightforward. As an example, some highly niche audiences (including some of the research and academic communities driving crypto innovation) are best reached by email and in-person conferences.
3. Where in the world is the audience located? This can be tricky for web3 because so many people are anonymous, but the more data you can get on where in the world an audience is, the better. If you learn that half of your audience is in the UK, you probably don’t want to post when they’re asleep. Tools like Twitter Analytics can help with this. But a really simple, growth-hacky way to get this information is to just go into your Discord and ask people to drop their flags in the chat.
4. What other accounts does the audience follow? Take a look at the popular accounts, influencers, and brands your audience follows, taking stock of content types and brand voice. Then consider how content will look in your followers’ feeds: Will it stick out, or blend seamlessly into their information diets? A quick landscape can serve as a solid baseline for early posts.
5. What are their favorite topics to engage with? Study accounts that post high-performing content. Look at their last 50 posts, see what connects and what doesn’t, and then use the themes that work best as inspiration.
6. How do they use social media? Everybody uses social media differently. And different platforms might have different functions in users’ lives, whether that’s to decompress with light entertainment, make connections, or learn new things. 

This is just a basic framework. Think of these questions as a map for figuring out where to start. In particular, what platforms to start building out, and what content types to start posting. 

Narrowing down a target audience unlocks a few key decisions. In particular, which platforms and accounts to prioritize.

It’s not uncommon for users to scroll between multiple platforms every day. For content creators, on the other hand, trying to be everywhere at once can really sabotage a social strategy. This is especially true for founders for one reason: Maintaining more than two social platforms at once is just not sustainable.

The goal is to start small, and build the muscle of creating great content over time. You can always scale to more platforms later (potentially by hiring people to help you create and manage content). In the meantime, we usually advise founders to stick to doing 1-2 platforms well, before branching out.

Founders shouldn’t limit themselves to brand accounts on LinkedIn and X, for example. It’s also important to consider how their own social media accounts play into the overall strategy (more on this below).

Putting a personal account to work

Founders often ask us what kind of account they should use to promote their work. Should they invest more time in their personal LinkedIn to build their own brand? Or create an account for their startup from scratch? 

The answer will depend on their specific goals; however, we find ourselves increasingly recommending that founders leverage their personal accounts for a few reasons. 

1. People want to hear from people, not brands. Whereas brand accounts can come across as promoting for the sake of marketing goals, hearing from a founder can feel more authentic vs. pure marketing.
2. Personal accounts seem to perform better than brand accounts. We are also seeing personal accounts outperform brand accounts in terms of engagement and reach on platforms like X, where the algorithm favors individual voices — at least for now. 
3. Building a personal brand creates a product-agnostic audience. No matter which idea a founder is working on or where they are in the product lifecycle, having a strong showing on social platforms can create a built-in audience for future projects, upcoming launches, and even new social accounts.

Founders do not need to choose one account over the other. In fact, activating both accounts allows companies to communicate to their community more effectively (since only a portion of each following will see each organic post). For more on the topic of founder vs brand accounts, see here.

Another thing we often hear from founders is, “I know that I need to have a social media presence, but I’m not sure what to post.” 

The goal here is to create social feeds that people want to follow because they provide valuable information and expertise they can’t get elsewhere — whether that’s an inside look at a popular project, interesting takes on industry goings on, or niche tips and tricks. In short, great accounts have a perspective that sets them apart.

So how do you find your perspective? To start, we often tell founders to look at their personal life experiences, their interests and obsessions, and their unique expertise. Then tell stories that educate, inspire, and teach from there. They can take an objective look at their career, how they spend their free time, books they find themselves devouring, or creators they follow. And then refine all of this down to a niche of 1.

For more inspiration, there are a few different themes and topics that work for most companies, and are a good place to start adding value:

• How-to content (show people how to do something)
• Behind the scenes (give people a look at your company’s inner workings)
• Industry insights (share macro trends that your audience cares about)
• Product updates (share product is and any new features)
• Company announcements (share a major win, for instance)
• Community questions (share a question that your audience might be interested in talking about)
• Founder reflections (share something you’ve learned, recommend a book you’re read, or just share your thoughts on a topic of interest to your audience

The bottom line? Find a niche. Accounts with a unique perspective, and that experiment with different content types and formats, can add a lot of value. 

What happens with the meta changes

We’ve all witnessed how changes to a social platform can reshape how people interact and engage with its content. As a recent example, X started downranking external links, especially those pointing to Substack. This shift forced people who’d been promoting their Substacks on the platform to fundamentally rethink their strategies — from burying links to cross-posting entire newsletters on X.

But while X’s changes have garnered a lot of attention, the reality is that this happens all of the time, and social media platforms are constantly experimenting with new ways to keep users on their apps and sites vs. elsewhere. Creators can learn the ins and outs of a particular platform, and optimize for content that will rank well, but the rules can change any time. 

