Notes from SOMA Tech Panel Meetup, Marketing for Startups, hosted at Tradeshift.

1. Know your audience. It helps to create personas for your customers. ie. Becky, a 35 year old, stay-at-home mother, may be a persona for one of your users. Where does Becky hang out online and offline? What does Becky read? These might be helpful questions to guide you as you develop your marketing strategy.

2. Understand the culture of the platform that you use for marketing. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can serve different purposes. Typically people using facebook do not like to be “sold at.” Instead they often engage in posts that are entertaining.

3. Identify and connect with the influencers in your market. Listen to their tweets, engage in conversation, develop a relationship. Use social media tools to identify your influencers and when they are online on twitter.

4. Ask influencers to republish their content on your blog or have them as a featured blogger. Ask them for an interview.

5. Attend events and conferences that your customers are attending. Organize events that bring value to your customers. Create blog posts after attending an event for content.