Designing the alignment model of social media marketing tools and goals.

Social media as a strategic choice leads startup companies to rapid marketing capabilities development. So it is essential for these business entities to develop and implement social media marketing strategies in a way that align a wide range of social media tools and tactics with marketing objectives to make sustainable competitive advantages and to meet business goals. To address this pivotal need, this article aims to present the alignment model of social media tools in startup companies.

Considering the complexity of aligning social media marketing tools with marketing objectives as the problematic situation, constructing the model was conducted through using soft system methodology and cognitive mapping. Data was gathered in collaborative way and throughout semi-structured deep interviews with 16 managers of 8 startup companies as an expert panel in heterogeneous industries that were selected according to non-random sampling method.

Findings implies that in congruence with triadic objectives of social media marketing plans within startups including increasing awareness, increasing interactions with customers and positioning, respectively three levels of interrelated alignment including content-conversation alignment, communication based alignment and conversion based alignment could be accomplished.

47 goal oriented actions were suggested by participants that could be considered as the alignment strategies guidelines either in social media marketing strategy development or implementation.