For this reason it’s increasingly important to stay nimble and be willing to experiment with new content types as the landscape shifts. While these shifts can be painful, they also present opportunities to think out of the box and test new ways to engage followers. 

So now that we’ve covered which kinds of content to start posting, let’s talk about how often to post — or cadence.

One instinct that people who don’t understand social media often have is that more always = better — that if posts aren’t connecting, the reason is usually the number of posts an account is putting out into the world.

This is a major fallacy. When it comes to cadence, the order of importance is: 

Quality > Consistency > Quantity 

Start with quality, as measured by an in-app analytic tool (more in this in the next section), looking at which posts are people engaging with, commenting on, and sharing.

Then think about consistency. It’s possible to start with just one good post a month and then increase that to two. See what the metrics say, and, if things are looking good, increase the cadence to daily.

A common mistake people make is flooding their feed with posts, expecting to connect with their audiences. The goal is to build out a social muscle, including process, taste, timing, and more — over time.

A quickstart guide to building cadence 

Don’t rely on inspiration. Creating a backlog of evergreen posts — content that will resonate, no matter when it is published — can help fill the gaps between big product updates, and timelier posts.

Instead of waking up and hoping for great content ideas, you can create a solid backlog with a few, focused hours and a little creativity. Here’s how: First, write out as many ideas as possible, and then select a few favorites. Write them up, and schedule them for the coming weeks. To continue the momentum, be sure to spend about 30 minutes every day engaging with comments in the feed.

All of this upfront work may seem like a big time commitment, so how can teams tell their efforts are paying off? Let’s take a quick look at metrics for success…

There are two basic and complementary approaches to measuring success when it comes to social posts:

1. Qualitatively, or a measure of sentiment (how people feel about your company/brand, essentially). Things like feedback, replies and questions, along with the content of quote tweets, mentions, and DMs.
2. Quantitatively, or a measure of growth. Things like engagement, impressions, reach, shares, conversions, followers, and referrals. 

For most founders, the value of quantitative data is obvious — like a set of product metrics, it’s easy to measure audience growth, shares, and likes. Qualitative feedback, on the other hand, is tougher to gauge; but it’s one of the best measures for how people (and, importantly, which people) are connecting with a brand. 

So to start, let’s look at a few very basic measures for quantitative data…

Quantitative data

When people are just getting started with their social strategy, basic tools like in-app analytics (Twitter Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics, etc.) will give them all the data that they need. Specialized tools like Sprout Social and HubSpot can be useful for scheduling posts, but they’re probably overkill in terms of advanced analytics. No matter what tools a team chooses, here are few key metrics to start:

Engagement

Engagement is usually going to be the most important qualitative metric at your disposal. Increasing engagement can increase impressions, or how often users see a piece of content. Increasing impressions can also increase profile visits, grow follower count, and more.

Most analytics tools — in-app analytics included — will provide some formula to quantify engagement based on post interactions (generally, a rate expressed as Total Interactions / Total Followers or Impressions x 100), but this can vary from platform to platform. The exact formula often matters much less than using a consistent baseline, and not mixing methodologies.

One good use for in-app analytic tools is to look at the best and worst performing posts in reverse chronological order over the last 30 or 60 days and try to unpack what made them rise or sink. 

Teams may find that memes may do really well (or really poorly!), or links to blog posts don’t get clicks, or that certain topics drive or cool engagement. Track these things over time to get a better and better understanding of what audiences expect from a given channel.

On a weekly basis it’s a good idea to also track metrics like total shares, responses, reposts etc. No need to get super granular on the exact numbers — what matters more is how things are trending over time. If numbers are consistently going up, for example, more people are seeing an account’s content, increasing its reach, and exposing it to more potential followers.

Conversions

Assuming teams have a product in the market, another key statistic to track is conversions, which is the number of people who clicked on a social post to a product’s website, newsletter, podcast, and so on.

Teams can also track conversions from organic posts (as opposed to paid ads) from click to sign up or purchase using Google Analytics, UTM links, and other tools. But this level of detail is often a nice-to-have vs a necessity in the early days.

Audience

Even more important than tracking total followers is understanding what content is driving spikes in followers. If certain kinds of posts reliably increase a given audience, that’s a hugely valuable thing to know. And as mentioned earlier, it’s a good idea to track top-performing and bottom-performing posts — and trying to understand what made a post a hit or a flop.

A growing follower count is a good indication that an account is reaching more people, but it doesn’t offer much insight into whether that account is reaching the right people. This is where qualitative data comes in.

Qualitative data

Don’t overlook qualitative data. In fact, it can be more helpful to spend time thinking about qualitative social information than quantitative data, although this is a tough mindset for some data-driven founders to embrace.

As an example, countless businesses rely on the power of “influencers” to spread the word. A share from someone with a vast network and trusted brand is often more powerful than hundreds of shares from smaller accounts. Just as reaching a higher quality lead can move the needle more dramatically than reaching someone who has no use for a startup’s product. When looking at follower growth, it’s just as important (and maybe more so) to ask “Are we reaching the right people” as it is to ask “Are we reaching more people.”

