Getting your business set up on social media

It can be overwhelming trying to get on all social media networks at once for business, and I’ve learned from painful experience that there is a merit in setting them up in a certain order. You see, you can use log-in information from one social network to sign-up for another, meaning you don’t have dozens of different passwords to remember.

When you’re looking to set up on social networks for business purposes, this is what you should do.

Facebook first

Assuming you already have a personal profile, you can set up a business page while logged in. Go to ‘create a page’ and follow the steps. If you do it this way rather than set up a second (business) account, then you only need to remember your personal log-in, and then use the drop down menus to switch between your personal profile and your business page. Don’t forget, if you’re using a personal profile as a business profile, you are breaking Facebook’s T&Cs and there is a good chance you will be banned from Facebook altogether. For communicating with family and friends as yourself, you have a personal profile, and for communicating with fans of your business, you need to have a brand page.

Twitter

Even if you haven’t got your head around Twitter, you should bagsie your company name asap and make the profile good by adding a suitable bio, avatar, and link to your company website. You can come back and add a cover photo, follow people, and tweet later, but for now a Twitter profile is handy for logging into other networks.

You can cross post from facebook to twitter by being logged in and going to www.facebook.com/twitter. You can then set things up so it will cross-post everything, or only certain types of post.

Instagram and Pinterest

Both can be logged-in using Twitter or Facebook. Again, make your profiles pretty and take the time to make sure they have the correct avatars, bios, and website urls. You can come back to these later. Both Pinterest and Instagram can be linked up to Twitter so that pins and Insta pics are tweeted out to your twitter audience.

Google+ and YouTube

Both of these work with your google ID, which is basically your gmail account. If you don’t have a gmail account, I suggest you get one if only to use these networks.  A Google+ business page can be set-up from your profile a similar way to a Facebook page and profile. You can also get your Google+ page verified. Before you set up a Google + page, make sure that one doesn’t exist already. If it does, you can claim ownership of it by following the steps. It’s pretty straightforward.

You can use your YouTube profile as your channel, or set up a separate channel linked to your account. Make sure you link YouTube up to Google+ and all your videos can be shared.

LinkedIN

This network runs on a separate username and password so it doesn’t really matter when you do it. You can link it to Facebook, though I wouldn’t recommend it necessarily – both networks are two completely different audiences, but it’s up to you.

To make a Linked IN page – first check that one doesn’t exist. If it does, you can claim it. If it doesn’t exist you can create a new company page but first you have to be active on LinkedIN. You have to have a complete profile and have made so many connections, so get on there and get active and keep an eye on when you can create a page.

There is so much more to social media than just getting yourself on a network – you do actually have to use them – but getting on there is the most vital step.

If you’re still not sure, I can do it for you. Drop me an email joanne@joannebrady.co.uk for information