“Unlike Excel spreadsheets or Trello boards, you don’t lose anything with Swat.io.”

“By company founders for company founders” – that’s the Startups Upper Austria motto. The association connects startups and innovative, creative thinkers in Upper Austria. Social media is a key component of the team’s growth strategy. “We communicate mostly via Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. These channels are essential to our growth, so we needed a way to manage them all in one place,” explains Maria, social media manager for Startups Upper Austria and the mastermind behind its tool selection.

Startups Upper Austria organizes myriad events for the startup community, which provide its members with valuable input and feedback on their business ideas, as well as practical insight into how other businesses managed to get up and running successfully. “In the events sector, in particular, we often receive input via social media from various sources,” says Maria. “Managing this without a dedicated social media tool was taking up a lot of time that could have been used more productively. Initially, we bridged the gap with Business Manager, but the constant switching between platforms was problematic.” This prompted Maria to start looking for a tool that could help the association address this challenge.

“I was familiar with Swat.io from a previous job and wanted to work with it again,” the social media manager continues. “The biggest advantage is that everything is in one place. Professionals in the creative sector already have to juggle multiple tools. They don’t want to have to manage each channel separately and risk things getting lost, as can happen with Excel spreadsheets or Trello boards.”

Since implementing Swat.io, Startups Upper Austria has ramped up its posting frequency, which has enabled the association to manage its social media in a more structured and productive way. Maria again: “In the tool, we create a monthly overview of all upcoming topics. This allows us to visualize important deadlines and where there’s room in the content calendar. We create graphics and upload them, and draft and approve text directly in Swat.io. Features we find helpful in this regard include internal notes, post duplication for different platforms and the ability to save drafts to work on later.”

The association’s goal is to enhance its profile throughout the whole of Upper Austria and gain new members. To this end, the Board is convinced that “with our social media setup, we can get our messages out there and attract interested parties”.