The tricky thing about drawing actionable information from qualitative data is that it’s more art than science. The best way to do this is manually, at least at first — there are lots of different sentiment tools out there, but this analysis is by no means exact. The goal is to tease out themes in inbound messages and DMs, paying particular attention to the words people are consistently using, and whether they’re positive, negative, or neutral. And then keep track of this over time. 

All of this material helps companies get a sense of how people feel about them — crucial information for making improvements in customer service, identifying gaps in product offerings, and even finding product-market fit.

Qualitative 🤝 quantitative

Every measurement strategy should look at performance from multiple angles. This is because leaning too much on one metric over another can distort your view on how posts are performing. It can also create incentives that are damaging to social strategies over the long term. A familiar example of this is a hyper-focus on views and impressions. The posts that get the most views and impressions (clickbait, if you will) are not necessarily good for building a beloved, or trustworthy brand.

Instead, focus on a more diverse portfolio of metrics. Teams who are new to this don’t need to start out measuring everything, but should pair qualitative performance with one that measures volume more broadly (like impressions) and one that measures quality (like engagement and clicks). This very basic framework can provide a more accurate picture of how posts are performing.

The challenge of silent supporters 

One of the biggest challenges when getting an accurate read on sentiment is the rise of “silent supporters,” who read a startup’s content without leaving a comment or like. Some people consume tons of content but don’t actually engage in the feed for a variety of reasons; for example, to avoid posting a public reaction on platforms like LinkedIn.

Don’t be deterred by missing pieces — content creators can try out a few different approaches that can encourage interaction and help complete the puzzle. 

1. Start conversations: Have conversations with people who are (and are not) engaging with your content and ask for feedback to replicate what’s working, and discard what’s not.
2. Host events: Host virtual or in-person events to deepen the relationship with an audience (content creators may find that their followers become more publicly supportive after attending an event)
3. Focus on community management: Try engaging in more outbound community management (for example, interacting with 5 different followers per day)
4. Test out different kinds of posts: Sometimes people are supportive, but just don’t enjoy consuming the content format. Experiment with videos vs. photos, short-form vs. long-form, and more. Or bring in new ways to engage, like polls, questions, and AMAs.
5. Don’t be discouraged: Social media success comes in many different forms, including leads, email subscribers, brand sentiment, 1v1 relationship building, product feedback loops, and more. Just because you’re not seeing the engagement you want doesn’t mean you aren’t making an impact with your social media efforts.

As people become more inundated with social media, it’s up to creators to find different ways of measuring their impact (as well as coming up with ideas to keep audiences engaged along the way).

There’s no magic bullet that can help a company’s social accounts grow by 10x overnight. But over time, a sound social strategy creates a virtuous circle, in which increased engagement creates increased reach, which will lead to more followers, which will lead to more engagement, and around and around it goes.

Here’s a few ways to speed up that cycle:

• Community management: Posting without engaging with responses leaves a huge amount of growth on the table. Responding to comments on posts helps them bubble up to the top of the feed, and surfaces them to more people. Every time you reply, like, or otherwise engage with your comments, you’re tapping into new audiences.
• Enticing shares and replies: Take the community management idea one step further and create the kinds of posts that people want to discuss. Pose questions (“What’s your favorite crypto meme?”), create curated lists (“10 essential resources for ZK proofs”), solicit opinions (“How would you explain web3 to someone new to crypto?”). 
• Maintaining consistent voice: This is why it’s helpful for founders to create personal accounts that don’t exactly mirror the company accounts in voice and topicality. Making them distinct creates a reason for people to follow both the founder and company accounts.
• Cross-platform promo: The idea here is to leverage an audience on one platform (let’s say Discord), and get them to follow an account on a different platform (like a newsletter). Simple.
• Avoid links when possible: Because social platforms want to keep their audiences captive, their algorithms tend to deprioritize posts with outbound links. One way to get around this is to post a screenshot of whatever it is you’re trying to share. “Link in bio” is another common way to circumvent this issue. 
• Don’t rely on AI: One of the biggest mistakes we see (on social media) right now is people fully outsourcing their social presence to AI. AI-driven accounts lose too much context and personalty. And for many people, it’s super obvious to tell that it’s not a person running the account — which can lead to distrust, lack of engagement, and overall cringe.

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The bottom line? Be helpful, be focused on your niche, and (especially at the beginning) limit yourself to two platforms. Over time you’ll grow your audience.

Social media can feel like a side hustle for founders who are juggling many jobs at once. The good news is that starting small is not only good for time management, but for growth as well. With some practical prioritization, even small teams can build feeds people want to follow, and maybe even have a little fun in the meantime.

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With thanks to the editors, Stephanie Zinn and Jonathan Ringen

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