A thriving startup isn’t all about initial funding and staffing as many just-graduated engineers and coders as possible. It’s about creating a healthy internal environment to focus on being great at what you do.
Besides big goals, a good team and industry insight, it also helps to have secret weapons in your startup’s arsenal. Excellence in areas like social media can help accelerate your business quickly to become a leader in its area. It can drive your startup’s brand awareness, thought leadership capabilities and industry reputation. It should definitely be one of your secret weapons.
But first, your team must have other secret weapons in place to help your startup thrive. Here are some that will serve as a good reminder to anyone contemplating starting their own business.
Focus on Core Competencies and Outsource the Rest
Every second of your time is valuable. What is your core competency? How do you focus everyday on that? Make sure you get every drop of value from every second of your life by focusing on what you’re best at. Leave other responsibilities to people who excel at those tasks.
For example, you should know which firm is hosting your private virtual server, but you shouldn’t get bogged down in details about bandwidth limits and more. And you probably don’t want your web-hosting specialists making decisions on your next round of angel financing.
Pick Every Member of Your Startup
Make sure you personally sit with every new member of your startup. Doing so can help bring about a sense of trust, community and goodwill at an early stage in your business. This helps employees to find ways to innovate within your startup and help increase your company productivity and intrapersonal synergy in surprising ways.
Make Sure You Set Clear Goals And Let Others Know Them
You’re not going to get what you want out of your startup if you’re not 100 percent sure of what you want. Many great companies have been started by committed entrepreneurs knowing the goals of their business from the start. Richard Branson’s experience in starting up Virgin is a great example.
Your company’s main goals should be crystal clear to your employees and partners. While many of these goals will change with each stage of your company’s growth (ex. Have a fully functional website before Labor Day, have the beta product ready in time for a conference in Las Vegas), others should remain constant throughout: “To become and remain the best end-consumer personal-Web-hosting solution on the planet.”
Use Social Media to Inform and Grow
Appoint a social-media person for your team. Have everyone know they can route status updates to this person and make it a collaborative, open process. Social media can build your business. The goal here is to encourage creativity among your team members in posting updates, videos, relevant links, and more about your startup on various social-media platforms. Have your team write blog posts, link to industry studies and be personable in your outreach.
Boost Moral by Recognizing Your Employees — Publicly
Commend your employees, partners, etc. when they make exceptional strides in your company. Make sure you tell them individually and as teams that you recognize the hard — and smart — work they’re putting in day-in and day-out. Compliment them individually — and within earshot of others — on their individual achievements; Or even on related matters such as having a consistent can-do attitude or a willingness to stop what they’re doing and help others.