Comprehensive Guide to Rebranding Across Social Networks
Published: September 26, 2013
Author: Molly Shotwell
So you’re going to undertake a rebrand, eh? In the midst of worrying about what you’re going to name your company, finding a designer (or God forbid, designing everything yourself), and getting a new website up and running, you may have forgotten about your social media presence. Luckily, we’ve got an easy step-by-step outline detailing what you need to do to cut over your social media presence on major social networks.
One important note: for Twitter and Facebook, where you can create URLs with your company name, reserve those as early as possible so nobody else snaps them up (hey, it happens).
Google+
Steps:
In advance: Prep text and images for the page (you can likely use images and text for fields in Google+, Linkedin, and Facebook if you’re crunched for time).
-You’ll need a cover photo (2120×1192 pixels) and a profile picture (this will be displayed on the page inside a circle).
On the day of the cutover:
– Log in
– Change all of the information/pictures. You’ll want to make sure to change the company name, website, cover image, and profile images. This process is very straightforward.
Dependencies? You’ll have to make all changes last-minute if your rebrand is a surprise
What about the URL? The URL to your new page will be the same numeric URL as before you edited your page.
LinkedIn
Steps:
In Advance: Prep text and images for the page.
-You’ll need a standard logo (which will be resized to 100×60 pixels) and a square logo (which will be resized to 50×50 pixels).
On the day of the Cutover:
– Log in
– Swap out all of the information with new text/images. Just as easy as Google+! You’ll want to make sure to change the company name, website, cover image, and profile images.
Dependencies? Again, you’ll have to make all changes last-minute.
What about the URL? Linkedin URLs are based on company name. Just changing the company name should change the company URL. For example, if your company was called “New York Pizza,” your URL would be generated as: linkedin.com/company/New-York-Pizza.
Facebook
Doing the cutover for Facebook can be very complicated. Feel free to check out our in-depth guide here.
Steps:
In Advance: (assuming you have more than 200 likes)
– Create new Facebook Page and mark it as private
– Add logos, text, cover image; again, use the ones you’ll be using for Google+ and Linkedin if you’re crunched for time.
On the day of the cutover:
– Mark profile as public
– Begin advertising on both the new page and the old page about the rebrand
Then you can do one of two things:
1) Merge the two pages
-As people begin to like new page, delete them from the old page
-Once the new page has more likes than the old page (and the old page has fewer than 200 likes), change the name of old page to something similar to the new page, like “New Page2”
-Merge the pages
NOTE: Facebook keeps the page with the most likes when you merge them.
Or
2) Once you have a satisfactory percentage of people moved from the old page to the new page, simply delete the old page.
Dependencies? This is going to be the worst cutover of the bunch. Basically you’ll need to try to convince as many people as possible to join the new page.
What about the URL? Thankfully, you’ll be able to set it to whatever you want.
Twitter
Steps: Twitter is a bit complicated just because it’s best to prep the new account in advance (thus ensuring that the new name you want is available, so you can see that all of the images work nicely, and so you have an account prepped to be a placeholder for your old account).
In advance:
– Create new account
– Create background image and user icon.
On the day of the cutover:
– Change name of new account to something else (to free up the new name)
– Change name of original account to your new company name (this allows you to keep you followers)
– On original account, change background and user icon to new images
– Change new account name to the name of the old account
– Change new account images to old logo/background
– Begin advertising on rebranded (old, but now renamed) account
Tweet regularly for a few days on new (now with old name) account announcing the name change and linking to the current account.
Dependencies? Have to make that switch at the last minute
What about the URLs? You can set them to be whatever you want, but you’ll want the placeholder account to be twitter.com/oldcompanyname, and the one you’re rebranding to be twitter.com/newcompanyname
Phew! Got it? If you have questions, hit me in the comments!
