Giselle Bisson Visibility Shift

It’s spring! Time to freshen up your social media and get organized.

There is nothing that ruins a social media campaign faster than disorganized passwords and log ins!

I swear 90% of my clients keep me waiting for days while they try to remember and find their passwords and log ins (or even remember which social media sites the are on). It’s a gigantic waste of time and money that can CRUSH your product launch. This happens to small solo proprietors and big brands alike.

1. Create a shared Google Document or spreadsheet for storing the names of your social media accounts, emails and passwords. Don’t forget the passwords to the email.

2. Invite all the members of the team into the document who will need access to these accounts.

3. Then, create one company email address specifically for all of your social media pages. (Not the email of an employee who might leave). Remember to record that password too.

4. I recommend one password for all your social accounts. Keep it simple and memorable as your Social Manager has to type this in all day long, several times a day, and you’re paying her by the hour!

5. Set a reminder on your calendar every 6 months to change the passwords and update the spreadsheet and team.

6. Name every social media page the exact same name (preferably the actual name of your company, film, book or product) and reserve the URL for it. (Example: http://www.facebook.com/mycompany.) Check to make sure you’ve reserved your private URL so it’s not taken by another brand.

Before you even name your business, book, film, band or product, check Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, WordPress, Domain.com and Instagram and make sure your name is actually available on all of these pages. It can be embarrassing if it’s not.

7. Use a service like Buffer to organize all your accounts.

8. Don’t use a Yahoo or Gmail account as your one email address — it needs to be http://www.yourcompany.com because some social media tools will only let you use a business email to establish your account.

When an employee leaves, or you stop using an agency, please remember to change the passwords and remove the admins. (I am still an admin on about 23 pages for projects I no longer work for, including clients who died and companies that no longer exist but still leave their Fan page up.)

9. Try a tool to clean up the deadwood inactive followers from your Twitter following. I like “Unfollow” and “Crowdfire.”

10. Add a tab on your spreadsheet with the names, emails, social accounts and phone numbers of each person on your marketing team involved with your social media.

You just saved your team hours of future frustration!