Setting up your Social Media

By Sam Vandervalk

Setting up your social media platforms should be done as soon as you set up your brand. When my business partner Marc and I set up Evercore Physical Therapy Products (www.evercorelife.com) and Active Atoms Turmeric (www.activeatoms.com), we looked at availability of web domains along with social media handles. For Evercore we chose Evercorelife since Evercore was taken on every platform. Active Atoms was easier and we got all ActiveAtoms urls we wanted across social media platforms except facebook. While getting a match to company name on the social media urls is great, I wouldn’t let it stop you from creating your social media or choosing a company name for that matter. People will care more about your message than your url.

So how do you create a good brand? Here is the order I would go about this:

1. Set up your social media accounts as soon as your company name has been confirmed.
2. Create your story. This for most people is the most challenging part. The story must be tailored toward your ideal audience. If you are a health company and your story is about rags to riches you probably won’t do so well. Your why is very important.
3. Create valuable content and good photos and videos to go along with it. Be very sure of what you want your message to be along with your mission statement. The faster you get your message honed in the better. Your message should be very simple and all content should flow from your message and your mission statement. If you don’t know your ideal audience it will be tougher to get your message down.
4. Put a small budget toward spending on boosting posts that have good reach. Remember every human is biased including the human that is putting out the message. You really don’t know what is going to take off and it’s a matter of testing many types of posts to see what takes off. Also, study what methods and language are working for others in your niche. Also make sure if you are selling something or trying to get people into a funnel that your funnel is clearly set up so that you have a clear test towards spending money. Posts should have one of the following reasons:
   • Getting for people to go through a funnel.
   • Collecting email addresses.
   • Doing posts for getting new followers/shares. I would suggest always posting for the purpose of at least getting shares and reposts. If its not good enough for that don’t post it.
5. Collaborate with others to hone down your message and see what is working for those insides your industry and close to it.

Other things you can do include commenting on posts from others in similar industries to warm up a possible future collaboration. You really want people interacting with your posts and so interact with certain accounts to hopefully get reciprocal comments.

Check out our other pages in this category for:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest