Early SaaS founders often don’t realize one thing:
Almost everyone that you can sell your SaaS tool to is available in some sort of social media platform.
This means, you have the resources to reach out to the highest number of people in the work while sitting in front of the laptop at the corner of your room.
No one from the previous decades had this leverage.
Thanks to the development of technology, we do.
Unfortunately, 9 out of 10 SaaS founders that I talk to don’t have any plans regarding social media.
The ones that do, their plans are traditional, boring and ineffective.
The biggest reason SaaS founders don’t focus on building a social media following is they don’t realize the potential it has to boost the growth of a SaaS company
Some other reasons are:
- They are too busy building the product and think they will do it later on
- Some are shy to come out of their shell and tell the world what they are doing
- They don’t have the basic writing and design skills that are necessary to make regular content.
But, building a social media following doesn’t have to be difficult. If you put 30–60 minutes every day for crafting content and building your audience, in only 6 months you can have a native following of 5000 people.
It may not look like a lot compared to all those celebrities out there. But imagine, if 5% of those 5000 people converted as your customers, you would have 250 customers in only 6 months!
That’s a SaaS growth thousands of SaaS founders can only dream of.
Today, I’m showing you how you can build a social following as a SaaS founder in only 4 steps.
Let’s start, shall we?
Step 1: Optimize your profile
Imagine doing this:
➡️ You are checking out new Product Hunt launches and suddenly a tool grabs your attention
➡️ You read the product description and want to check out the founder.
➡️ You go to their social media handle only to see “Software Developer at ‘X’ company”
How would you that make you feel?
The same experience may occur when someone comes across one of your posts and goes to your profile, only to see the same.
If your profile is not optimized,
🚫 Your target audience won’t take you seriously
🚫 They won’t be able to relate to you
🚫 They’ll lose interest.
When this happens, visitors will come and bounce off your profile. And you’ll lose the opportunity to expand your follower base.
Your social media profile should clearly explain:
- Who you’re trying to help
- What problem you’re trying to solve
- How you’re solving the problem
I have already talked about it in this previous post of mine. You’ll get further details in there.
If you still face any difficulty, you can always reach out to me.
Step 2: Make a content calendar
Nothing runs well without a system. Your social media game is no different.
You should build a content calendar for posting (preferably weekly) and you must commit to it from day 1.
Adhering to a content calendar makes it easy for you to be consistently available on social media.
Also, it saves you the mental stress of what to post and what not every time you sit on your desk to prepare a piece of content.
As a SaaS founder, a simple weekly content calendar can look like the following:
| Day | Topic |
|---|---|
| Monday | Talk about results. Post something about what your continuous effort if bringing you. For example, you could share the number of signups or demo calls booked last week |
| Tuesday | Pick a problem your ICP usually faces and offer a solution. It could be a small PDF, a carousal or some insights your audience will be interested in |
| Wednesday | Talk about your past and share a memorable personal story that has a lesson attached to it. Add a picture of you or of that time along with your post. These type of posts have great reach on social media platforms. |
| Thursday | Talk about the new features you have built in the past week or what improvement you’re making at the moment. Invite people to be a part of the process. Build in public. |
| Friday | Talk about how your week ended and what you accomplished. Discuss the good (goals you achieved), the bad (goals you couldn’t achieve), the ugly(a new problem you found). Be open and honest. |
| Weekends | Talk about your life as an individual, not work. Give a glimpse of your personal life. Share your insecurities, your dreams and aspirations. Don’t be always about work and work only. |
You may choose to tweak it a bit as per your convenience.
The goal is to be consistent and engaging with your audience.
You shouldn’t let the anxiety of what other people might think of you stop you from posting on social media regularly.
Some may make fun of you, some may think it’s weird in the beginning. But, when they see that you’re consistently pursuing your dream and talking about it, they’ll eventually start taking you seriously.
Step 3: Comment more, post less
This is a crucial angle most beginners miss out on.
You see when you first start your social media journey, you’ll likely have 300–500 people in your contact list (unless you’re already followed by millions)
So when you post something, only a few people will notice what you’re talking about.
That doesn’t help you much.
What if you could post and thousands of people would watch it on day #1.
That would be great, right?
Well, in order to achieve that, you just need to tweak your posting plan a bit
Here’s what you need to do:
- Find social media influencers in your SaaS niche that people usually follow.
- Follow their social media profiles and track the times when they post throughout the day.
- When they post something, try to be within the first 10 to put up a valuable comment relevant to that post.
- Sometimes try to talk about your founder journey and who you are trying to help through your SaaS.
When you do this in a strategic manner, you’re going to get a lot of attention towards you. Some people will go check out your profile. Some will follow and try to connect with you. Even better, some will send you DMs.
This method is so effective that even founders and CEOs of large companies do it to get more followers.
Step 4: Give it some time
There are some internet gurus who’re selling success in 2 weeks, 30 days or sometimes 60 days.
I’m not against being successful in life earlier than later. But, like every other good thing, building a social media following takes good time.
For some it’s 6 months, for some it’s 12 and for some it’s 2 years.
This means you shouldn’t have any wrong expectation from the start of your journey.
Also, you need to hang in there whenever you feel this is not working.
The number of profile views, impressions and DMs will tell you if you’re doing anything wrong.
Now let’s address the elephant in the room**:**
Never choose virality over relevance. You’ll find a lot of methods that’ll help you go viral in a few weeks. But, you need to remember your objective.
You’re here to get customers, not followers. The more relevant your audience is, the higher their chances of conversion.
One Last Tip: There’s a golden ratio of the times you value and the times you try to sell through your posts. For some content creators it’s 3:1 and for some it’s 4:1. This means, every 3 times you post about adding value in your TG’s life, you post once asking them to try your tool out.
In Summary
It’s time you gave social media the importance it deserves.
As more and more people join social media platforms worldwide, your chance to build the right audience keeps increasing each day.
Look out for people for whom you built the solution in the first place.
Try to locate them wherever they are.
Then, play your content card.
Always remember, content is king.
Next Action Step
Make a list of all the influencers your TG is likely to follow.
Make another list of the issues your TG frequently mention
Now, start making posts to address the issues and engage in the discussions of influencers’ posts.
Also, always reply to comments and DMs.
That’s it for today.
See you next week.
Whenever you’re stuck in your SaaS journey, there are 3 ways I can help you
➡️ 1:1 early SaaS founder consultation
➡️ Building a social media following of your ideal customers
➡️ Go-to-market Strategy
You can find me here]