The 10 essential social media for your company should basically be channels through which you communicate with your target audience and customers, convey your brand image and, ultimately, attract traffic to your website.
Don’t try to sell: that will come by itself if, before rolling up your sleeves, you design your digital strategy. Social networks, or rather social media, have been around for more than 10 years and there are still companies that turn their backs on them, that don’t take them into account in their day-to-day work or in their corporate strategy.
Having worked at Xing.com, a professional social network, gave me the opportunity to work with freelancers, the self-employed, start-ups, SMEs, non-profit organisations and multinationals in their transition to social media so they could make the most of it. In many of those cases I gave them the basic training to understand the medium and feel like a fish in water.
How do you take the step into social media?
- Clearly you shouldn’t rush in and sign up to every social network just to be there; first you should do some research to find out which of them are worth being on so that they help you achieve your personal or business goals.
- First observe and listen, to understand the communication codes of each of the different social networks. Start with a basic profile that doesn’t commit you too much. Listen a lot and write little.
- Design your message: how you want to be perceived on social media and what you want to communicate.
- Choose the keywords that define you and your business, the ones with the most strength and impact.
- Gather a good number of quality images, logos, infographics, high-resolution photos of your company and team, and any other pieces you are going to use on social media.
- Put your plan in writing, even if it’s basic, and design your dashboard with the social media you have chosen, shortcuts, passwords, the people responsible for using them, etc.
- Organisation, organisation. As well as the plan and the dashboard, use an editorial calendar for your social media posts. I start from some of the ones Vilma Nuñez shares on her blog; she’s brilliant.
- Take the utmost care of your corporate identity. Consistency above all. Use original images in the headers of your social profiles, even ones that include a way to contact you. You can use Canva for this; for me it’s the best tool for creating all kinds of quality graphic content, and it’s sure to awaken your most creative side.
Who is going to be behind your company’s social media?
Here my opinion is very personal, and many professionals agree with me. Who better than you and your employees to speak on behalf of your company? The message will certainly be more natural, more immediate. You can often tell that some companies aren’t the ones doing the communicating, when you read messages that are impersonal, over-elaborate and very commercial.
I see social media as a loudspeaker through which you can tell people what is happening inside your company in a natural, transparent way, and if it’s with a sense of humour from time to time, even better. Don’t always talk about us, us, us; instead always try to share interesting content from other sources, so that you become a point of reference in your sector.
Do I want to take work away from Community Managers? Of course not, but it’s better if they sit next to us or spend some time with the client whose social media communication they are going to handle, so they understand our business, market, and the products or services we offer better. 
What are the 10 essential social media?
1. Twitter. Your company’s main loudspeaker for telling people what you are doing: your press and communications department. But also your channel for actively listening to what is going on, and a customer service channel.
2. LinkedIn. You and your team should have a complete profile, describing what each of you does and what your company does. Also look after your company page and add your products and services to it. If you have a good base of customers and partners you can even create a group.
3. Facebook. Also essential for sharing news, events and interesting content of your own and from others. The perfect channel for interacting and building engagement with your customers and followers. Share photos, videos and news.
4. Google +. We have no choice if we want Google to rank us well: SEO is SEO. There is also Google My Business, your business’s page on Google where you can include photos of your company, services and location, all designed for its search engine.
5. Slideshare. I’ve used it for years to share the presentations I give about my company, and the talks and conferences given by you and your team. Upload your corporate presentation, product or service presentations, tutorials, your annual report if it’s public, your press kit. It will also help your SEO.
6. Flickr. One of my favourites for organising all the basic photos and images of my company. You get 1 TB of storage. Organise everything into different folders or sections. Describe, tag and optimise your photos.
7. About.me. It’s perfect as your calling card, where you can show who you are on one single screen and who your company is on another. A kind of landing page. Include all your social profiles on it.
8. You Tube. It’s essential that you create video content, or at least gather on your channel all the videos you appear in and the ones you like and want to share.
9. Business directories. There are many here: Infoisinfo.org, QdQ.com and 11870.com will give you a superb ranking.
10. WordPress. Go on and start your own blog, along the lines of the CEO’s blog or “my company’s” blog. It will let you communicate more and better, in more detail, who you are, what you do, and about your customers, achievements and celebrations.
Most importantly, customise your URLs, and good luck with your move from offline to online.
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