Social media things you need to sort as a new business
I am starting a new business and need to build a new social media audience from scratch. In this blog post, I am walking you through the first steps you should take when it comes to securing your new accounts and setting yourself up for social media success.
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5 social media steps to set your new business up for success
Before I dive in, let me quickly tell you about this new venture: my new business is called Busy with Books. My mission is to create a space both online & offline that helps women find other book-loving friends and take time for themselves, outside of their busy lives. I am currently planning NZ’s first reading retreat to give people time to refill their cups & finally read all of their books uninterrupted.
Let's dive into the few things that I sorted for my social media before officially launching this business:
1) Secure your social media handles:
Securing your social media handles is one of the first steps you should take as soon as you have decided on a business name. In fact, the (non-) availability of certain social media handles could even have an impact on your business name decision. This is actually something you should do before you officially register your business or apply for a trademark because you don’t want to go through the whole process only to discover that the handles/domains/names you wanted aren’t available anymore.
I used this handy tool created by the NZ government that allows you to check if a business name has been trademarked, if the domain is available and what social media handles you could use. Ideally, you want to keep everything the same on all platforms so people can easily find you.
Once I had secured my domain & social media handles, I updated my NZ business records and the tool updated its results to say they weren’t available anymore.
2) Switching on 2- factor authentication:
Keeping your accounts secure is SOOOO important. This is why you want to switch on 2-factor authentication immediately, ideally through the Google authenticator app and not SMS as you might lose access to your number at some point (been there, done that 🙄). You don’t want to get hacked & lose your accounts before you even launch your business.
3) Setting up your Meta Business Manager correctly:
Once you’ve created your Instagram and Facebook pages, you should connect them up in the backend in your Meta Business Manager. This is something a lot of businesses forget to do and it comes back to bite them later on.
Here’s what you should take care of:
Create a new Business portfolio account for your business
Connect your Facebook page to your Instagram page
Create an ad account, even if you don’t want to run ads just yet
Create a pixel (once your website is live)
Verify your domain (once your website is live)
Set up custom events & audiences (once your website is live & pixel is installed)
Add a second person to your Business portfolio for security reasons
Need help with the back-end stuff? Send me an email, I support clients with this all the time!
4) Competitor research:
Once your admin & back-end stuff is taken care of, you can start doing competitor research. Follow people in your niche & take notes of the content they are making:
What are they doing?
What do you like/not like about their content?
What gaps can you fill with your offer?
Added plus: people will often follow you back so you can use this strategy to start growing your audience too!
5) Start collecting ideas for launch:
You’re done with setting up your accounts & securing them, all that’s left to do is prepare for the launch. I like to save nice content ideas in a folder on Instagram or TikTok to make my launch less stressful.
And that’s it - your new business is ready to be marketed on social media!
If you’d like to follow my journey of growing a new business, please follow me on Instagram or TikTok!
Talk soon,
Hanna