In meeting after meeting with brands and business owners, when the idea of building a social presence arrives, so many companies have no idea what a starting point even is. In this guide we will tell you all of the accounts which are absolutely MUST haves for any business. Even if you don’t post on them or use them, it is crucial to have these accounts made and set up, without them you are leaving the door open for someone to claim your name.
Before I give you all of this, some things to keep in mind:
- Now even though you need all of the following accounts, you have to remember not to overstretch and post on too many of these sites. Identify what is important, and do it best.
- Try and use the same email, phone number and any other contact details for all the accounts
- Randomly generate all of the passwords though, no two should be the same and no person should be able to guess it
- Store your passwords securely. Whatever application you choose, you need one that will securely hold all of your passwords. For a good secure free application, 1Password is a fantastic solution.
So here is the 5Tales definitive list of the social accounts you need and why:
The big blue king of the internet and digital age is alive and well. Although it’s primary service is constantly changing, I am confident in saying that it will continue to be the future moving forward. Many businesses will end up performing advertising through Facebook and to do so you need a presence. I would be surprised if your business didn’t decide on pushing out some Facebook content.
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140 characters at a time the world reacts to politics, brands, sports, world events and hopefully your company! Although Twitter can be seen as pointless for some businesses, it is a social property that you still have to own if you want to protect yourself from having it taken and if you want to develop an almost professional relationship with your audience.
Instagram is the visual media of the future. Instagram combines the extremely shareable nature of images and video, with the new live insight into people’s lives through Instagram Stories. Considering Facebook’s previously sizeable investment into the company, as well as it’s increasing user base, expect this to be one of THE social media platforms of the future. This will be one of the best ways to share visual content with your audience.
Snapchat
Snapchat is not dead and will not die anytime soon. Regardless of Instagram stories competing in a lot of ways with Snapchat, it will live on as one of the communication platforms of the future. Although being a presence there now is unlikely to lead to large advancements for your business, expect Snapchat to introduce some kind of feature which will assist bands in communicating with potential consumers. Building a base there is only going to help going forward.
Pinterest is what I would call, a niche social platform that is based around images and collection of images. Many bloggers and companies in the fashion, design, make-up and other visual industries have found significant success executing on it.
Google+
Google+ has been the butt end of countless jokes ever since it began, and yet it remains. Although one of the least used networks out there, having an account there is worth it. Especially considering the lack of users, it means that very few people put any kind of regular content onto the site – allowing you to be one of the few. Although it might not seem that useful to be the leader of a dying site, Google wants Google+ to succeed and reflects this with how it pushes it to the public.
Quora
Quora – the Yahoo Answers for people who know what they are talking about. Since being launched to the public, Quora has become a great place for communities to build, grow and support each other. With user’s submitting questions for other users to answer. Although it seems like that might be somewhat unreliable (and it certainly can be), it has a place and has value. At least owning the account is important and having some kind of presence will only help.
The front page of the internet is all of the cool links, funny images, interesting articles and more gets collected. Instead of dumping them all in one place though, reddit has themed “sub-reddits” which are collections of people with a common interest. Reddit can be a great place to talk about launching a new product, engaging with customers and having a presence. That said, for most businesses – they won’t find a ton of value. Owning the account though is important!
LinkedIn is the network for professionals. As the premiere place for people in business to connect, LinkedIn is almost a requirement. Not only that, but it can be a great place to gain free traffic to blog posts just by taking advantage of the LinkedIn Group system.
YouTube
YouTube has almost no competition in it’s corner of the market. Even with Instagram and Snapchat moving forward as the leaders in shorter video content – YouTube has it’s section of the market well and truly locked up. Although for most brands, consistent content might not be created through this, having an account and maybe even a video or two is well worth it.
CLICK HERE to read Part 2 of the checklist!
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