Make yourself 'searchable' on social media

"Total Socials is a business directory with a difference, it allows you to be found on a huge range of social media channels."


When you join Total Socials, you don't just get a listing in our business directory. You get a beautiful page with your most important business information on, not only this but more importantly you get a page which has your social media accounts on. Directories have become something we see as outdated and useless, but yet we still all take the time to add ourselves into them incase it may generate a lead or two. 

At Total Socials, we know that you want people to find you for what you produce or the service you provide - but you want to be found on social media, something which is nearly impossible with the way in which the social media giants' searches work. 

As an example, we ask you to try and track down the nearest Mechanic to you on Twitter, or an Accountant on Twitter in London, maybe a Vet in Aberdeen on Instagram or a Marketing Agency in Brighton on Pinterest?

"We are here to solve the problem that is searching for businesses on social media."

Adding your business to our directory will allow anyone to find you, for keywords YOU CHOOSE. You can add your business, and select a range of keywords that match your business, meaning when anyone searches for that service or product you will appear - but more importantly so will your social media profiles. An example is shown below, where you can see this profile, from Social Media Training Cheshire has LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest listed. All of these are easy for the person searching to join. 

Social Media Training Cheshire on the Total Socials website. 

"Your page will look amazing, and will be something you are happy to share across your networks"


Your unique page will look great, and will include all of the information you provided when you joined us, such as a contact email and phone number, a description of the business and a google maps location. More importantly, your social media will be shown larger and is easier for a user to follow from here - your page will also have a unique URL that you can share across your networks to drive even more people to join you. Some examples are shown below -                   

Tweetable Business Solutions

Biz Promo Video

Both of these users have amazing pages, which can now be shared - and will help them grow. We also ensure that all of our members get a shout out to our massive audience on Twitter and Facebook - with some lucky ones also getting promotion on Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn (Depending on the membership scheme you choose)


Overall, joining Total Socials will make you easier to find on all of your social media accounts - our 'search for social' feature is unmatched and no other directory allows you to search through social media sites like ours.

Add your business now, and list one social media profile to your page. Visit www.totalsocials.co.uk 

6 Simple Photo Tools for Creating Social Media Visuals

Are you including images in your social media content?

Looking for easy-to-use tools to help you create images for your content strategy?

If the idea of using Photoshop makes your head spin or hiring a graphic designer isn’t an option, there are many easy-to-use, low-cost alternatives available to you to create social media graphics.

In this article, I’ll show you 6 easy tools that will help you create compelling graphics for social media.

#1: Use PicMonkey’s Online Photo Editor to Take Your Images From Good to Glorious

PicMonkey‘s free option has a wide variety of frames, special effects and font types to choose from.

With a touch of a button, you can crop and resize your photo, and add text to your images.

Choose from a wide variety of free fonts on PicMonkey to create appealing images like this one with PicMonkey.

The paid option offers additional features that include more frames and photo effects.

PicMonkey is a great solution for all types of social media images. Not only can youcreate graphics for your posts, you also can make banners and buttons for your social media accounts, such as Facebook.

#2: Express Yourself Through Photos and Creations on LiveLuvCreate

LiveLuvCreate is an image-creation website most anyone will find easy to use.

With LiveLuvCreate, you pick from a variety of design layouts—from one image as a background to a collage of graphics. You can use images from your computer or choose from LiveLuvCreate’s library.

Choose up to three text areas with a range of font types, colors and styles.

You may also select borders, filters and photo effects for additional image enhancements.

An example of a social media graphic you can create on LiveLuvCreate.com.

Once you complete your graphic, you can share your creation on Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook, or download the image to your computer.

#3: Create Your Own Designs With Canva

Canva is a free application that offers a myriad of graphic types for use in everything from presentations and posters, to business cards and invitations. For social media use, consider Canva to help you design Facebook cover photos and blog images.

Canva offers many different layouts to help you create compelling and shareable social media images.

If you’re signed into Facebook, Canva can pull in your photos. You can also upload your own graphics from your computer, or purchase from Canva’s stock image library (most images are only $1 US).

Additionally, Canva has a unique feature where you can collaborate with other users, which is great if you need to share or edit your images with someone else.

Canva is currently under closed beta, but you can reserve your username and be placed on a waiting list. Then, you can try Canva out once you gain access to the beta version.

#4: Use Image and Photo Editing Software From Paint.NET

If you want some of PhotoShop’s capabilities, check out Paint.NET as an alternative.

Paint.NET is a free download for PCs and offers many of the same features available in PhotoShop.

It supports layers, has unlimited undo capability and offers special photo effects, including red-eye removal. You can also draw shapes, add text and recolor your images with Paint.NET.

