So you have been tasked to take control of your brands social media properties online. You need to research Facebook Pages, Twitter profiles, LinkedIn Company Pages and now you find out that Google is launching Google+ business profiles… All these ‘social homes’ have different layouts, design guidelines and audiences. This blog contains the best pieces of advice online on setting up, maintaining and growing these properties into wonderful thriving, social mansions.
Facebook Pages
Facebook Pages are a free product for organisations, public figures, businesses, and brands to express themselves and communicate with people on Facebook.
There are 6 different types of Facebook Page, each with a slightly different setup process:
- Local business or place
- Company, organisation or institution
- Brand or product
- Artist, band or public figure
- Entertainment
- Cause or community
If your looking for a Beginners Guide, then Facebook themselves provide a 10 page step-by-step PDF guide that walks your through the entire process.
Once you’ve created your first Facebook Page, the obvious question is… now what?
Facebook themselves advise breaking your plan into 3 steps: Start the conversation, expand your fan base and thirdly analyse & optimise. To find out more take a look the 20 page ‘Building Your Business with Facebook Pages’. Here are my 3 favourite tips from that guide:
- Self confidence is vital – Know your business, know your customers and know your goals.
- Plan – Create a posting plan or conversational calendar for your Page. Content and conversation are import ingredients when developing a following.
- Sign posts - Adding a Like button on your website, encouraging check-ins at your business or promoting the Page through Facebook Ads all help to grow the popularity of your Page.
Who’s doing it well? HubSpot have looked at 20 great Facebook Pages. Take time to visit each one and see how they are engaging the community that they have created.
Need more information? Check out these 3 additional resources:
- Facebook’s very own Resources section.
- How the new Facebook Pages are better than the old ones by Smart Insights
- Detailed exploration of the Facebook Pages options.
Twitter Profile
For a beginners guide to Twitter, the first place to visit is their Twitter 101 guide.
Whilst advice for beginners, this quote really sums up how to get the most out of Twitter: reading Tweets and discovering new information whenever you check in on your Twitter timeline is where you’ll find the most value on Twitter.
Your profile on Twitter is the equivalent of your Facebook Page and does offer some nice customisation options. From your profile image, through to the background image there are plenty of opportunities to make this look and feel like you or your brand.
For a complete guide to customizing your Twitter profile, pay the TodayMade blog a visit. If your struggling creatively you might need some design inspiration. The team over at onextrapixel have a gallery of the best Twitter profile designs to get your creative juices flowing. Once you have an idea you can use this Free PSD from Web Design Shock to turn your concept into a reality.
So you now have a wonderfully presented Twitter profile, it’s time to engage with the Twitter community. Chris Brogan lists out 50 Power Twitter Tips and I’ve highlighted my top 5 below:
- Retweet the good stuff from others. Sharing is caring.
- Make hashtags small and simple. We need room to tweet.
- Use Twitter as a personalized communication tool, not another blast.
- Tweetups are awesome, especially if you make them about more than just drinking and saying hi. (Though, hey, drinks can be nice.)
- Promote other people 12x to every 1 self-promotional tweet.
Linkedin Company Pages
The self-proclaimed world’s largest professional network LinkedIn is a relative newcomer in the ‘social homes for brands’ market. Company Pages are a company’s profile of record on LinkedIn and allow your brand to connect to millions of professionals through word-of-mouth and recommendations. For a business it allows you to present the human side of your company.
Each company has 4 pages, by default:
- Overview – a friendly introduction to your brand.
- Careers – for a fee you can promote vacant positions within your company here.
- Products & Services – Highlight products & services that are relevant to your target audience.
- Analytics – Only visible to admins. You can use this to understand who your followers are, what they do and which other companies they follow.
Much like Facebook, LinkedIn themselves have created a great set of resources. Each section of the LinkedIn Company Page guide has a downloadable guide to help maximise it’s potential.
The team over at the Content Marketing Institute have created the best step-by-step guide to setting up a LinkedIn Company Page. Below are my favourite 3:
- Control - any employee with a valid e-mail address linked to your company domain can modify your Company Pages – you have been warned!
- Content - integrate your Company Pages into your social media strategy.
- Keep it fresh – Create content specifically for your LinkedIn Company Pages, don’t just rehash content from other channels.
Take a look at the full step-by-step guide.
Coming soon… Google+ Business Profiles
- 10 million users
- 1 billion items shared and received every day
Google+ is the new kid on the block when it comes to maintaining a brand’s online presence. Whilst some early adopters, rushed in a setup business profiles by gaming the personal profile system Google, have told users not to do this. This will launch in the near future, but for now it’s a case of putting you name on a pre-launch list.
One of the first brands to be accepted into a ‘beta’ of the Google+ Business Profiles is Ford Motor Company . The layout is nearly exactly the same as a personal profile and it’s too early to give guidance on how to make the most of this new home. For now you can sign-up for the beta and keep an eye on twitter, mashable and other places to see who else Google let on to the trial.
