There’s no doubt that social media has become increasingly important for companies.
According to Hubspot, social media produces almost double the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing, direct mail, or PPC, and social media lead conversion rates are 13% higher than the average lead conversion rate. In fact, approximately 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision.
Even if you don’t plan on being active on all the major social media platforms, or don’t have a strategic plan on how to proceed yet, it’s still a good idea to reserve your company name now. Here are two reasons why.
Note: this article was last updated on October 15, 2019.
Why You Should Register On Social Media Platforms
1.Registering the user handle prevents someone else from registering the name and causing confusion if that particular social media profile starts showing up next to search results for your company when your company name is searched.
2. Even if you aren’t going to make updates on the sites, you can still fill in your profile with information about your business and get extra links back to your website by including your company URL in the user profile.
Here are the three most important social networks your company should be on, including the account sign-up links. In addition, I’ve listed other major social media platforms you should also reserve your business name on.
According to the 2018 CMI report, more than 95% of B2B companies use LinkedIn for marketing. That’s not surprising given there are over 500 million users on LinkedIn. This presents a great opportunity to promote your business on the platform.
To create a LinkedIn company page, log in to LinkedIn with your personal account and click on the “Work” icon, then click Create a Company Page. Select company type, then proceed to enter your company name, email address and details. The URL of your LinkedIn page will be www.linkedin.com/company/company-name.
If you need help getting started on LinkedIn, download our free LinkedIn for Sales white paper.
Sign up at twitter.com with your email and choose a username that corresponds to your company name. Your username can have a maximum of 15 characters and the URL of your Twitter profile will be in the twitter.com/username format.
To create a Facebook company page, login to your personal Facebook account and go to Create a Page. Select the appropriate category for your business, then you’ll be asked to enter information about your company and you’ll be given the option of creating a custom URL, e.g. facebook.com/businessname. Once you select a custom URL for the page, it can’t be modified.
Google Plus
*Note: Google Plus has been discontinued. This paragraph remains for archive purposes.
To create a Google Plus company page, log in to your Google account with a Gmail address and go to Create a Google+ Page. The default URL of your Google Plus company page will be plus.google.com followed by a string of numbers (e.g. plus.google.com/b/1020760). Select a vanity URL so that it looks something like plus.google.com/+VapartnersCa, see Getting Started With Google+ Custom URLs.
Additional Social Media Networks
Other major social media networks you should reserve your company name on include:
- YouTube – video-sharing website
- Pinterest – photo-sharing website
- Instagram – photo-sharing website
- Slideshare – presentation-sharing website
- Scribd – PDF-sharing website
Are there any sites that we should add to this list? Have you ever come across a situation where the username you wanted was already taken? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Contact us if you need assistance getting started with your social media plan.