You can easily crop any image on Paint.NET and then resize to your specifications.

Because Paint.NET is a free download, tapping into the user community is the best way to get help with how to use it. Check out Paint.NET’s online forum for help, tutorials and plugins.

#5: Design Unique and Compelling Presentations With PowerPoint

It may come as a surprise to see PowerPoint on this list, but it offers another easy way to create social media images.

Any PowerPoint slide can be saved as a JPEG or PNG. Just click on Save As, and then select JPEG or PNG from the Save as Type drop-down menu.

PowerPoint then asks if you want to export every slide or just the current slide. Select Current Slide Only, and you have an image file of your PowerPoint slide. If you’re comfortable using PowerPoint, take advantage of this capability to create social media images.

And if you’re looking for an easy way to make Facebook cover photos, be sure tocheck out Tabsite’s PowerPoint Template for Facebook Cover Photos.

Use Tabsite’s PowerPoint template to create eye-catching Facebook cover photos. Photo courtesy of Tabsite.

Tabsite made a free, easy-to-use template that even shows where your profile photo appears on a cover photo so you can design around it.

#6: Make Awesome Collages With PicCollage

Don’t forget that compelling social media images can include snapshots, and when you want to creatively display these types of photos, check out PicCollage.

PicCollage is an app for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

Once you download the app, use photos from your Facebook account or camera stream to create collages.

Select a background on PicCollage, add your photos, then text and stickers to your image. PicCollage also allows you to resize, rotate, edit and delete any of your creations. When you complete your collage, you can share your image on Facebook,Twitter and Instagram.

You can choose from many different layouts for your collage. Photo courtesy of PicCollage.

Use PicCollage to creatively display photos from a client event, office party or conference. Or pull in a favorite quote and surround it with images.

With a little creativity, PicCollage helps you create social media graphics that show a more personal side to your business.

The Ultimate Business Hashtags

Social Media hashtags are big business, with so many floating around it can be extremely difficult to find which one you should use on your tweet! The power of using relevant #Hashtags when tweeting about your business is awesome, and can be vital to help you build an audience of relevant followers. 

This last year has been great for Twitter and we want to share some great hashtags that we have found to be most interactive, and in turn - get you the most exposure for your tweet and your business. These hashtags are ones we use on a regular basis and have helped us to grow rapidly in a short period of time.

Lets begin the list with our friends at Tweet Your Biz UK who have created the amazing hashtag #TweetYourBiz - John, the owner is always happy to retweet any UK businesses who use the hashtag to his massive following which is now over 10k strong! 

Next, we must mention the great hashtag #KPRS which is owned by K Pearson Roofing - Again Keith, the owner will help you to promote your business if you include the hashtag in your businesses tweets, with over 30k followers its sure worth it.

#UKHour is something which happens everyday 9-5 and is worth a mention, the account has over 4000 followers on Twitter and is growing very quickly! Another hashtag you should try and use. Find them on Twitter HERE.

Tweepectory help to promote your business on Facebook, Twitter and across the web - but they also have a great hashtag - #Tweepectory which is widely used for RT'ing businesses. Great news - as they have over 23k followers and a large Facebook audience also.

Tweetable Business Solutions have another amazing hashtag with the power to promote your business, #FPSBS across their Twitter network they have well over 50k followers and so getting a RT on this will be sure to get your business name out there! 

Bizitalk is the biggest business hashtag on twitter, and a great hashtag to include in your business tweets! They have also created a great new social media site for businesses which you should check out - the hashtag is simple - #Bizitalk

#GBHour is a great hashtag which is every Friday between 4 and 5pm, but they also RT some businesses during the week from a new account on twitter they have created! GB Hour has a good following and is something you should include in your tweets for sure.

There is plenty more great business hashtags out there for your business to get noticed, and the best way to find out is to get on Twitter and start experimenting, find out with ones work best for you, which ones are most engaged and find out what times are best to use certain hashtags!

For networking hours it can be extremely hard to know what happens when, please check out our Twitter Hashtag Timetable for a full list of times for certain business networking sessions on Twitter! 

  

Total Socials In Social Media Today

Last week, we were extremely proud to have been featured in Shay Mosers' weekly piece in social media today known as : Social Startups. This was a great opportunity for us as a startup as Social Media Today and Shay herself are both major players in the Social Media world. We would like to share the piece with you all which explains a bit more about total socials. And our founder - Jake Tipper. We hope you enjoy.

Social Startups: Total Socials Lets You View Social Media Profiles for All Businesses in One Place.

People are using the Internet to find information, but more importantly, to connect with companies. And yet for so many, it can take hours to find all of a business’ social media channels.

“It is a very long process when searching in Twitter, for instance, because it picks up on keywords in users’ profiles,” says Jake Tipper, founder and CEO of Total Socials, the world’s first social media business directory.

