Just how important is social media to startups, and how much time and resources should you devote to it? Here’s one data point, from Guy Kawasaki. He is chief evangelist for Canva and held the same title for some company called Apple in the mid-‘80s, the boom times for the Mac. So Kawasaki has a unique perspective. He has breathed the white water of social media on both sides of the great Internet divide.
Kawasaki told Startup Grind’s Derek Anderson that social media is more than important for founders – it’s everything.
In the heyday of the Mac the only way to get profile was to buy it. You had to pour millions of your precious VC cash into public relations campaigns for trade and mainstream business media, TV ads and more.
Kawasaki says that today, a well-orchestrated social media campaign will deliver the same exposure, at a fraction of the price.
Note: social media results are not free.
Founders need to commit a serious chunk of their time to social media. Nobody else in the company has the credibility.
How much time? In Kawasaki’s view, two to three hours a day, every day, week in and week out is just the beginning. Founders will also need to have one to two full-time equivalent social media experts to support them.
To founders who say they don’t have this kind of time for marketing when they have so much else to do, Kawasaki says “man up!”
