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By Shirley Lau

Earlier this year, Alison Tatham founded College Tourist, a site where students from around the country can share travel advice, style tips and hotspots in their relative cities to share with prospective and current students. Using a website as its platform but Facebook as its marketing avenue, College Tourist allows its users to connect with others via a Postcard Facebook app.

“We cover topics anywhere from within the USA—a great college town which has an event or a festival to an overseas destination offering something similar,” says Tatham. “Students travel locally as well as overseas and we aim to keep it fresh and interesting.”

Tatham and College Tourist’s chief business officer, Lori Stratford, share their tips on how utilizing social media platforms can build your following, gain valuable feedback and attract advertisers.

Brand Differentiation
Begin by writing a list of unique ways your business is differentiated from your competitors. Using these points to develop your social media strategy, you are able to more effectively connect your brand with your audience. Once you have decided on a fabulous eye-catching logo, cover all forms of social media. The wide variety of platforms allows you to connect with Pinners, Tweeters and bloggers alike. By conveying your central ideals as a business through social media, you are able to connect on a deeper level with your audience than just by promoting your product or concept.

Targeted Content
While you are building your website, also begin building a social media following using blog posts, Facebook links and Tweets that reflect your audience’s interests and have a strong flavor of your company. For example, College Tourist decided early on to focus our social media on three main areas of interest to their demographic. By finding their own material and re-blogging posts from sources they liked, College Tourist built a following that enjoyed varied content within the broad theme of these three areas. It’s about the conversation rather than promotion of the web site.

Feedback
It is important to obtain vital feedback directly from your target audience. The College Tourist team literally pounded the pavement, visiting places where large numbers of college students gathered. The founders talked but then listened twice as hard. The response of their audience hearing about the project for the first time was invaluable. It helped refine the message they were sending so as to be clear on what was being provided and why they should participate. Refining your message is important. It is crucial that you don’t confuse your target demographic about what you require of them. For example, College Tourist wants to hear about the great things in the college towns around America—not necessarily the college campuses. It was imperative for them to send that message clearly and that students understood to post a virtual postcard on the site. Monitoring social media posts closely helped maintain a tight focus on the specific points to be conveyed at that time.

Creative Collaborations
Marketing yourself and attracting sponsors and advertisers presents a dilemma when you have a very small following. Rather than focus on your low volume of web traffic, keep your attention on how fantastic your product or concept is. Think of ways to create a joint project with a larger company that complements your own. College Tourist found several companies that recognized their great concept and understood that they were just beginning. Try directly contacting companies that complement your own product or concept. Even if your target is large and successful compared to your tiny start-up self, many companies are constantly looking to create joint ventures with interesting and new companies. You may be surprised at the warm reception you will receive from fellow CEOs who would love to run a mutual project. Talking to other start-ups and industry professionals on a regular basis is a great way to network and increase your knowledge base. Even companies unrelated to your own can provide you with great tips on social promotion techniques. Meeting people in related industries affords you the chance to establish guest blog positions with other bloggers. This is an opportunity for both parties to increase their media footprint.