Start-ups need to think about what exactly they want to achieve through social media.

Do you want to talk with customers? Perhaps you’d like to sell products through your social media pages, or respond to complaints and handle technical support. Maybe you want to host discussions.

Your goals will determine how you use social media such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkeIn. Once you determine what your purpose is, you can then identify the site that is best suited to your strategy.

If you want to update customers about new deals and sales on a daily basis, you should be using a site like Twitter, which is designed for constant communication. On the other hand, if you want to host discussions and share interesting links, a Facebook page may work better.

There is also no reason why you can’t develop different social media strategies for different platforms, like Facebook and LinkedIn, but just be sure that you spend time observing how your customers interact with your business on these sites.