Getting your feet wet with Social Media

Another comment on @acuras_web blog: I advise on the value of _not_ signing up the brand name you want http://bit.ly/flRtMT Do you agree?less than a minute ago via TweetDeckMark Mapstone
markmapstone




A useful tip I offer up to new clients, is to never sign up a new social profile with the company name you want to use initially.

the reason for this is, in order to fully understand all the features of the site, they should sign up a dummy account first, test out all the important settings, including swapping admins, importing and exporting content, blocking & banning other users and finally, most importantly, deleting that account and then seeing if the name becomes available, should they wish to sign back up again.

This way, everything 'new' can be tested to the max, in complete safety that they aren't experimenting with the companies 'officially' profile. Clients are particularly interested in the import and export of their content. If any of these social spaces (not the ones you've listed, but any newer one) get bought out & change service direction or suddenly hike up their hosting prices, the client is going to be really glad they thoroughly tested the process before investing a lot of time and content in a service.

Once fully happy, sign up the official company profile. Now this might all sound obvious to you... if so, sorry, I don't mean to patronise. But I'll give you an example where it becomes invaluable.

I once signed up an account (the one I really really wanted) and during the sign up process, I made an error in the admin registration email address - now whilst annoying, at least I spotted it as I clicked the 'submit' button. It wasn't the end of the world but it did cause me a massive headache trying to change admins on that account. The service I was dealing with was Blogger. That was then, now they've sorted out that 'bug'... but if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone and not all social spaces use the same sign up and registration process.

Anyways... I've waffled on a bit, but hopefully you'll find this interesting or useful.

all the best - Mark :)

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