A step-by-step guide to setting up your brand on every social platform you need, with the tools and links that make it easier.
Hootsuite Social Media Style Guide · LinkedIn for Brands official guidance · Meta for Business Help Centre · Founda agency setup playbook
A clean social setup is a small task with disproportionate impact on how your brand reads to the people who find you. Done properly the first time, it makes you look more established than you may currently be, makes any future verification process significantly easier, and saves the messy migration work that almost every brand ends up doing later when handles are inconsistent and recovery emails are sitting on a former employee's account.
What follows is the full walk-through, grouped into four phases so you can complete it in one focused afternoon, or spread it across a working week if your time is in shorter pieces. Every step points at the official documentation and the tool we would recommend, and we have flagged the free option wherever one exists.
If you are setting up a brand new estate, work through the phases in order. If you are auditing an existing setup that has drifted, skip to the section that addresses what has gone wrong and use the rest as a sense-check.
“Spend two hours on the setup once. You will save twenty hours fixing it later.”
— Founda
A consistent handle across every platform makes you easier to find and stops a squatter from taking your name. The free tools below let you check availability everywhere in a single search.
Pick the canonical handle you will use everywhere
Use lowercase letters, avoid underscores, and skip numbers if you can. The handle that reads cleanly in conversation is the one people will remember and type correctly.
Scan availability across every major platform with Namechk
Namechk (https://namechk.com) checks more than 90 platforms in one search and is free. Knowem (https://knowem.com) is a good alternative if Namechk is missing a network you need.
Reserve on the platforms you use today
At minimum: Instagram, LinkedIn, X, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook. Facebook is still required to access Meta Business Suite, even if you never post on the platform itself.
Reserve on platforms you might use tomorrow
Threads, Pinterest, Bluesky, Reddit, and Snapchat. The 30 minutes it takes to claim them now saves you from a public squatting situation later.
Reserve the matching domains
Pick up the .com, your country code (.ae for the UAE), and the closest typo variants. Park them on a redirect to your main site. Namecheap (https://namecheap.com) and Cloudflare Registrar (https://cloudflare.com/products/registrar) are both reliable, with Cloudflare offering domains at cost price.
Document everything in one shared place
Keep a single sheet that lists each platform, the handle, the email used to claim it, the recovery phone number, and the date claimed. A shared 1Password (https://1password.com) vault is the cleanest way to do this for a team.
Each platform asks for a profile photo, a header image, a bio, and a link. The specs below cover the four that move the most.
Profile photo: 400 by 400 pixels at minimum
Use your wordmark or your symbol mark, not a photo of the founder unless the brand is the founder. Save it as a transparent PNG so you can swap the background as platforms update their UI. Keep the same image across every platform.
Cover or banner image: sized to the platform
LinkedIn is 1584 by 396, X is 1500 by 500, Facebook is 820 by 312, YouTube is 2560 by 1440. Canva (https://canva.com) has free templates pre-sized for every platform if you do not want to build them from scratch.
Bio: under 160 characters where possible
Lead with what you do for your customer, not what you call yourselves. Add one specific proof point if you have one. End with a verb-led call to action. Most platforms cap bios between 150 and 200 characters, so the same line will fit almost everywhere.
Link: one canonical destination
Send people to your homepage or to the landing page for whatever you are currently promoting. If you genuinely need multiple links, Beacons (https://beacons.ai) and Linktree (https://linktr.ee) both have free tiers, but a custom page on your own site is better for SEO and trust.
Pinned post or featured content: refresh every 60 to 90 days
The pinned slot is the second thing visitors see after your bio. Use it to highlight your strongest current piece of work, your most recent launch, or your highest-converting offer.
Pronouns, location, and contact: only fill what adds clarity
If a field does not help a customer or a journalist understand the brand, leave it blank. A half-filled field is more credible than a field stuffed with keywords.
Verification reduces the chance of impersonation and gives you a small ranking boost in search on the platform. Each platform has a different process, so check the current docs before you apply.
LinkedIn Company Verification
Free for businesses with a verified domain and a Microsoft Entra account. Apply via LinkedIn Help Centre (https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1359065). Usually takes a week.
Meta Verified for Business
Paid subscription from around $14.99 per month. Covers Facebook and Instagram. Includes account support, which is genuinely useful when something goes wrong. Apply through Meta Business Suite.
X Verified Organisation
Paid at $200 per month. Worth it if you do customer support on X or run a publication. Otherwise hard to justify for most brands at the current price.
Google Business Profile
Free. Set this up even if you are not a local business. It is the source most search results pull from when someone searches your brand name. Manage at https://business.google.com.
These steps take 30 minutes and prevent the most common ways brands lose access to their accounts.
Turn on two-factor authentication on every account
Use an authenticator app like 1Password, Authy, or Google Authenticator rather than SMS. SMS-based 2FA is vulnerable to SIM-swap attacks. Document the recovery codes in your password manager so a lost phone does not lock you out.
Add at least two admins to every account
Single-admin accounts get locked out the day someone leaves the company. Set up a second admin from day one, ideally using a brand-level email rather than a personal one.
Use a brand-level email for account recovery
Create something like brand@yourbrand.com or social@yourbrand.com and use that as the recovery address on every account. Forward it to whoever currently owns social. When they leave, you only update the forward, not every platform.
Write a one-page crisis response plan
Decide in advance who responds to a negative comment, who escalates to leadership, what your standard holding line is, and what you never say in public. Print it. Pin it next to whoever is running social. The Hootsuite crisis management guide (https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-crisis-management) is a good free starting point.
Define your block, mute, and report rules in advance
Spam: block silently. Hostile but valid feedback: respond once, then mute the thread. Coordinated brand attacks or impersonation: escalate immediately and report through the platform. Writing this down once stops the team improvising under pressure.
Namechk
Free. Scans handle availability across more than 90 platforms in one search.
https://namechk.comCanva
Free tier covers most needs. Pre-sized templates for every platform's profile and cover image.
https://canva.comBuffer
Free tier covers 3 channels and 10 scheduled posts per channel. Good for getting started with consistent posting.
https://buffer.com1Password
Paid from around $8 per user per month for teams. The cleanest way to share account credentials, recovery codes, and 2FA backups across a team.
https://1password.comHootsuite Social Media Style Guide
Free PDF and a long-running blog with practical templates and current platform specs.
https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-style-guideIf you have inherited a messy social estate, with orphaned accounts, inconsistent handles, dead profiles or no recovery access, fixing it is more delicate than starting from scratch. We can help you tidy it up without losing your audience or your verification status.
Founda runs brand-tidy days that include a full social estate review, account recovery where possible, and a fresh setup that follows this checklist. Book a call to talk through what you have inherited.
See Founda services: founda.me/services
Book a call: founda.me/on-call
If you are inside a live crisis, like a locked-out account, a hijacked handle, or an active impersonator, skip the audit and book the on-call line directly.