How do you set up social media accounts? In a way that is cohesive and fits your brand of course! While that’s the goal, how do you actually set up social media accounts? Our business has set up social media accounts for many companies and we have created a social media checklist that our designers use to make sure we never miss anything when setting up your social media. I’d like to share the 7 most important things we do for every client’s social media accounts.
Images
There are two primary images you really care about when setting up accounts, which means this really counts as two things. The profile image and the cover or banner image. Making sure you maximize these ensures you profiles (business or personal) will be as clear as possible to anyone viewing it across different platforms, such as phone, tablet, and computer. Once you have both images created following your brand guidelines it’s just a matter of formatting different sizes to match each platform.
You’ll find these recommended image sizes all over, but keep in mind each platform can choose to change any of these at any time, however this handy reference will help you! We’ve even included the Google+ sizes even though they have announced it’s getting shut down, Google might change their minds.
Social Media Image Size Chart (Units in Pixels):
| Platform | Profile | Cover (Banner) | Others |
| 180×180 | 820×312 (400x150min) | 1920×1080 event image | |
| 400×400 | 1500×500 | 440×220 in-stream image | |
| Google+ | 250×250 | 1080×608 | 497×373 shared image |
| 110×110 | 1080×1920 (600×1067 min) stories | ||
| 165×165 | 222×150 (board cover) | 236 wide pinned image preview | |
| 400×400 (200x200min) | 1584×396 | 350 wide shared image | |
| LinkedIn Business | 300×300 | 1536×768 | 60×60 searches square logo |
| Youtube | 800×800 (icon) | 2560×1440 | 1280×720 video thumbnail |
| Tumblr | 128×128 | 1280×1920 (500×750 min) image post | |
| Snapchat | 1080×1920 geofilters, ads, and lenses | ||
| Yelp | 533×400 | ||
| Vimeo | 300×300 | ||
| Google My Business | 720x720min | 3000×3000 (1000x1000min) logo |
*Yes, some spots are missing as there is no option for it.
Handles
Every platform has a handle or username that is attached to your profile that you get to pick. It’s very important that these match across all platforms so that when someone is looking for you they can find you. The other key thing to remember is that this does NOT have to match your exact legal business name. If you are an LLC you don’t have to put that into your handle, but you might do that to differentiate yourself from someone with the same name.
Name
This is different from handles, this is your actual business name which helps people make sure they have found the right person or business. Might seem silly to put on a social media checklist, but you always need this one! We usually put the full legal name here, or the DBA of choice.
Tagline
A single sentence that tells people about your company. Think elevator pitch, but shorter! There are tons of examples of taglines online, you can also look up slogans to get ideas. Your tagline is the quickest way to capture people’s’ attention when they are glancing through profiles or searching online.
Short Description
This is a single paragraph that describes your business, what it does, and maybe mentions where you are and when you started. Keeping it to under 160 characters makes it easy to share via places like Twitter and any other short description places on a profile.
Long Description
This should be a 2-3 paragraph section that really tells the entire story of your business, how it started, what it does, possibly something about a big or important client of yours, etc. It should be informative and tell a story. There should be no questions as to what you do and who you are if someone reads this.
Contact Info
This might seem obvious, but when you are like me and working with many diverse clients it’s important to get all the contact info needed. This is phone numbers, emails, addresses, hours of operation, etc. Making sure that this is the same across every platform is very important when setting up a company because search engines and people notice discrepancies like this. This spreads beyond just the platforms mentioned above to every digital and physical presence you have. There is a whole lot that goes into the contact portion when working on Facebook, Yelp, or Google My Business and it should all be captured and documented.
If you get every single piece here together and then create your social media platforms you’ll be ahead of the game compared to many other people. The downside is now you have to spend anywhere from 4 hours to 4 days creating all this content and then putting it into all the profiles your business should have, which might be less than you think! That’ll be another post though.
Great news though is that if you go through all this set up, you’ll have some content for your website as well. We hope this social media checklist helps you. Happy posting!
After you set up your social media accounts, you’ll want to check out our post about client and customer communication.
The Peterman Design Firm launches businesses and products, specializing in technology and mobility and provide branding to support a successful launch. We are also recognized as a Top Branding Agency on DesignRush.
