Checklist 2: Social Media Account Setup

1. Create a free personal LinkedIn.com account. Join and follow at least 2 discussion groups that are highly related to your product, service, and/or industry. At least a couple of times per week you should interact with those groups you joined to give your opinion on topics they are discussing, to ask questions, to answer questions, and to provide helpful resources. Do NOT try to sell in these groups or you will quickly be blacklisted as a jerk and you may be expelled from the group. These groups are for professional networking and helping each other. Trying to sell to the people in these groups by posting ads and other promotions is frowned upon.  Some of the groups you join may have over 10,000 members, so by being a helpful resource to them, you can gain their trust and over time they will want to do business with you.
2. Create a free company page on LinkedIn.com. Make sure it looks very professional with high quality graphics and professionally written text. Every business day you should post 1-5 links to valuable industry content, be it an article you wrote or helpful articles or resources you found that relate to your product/services, or industry. The purpose for this is to make your LinkedIn company page a valuable information resource to people in your industry. That in turn will get people to like and trust your company and want to do business with you.
3. Create a free Twitter account for your business. Conduct a search on Twitter using keywords most related to your product, service, and industry. Follow 100 people, especially if those people are well-known experts in your industry. Every business day you should post 1-5 links to valuable industry content. This can be exactly the same content you posted to your LinkedIn company page. The purpose for this is to make your Twitter page a valuable information resource to people in your industry. That in turn will get people to like and trust your company and want to do business with you.
4. Create a free Facebook company page. Every business day you should post 1-5 links to valuable industry content. This can be exactly the same content you posted to your LinkedIn company page and your Twitter account. The purpose for this is to make your Facebook company page a valuable information resource to people in your industry. That in turn will get people to like and trust your company and want to do business with you.
5. Setup Facebook Authorship on your WordPress website (if you are using WordPress).
6. Create a free Google+ profile for your business. Follow at least 20 people in your industry, particularly people who are known experts in your industry. Every business day you should post 1-5 links to valuable industry content. This can be exactly the same content you posted to your LinkedIn company page, Twitter account, and Facebook company page. The purpose for this is to make your Google+ company page a valuable information resource to people in your industry. That in turn will get people to like and trust your company and want to do business with you.
7. Create a free Pinterest business account. Go to http://analytics.pinterest.com and click on Get a Business Account. Post pictures of your products, your employees, interesting “industry related” pictures you find, infographics, and any other visual images that you think your industry will find interesting and valuable. An insider tip is if you have short blog posts that fit in a single screen-shot window, you can screen capture your blog post and save it as an image. Then you can post it to Pinterest as an image. However, make sure your blog post contains an interesting photo or graphic in it as Pinterest is all about photos and images, and just posting an image of plain text with no photos or graphics will be seen as boring and it will not be viewed very often or shared.
8. Instagram has now surpassed Pinterest for traffic, so you should create an Instagram account and share photos to it just as you are doing with Pinterest.
9. Create a free account at about.me and connect it to your social media accounts that you created in the previous steps.
10. Create a free account at Gravatar.com.
11. Create a free account on Livestream.com for the future sharing of presentations.
12. Setup a free account on Klout.com and connect your social media accounts. Then, subscribe to and update your status with three topics on Klout. Klout evaluates your social media presence and provides you with a quality score for your social media marketing performance.
13. Create a free Youtube business account and post all of your company videos to it, such as presentations, how to videos, video versions of each of your blog posts, FAQ videos where you answer common questions customers ask you, etc. Video is HUGE on the Internet and it is growing every day. It is so popular that Youtube has become the second largest search engine in the world, only surpassed by Google. If you want to remain competitive you need to start creating a steady supply of videos that you share on Youtube and Facebook. These videos do not have to be professionally produced Steven Spielberg quality videos. Making videos with screen capture software or using your smart-phone is good enough.
14. Posting 1-5 links to your LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ page every day is a lot of work. However, you can use a subscription based software tool like Hootsuite.com to automate this process for you so you can post once to Hootsuite and then Hootsuite posts to all of your social media accounts.