How to Set Up Social Media for Your Business

If you have a business that sells a product or service, it’s essential to build brand awareness through social media marketing. Not everyone loves social media and it can be a daunting task to get started. But it’s the best way to connect to new customers and with people who already love your company. Customers are more likely to buy from companies that have active social media accounts so it’s not something you should take lightly.

If you feel that it isn’t something you want to manage yourself, you can hire a digital marketing company to manage social media for your business and leave you more time to do the things you love. We’ll give you an overview of what social media platforms are best for your business, how to set up your social media profiles and give more insider tips on how to make social media work for you.

Which Social Media Platforms Should You Use?

Not every business needs to use every social media platform, so you’ll want to research them all and choose the ones that make the most sense. What is your goal with social media? Spend some time to come up with a plan and clear objectives on how you want to use social media — then it will be easier to choose what platforms will help you reach your goals. See what your competitors are doing on social media and what is working well for them. This will give you inspiration and insight on how to create your social media presence.

The big four social media platforms are Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. There are others that many people use but may not be relevant to your business like YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat and Tik Tok. These four are for entertainment or education purposes and could help introduce new customers to your brand.

If you sell a product or service, we recommend starting with Facebook and Instagram for your business, then create your professional profile on LinkedIn and a separate business page.

How to Set Up Social Media Profiles

It’s easy to create accounts on social media, but there is a bit of planning that goes into making your profiles successful from the start. Below we share with you the basic steps and important considerations on setting up social media accounts for your business.

Step 1 — Create Your Account

Most likely you already have social media accounts for personal use. You’ll need to decide if you want to continue using your personal accounts for your business or start new profiles. Most probably you’ll do the latter and create new accounts so you can start fresh. But with some social media like Twitter and Instagram, several types of businesses can easily tweak their personal accounts to represent their business.

For Facebook and LinkedIn, you’ll create a “Page” for your business so you can keep it separate from your personal profile. For Instagram and Twitter, you can “Add an Account” to your personal account to make it easy to switch back and forth between each from one login. Check this article to get help setting up each of your accounts.

Step 2 — Choose a Profile Photo and Banner Image

Your profile photo is going to grab the attention of those scrolling through social media so make sure to choose a great photo. It could be your logo, a headshot or a photo that represents your business. Then you’ll need an eye-catching banner image on many social media platforms to make your profile complete and stand out.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube have banner images across the top and each has specific size requirements. If you need help creating beautiful images for each social media platform try Canva . Even if you aren’t a graphic designer, Canva has templates in the correct size so designing graphics is a snap.

Step 3 — Write a Compelling Profile Introduction

For each social media platform, you will need an introduction or a blurb about you and your business. Each platform has its own look and character requirements. Write on a saved document a short intro of 160 characters, a medium-length one, and a longer bio so you have these on hand and can tweak them as needed. It can be hard to say everything your customer needs to know in a short profile intro so be succinct.

Step 4 — Create Posts and Schedule Them

The content you create for each social media platform will vary, as it isn’t recommended to post the same things to every platform. They all operate in different ways and have different requirements for images and posts. For instance, Instagram is more image and video centred and has no clickable links, while Facebook does let you share links to content. To save yourself from looking at social media every single day, you’ll want to use a scheduling application that will post things throughout the week for you.

How to Create a Content Calendar

If you create your social media content a couple of weeks to a month in advance and schedule these posts with one of the handy scheduling apps below, it will save you so much time. Mix up the type of content you are posting — include informative educational posts, some videos and beautiful images, links to your blog content or articles you are featured in, host giveaways or competitions and ask questions to get conversations started. Some businesses find it useful to have a theme set for each day of the week to guide the content. Your content should inform, entertain and engage, but also sell your product or service naturally. You don’t want every post to be salesy.

How to Schedule Social Media Posts

Several applications make scheduling social media posts across many platforms a snap. These are essential to use to help you save time when it comes to social media marketing. And this gives you more time to engage with your audience as well. These scheduling apps help productivity and give you the time to work on other business-related tasks.

• Buffer — This software application allows you to schedule out content on the top social media platforms from one dashboard: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Linkedin. Unfortunately, the free plan is limited to only three social accounts and 10 scheduled posts per month, which isn’t that helpful if you post content often.
• Hootsuite — This social media management platform is similar to Buffer but their free account allows for three social media accounts and 30 scheduled posts per month. There are more platforms you can monitor and post to with Hootsuite. Free users also get analytic reports so you can track how you’re doing.

There are many more social media schedulers out there but these are the most popular and have a proven track record. Social media can be a daunting task but it’s super important for your business. Hopefully, this overview on how to set up your social media accounts has been helpful to get you started for success.

When you work with Mint Formations, we’ll manage the process of setting up your new business so you can start on the right track. Find out more and browse our company formation packages .

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