Social Media Set-Up Guide sponsored by Pet Business

Follow these easy steps to create personal accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

FACEBOOK

Step 1. Sign Up

• When you go to Facebook.com, you see a screen that asks you to login or sign up for a free account. Click on “Sign Up,” which takes you to a Web form.
• Fill out the form that asks for your full name, your current relationship status, email address, a password and your birthday. You’ll also have to type in a series of letters and numbers for a security check as well as check a box saying that you understand and agree to the terms of use and privacy policy. Click the “Sign up now!” button when you have completed the form.
• Wait for your confirmation email. Facebook sends this email to confirm your registration. When you get the email, click on the link in the email to confirm that you did in fact register for a Facebook account. You will then be logged into Facebook.
• Search for friends and coworkers. When you first set up a Facebook account, you have the opportunity to search your email address book for possible friends and contacts. Type in your email address and password to do a search, or try searching by school or company.

Step 2. Fill Out Your Information

Now that you’ve created your account, it’s time to set up your profile. Your profile allows you to share your interests, activities, and anything else you want to include with people you connect with on Facebook. Your Facebook profile is about representing yourself and sharing what’s going on in your life with your friends.

Start with the basics

• To edit your profile at any time, click on the “Edit Information” link at the upper right corner of your Basic Information or click on the “Edit” icons on the upper right corner of each of your profile fields.
• Each profile information section represents what people will see when they arrive at your profile. Start by filling out the information that will help people identify you–Basic, Education, and Work.
• Filling out your Education and Work Information is especially helpful since it enables your former (and current) classmates and coworkers to find you via search.
• Upload your profile picture. Having a profile picture makes it easier for friends to identify you as being the real you, especially if you have a common name. In addition, the picture you select is another way to express who you are to your friends and family. Remember, nothing is set in stone on your profile; if you find a photo you like better, you’ll be able to change your profile picture later (as well as the rest of your information).

Sign up for Fetching University’s SM101 course to learn more about the basics of setting up your Facebook account, including privacy settings, friend lists and custom URLs!

Sign up for Fetching University’s SM102 course to learn how to create a Facebook Page for your company or brand!

TWITTER

Step 1. Sign up

Head over to the sign-up page, and fill out the four fields. If you’re creating a company account, use the “Full name” field to type in your company name. Choose the shortest name that best describes your company or this particular account.

After you’ve signed up, the site walks you through a couple of screens to help you find people on Twitter you know or might be interested in. The process is quick, but if you want to jump directly to your account page, just head to the bottom of each page and click “Skip this step.”

Step 2. Fill out your information

Before you do anything else, click “Settings” to get a page where you can fill out a few more details to help people recognize your company. Most of the fields are self-explanatory. But pay special attention to the Bio, which gives you 160 characters; this is a great place to list the person or people twittering for your organization (if individual staffers have their own Twitter accounts, you can list their @usernames here).

Before you leave “Settings,” check out the “Picture” tab, which is the place to add your company logo or photo of yourself. On the “Design” tab, you can upload a background image for your Twitter home page and tweak the page colors.

Step 3. Find relevant people and companies to follow

Whether or not you chose to follow anyone in the sign-up process, now is a good time to search for people and companies of specific interest to you. Use the search box on your Twitter home page to look not only for people talking about your company, brands and products, but also for partners and mentions of key terms in your industry. When you find interesting messages, consider following those accounts. No need to worry about the number of people you’re following—just follow a few with updates you really want to read, say hello and let conversations grow. Click here to follow Fetching Communications on Twitter.

Sign up for Fetching University’s SM101 course to learn how to optimize your Twitter profile and posts for your business.

Sign up for SM102 to learn how to link your Twitter and Facebook profiles so that a single post updates both accounts!

LINKEDIN

Step 1. Create a LinkedIn Account

• Go to LinkedIn.com
• Create a LinkedIn account by entering your personal and professional information and pressing the “Join Now” button.
• Go to your home page and locate the site map, a rectangular box that is made up of several categories (Home, Groups, Profile, Contacts, Inbox, and Applications).
• Click on the “Profile” category within the site map (you can edit all of your profile information from this page).

Step 2. Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

• Fully complete your profile – Ensure that your profile contains all relevant career history and interests. LinkedIn makes this easy by displaying a percentage score to show how complete your profile is. Adding a photo or recommendations will help your profile reach 100% completion. Also remember that a LinkedIn profile acts as an online resume or curriculum, so make sure you’re being honest and describing yourself and career clearly.
• Make your profile publicly available – You can set the information which is publicly available to non-members/contacts. Be careful with blocking too much information as this will also be unavailable to the search engines. As a minimum we would recommend providing enough information for the search engines to index your profile and cache the external links you have listed. In terms of optimizing your profile, the main goals are normally to rank for your own name, company name and possibly industry keywords related to your business.
• Make connections – Increase the reach of your profile by connecting with current and former work colleagues, clients, friends and family. We’d also recommend adding any industry contacts, perhaps from people you have met at conferences/events or are connected with on other social media sites and share a similar interest.
• Request recommendations – Obviously don’t ask everyone, especially if you don’t know them that well. But having recommendations will help your profile to stand out and will help to build trust in your reputation to visiting users. This will help improve the visibility of your own profile within internal LinkedIn searches too.
• Join related groups – Find groups where other industry professionals have joined and look to participate in (or at least join) these groups. These will add value to your own profile and help you to get found by other industry contacts.

Sign up for SM101 to learn how to transform your LinkedIn account and profile into the ultimate networking tool!

Sign up for SM102 to learn how to
create a LinkedIn Company profile!