When the 19-year-old entrepreneur had been unsuccessful trying to find all the social media channels of prospective customers, other businesses, and competition in his part-time marketing job, he wondered, “There must be somewhere that lists all social media accounts for companies in one place.” When his search led him nowhere, he began drawing up plans for Total Socials. The website launched last week—just in time to give your company the Christmas present that keeps on giving.

You may be thinking, “Directories are old-school,” as you picture a big, clunky phone book. Think again. This is a list you want your business to be on. Total Socials lets users do a simple online search through three main fields: Business Type, City/Town, or Social Media Profile. From this, you can see all of a business’ contact information, Google Map location, and every one of the company’s social media channels.

For businesses, Total Socials provides a reliable way to get listed and located. “Other businesses and users will be able to search for your company and interact across your social channels,” Tipper says. “It also gives businesses a page in which they can share from their social media channels.”

Despite being a niche directory that’s extremely targeted, it’s free to have a basic listing that includes two social media channels. There are three payment options for businesses that want to list more than two social channels, add custom options, and use other benefits, such as extra images and a custom URL.

Take one of Total Socials’ current clients, as an example of how the platform works. “George owns a business in the UK, manufacturing a product for the farming industry,” Tipper says. “He joined Twitter and started looking for farms in his area to connect with and possibly do business with. However, when he searched on Twitter he was overwhelmed by the results. So he joined Total Socials and searched for ‘farms’ in ‘Birmingham’ on ‘Twitter,’ and simply connected with all of them on Twitter from Total Socials.”

Seeing the simplicity and success from this, George listed his manufacturing business on Total Socials, chose his keywords, and added all of his social media sites through his premium account on the platform. Extra promotion as a premium member also boosted his networks’ following. And over the course of six months, he saw an increase in interactions on his social media channels as people searched for his services and products. Ultimately, it led to new business for George. 
“I intend to make Total Socials the only place to search for businesses on social media,” Tipper says. “I want to get over 25,000 businesses listed in the directory over the next year.”

In the next five years, Tipper says he hopes to have Total Socials operating in America, across Europe, and in the Middle East. “As long as we can legally operate in these countries and have the website translated accordingly, then we will be there,” he says about the UK-based startup.

List your business for free at http://totalsocials.co.uk. The Total Socials website is driven by you, and it thrives if you share and use it frequently. In other words, the more the merrier!

What Is Total Socials And How Can It Help My Business?

Total Socials, the worlds first social media business directory is set to launch very soon, but the question on everyones lips are: What is it, and how will it benefit me?

What even is a social media business directory?

Total Socials is the worlds first, so you probably have never heard of a social media business directory, but its pretty self explanatory. We are all used to getting listings in online directories where we can list our business and a lot of what we see as irrelevant information. With social media being such a powerful business tool it is important that we all harness it and take full advantage. Our directory will have one key feature, allowing you to 'search for social' This key feature means that you can track down a business type, in an area and on which network you want to find it. We call this a social media business directory. 

Whats it useful for?

So the directory is useful for a lot of different reasons, firstly being that it allows you to find and connect with your potential clients. For example you might be a marker specialising in working with estate agents. With a total socials search you simply find the estate agents on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or a range of other social media sites we accept. You can also use the site for finding competitors, something we think is key to a successful social media campaign. The site can also be used by customers and clients, who may be looking for a business or service provider, on social media. It is becoming more and more apparent that people like to connect on social media and this is a tool to help them do it. 


Whats the cost?
Our memberships will start with free accounts, offering basic services such as adding just two accounts to your profile and some other extras, as we go up to the £5 a month membership you will be allowed to add more accounts, and get some promotion from us on our social media, as you go to the £10 or £15 a month membership you will receive even more exposure from ourselves  as well as getting many extra benefits, such as becoming higher in the results for your category and more social media accounts being displayed on your page.

Who is involved in Total Socials?

We have many companies who have already registered an interest in the site and are willing to sign up right away, but as well as this we have gathered some 'founder members' who we feel use social media extremely well, and have a large enough following to help us get the word out about how good Total Socials is. Some of these companies include -

Muddywall

Indigo Car Hire

Biz Promo Video

Entrepreneurial Spark

Baldwins Accountants

Tweepectory

Social-Hire

Tweetable Business Solutions

Wee Print

Ingenious Britain

Social Media Training Cheshire

When can I join?
We will be launching shortly and when we do you will be able to sign up easily online. All of our payments are fully protected as we operate via PayPal, giving you maximum protection. Keep up to date with our progress by following us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Blogger. Or like us on Facebook. We hope you continue your amazing support in the lead up to our launch!