When your startup or small business runs on a tight marketing budget, reaching out to the target audience becomes a daunting task. The market has many new and established competitors vying get the customers’ attention. To grab a market share for your new company, you need to be extra vigilant about the moves of your competitors. Social media can help you combat the tough competition by driving your target customers to your small new business and maintaining healthy brand awareness.

Fortunately, with the increase in Internet usage, social media penetration is much easier now than ever before. New avenues of customer engagement and marketing are opening up and you can explore them to your advantage. Social media is your cost-effective means to achieve your customer engagement goals. Your company needs to build a strong social engagement for a steady business growth.

Here are the cost effective ways to bring more customers to your startup from the social channels.

1. Start blogging

One of the first things your startup must ensure is to launch and maintain an active blog. Create a blog and post articles regularly about your products or services and provide useful information. Soon, you will build an excellent following. Make sure that the blog projects you as an expert of your industry. Demonstrate to your target audience that your business believes in innovation and offers unique products.

Blogging will also help you keep your company’s domain name at the top of the search results shown by Google and other search engines. Your potential customers will type some search words on the search engines to find out the products or services. On regular blogging, your domain name will gradually rank higher in the search results. So, blogging is a useful SEO technique as well.

But publish the articles that people want to read. Give priority to the articles that solve the users’ problems. Write some tutorials and case studies or any socially relevant pieces. Your blog should be a part of your business website.

2. Be active across all social channels

One of the cost-effective ways to market your business is to promote it actively on a wide spectrum of social media. But make sure to use right tools or you may end up spending more time and efforts with little results. You must monitor your social media channels and engage with your followers regularly. Use an account manager such as SocilOomph, Tweepi or HootSuite to achieve your social engagement goals without spending hours.

Build your profile on all channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr and Behance etc. Make sure that you are active by posting your content and engaging your followers. Most of the social media sites have inbuilt tools to let you know the amount of engagement you are getting and tailor your approach accordingly. Initially, try to find out what type of content your followers are interested in more. Post a variety of videos, articles, photos and even coupons.

Your startup should make it a point to communicate with your target customers regularly using social media. Respond to your visitors’ requests and complaints to build a nice brand image of your company.

3. Invite testimonials and reviews

A new company tries hard to build some credibility in its target market and audience. Social media is an excellent way to build a nice brand identity. An easy method to highlight your business is let your users say something about your products or services. Post their comments on your main business website and many social channels too. Nothing will enhance your brand image more than the testimonials and reviews that speak positively about your business. Do not wait for the customers taking the initiative to post a comment in an email. You should instead request your satisfied customers for the testimonials and reviews. Many of them will happily speak for your business on request.

If you can get testimonials and reviews from some high-profile clients such as chief executives of companies, spread those comments across a variety of social channels. Recommendation from top clients will enhance the prestige of your startup in the eyes of people.

Do not be afraid of publishing some less than positive reviews. Some occasional less than favorable reviews will help build the trust, as people will then take the positive comments more seriously. You should also think of including some videos of your customers reviewing your products to make the testimonials personal and authentic.