How to find the best Social Media accounts – 10 tips October 27, 2015

Social Media feeds can be pretty overwhelming. Especially when you use a certain Social Media app or website for the first time, you might not know where to start. And more importantly: Who to follow? Of course there are always channels left and right thrown at you or directly recommended. But to get the most out of your Social Media, you should know ways to customize your experience and Update feeds. So in this article I want to share with you how to find the best Social Media accounts for your liking! This way you can shape Social Media to your interests and create the best entertainment level for yourself. You can apply some of the information of this article in the same way to find new blogs to read. So without further ramblings, here are my 10 tips for you:

1. Use the search option. This may sound obvious but a lot of people do not make proper use of search options on Social Media. If you are interested in a certain subject, look for it. You can also find many accounts by subjects.

2. See who people you like follow. If you really enjoy an account, check out their subscriptions. This works for YouTube, Pinterest, twitter or any other platform, really.

3. If you want to see what’s out there, what is hyped or even underhyped, browse the internet for recommendations to blogs, Instagram feeds, or any other Social Media accounts. People like to talk about their favorites and you can also see which blogs or accounts they follow, as mentioned previously. But do not limit yourself to that! You can search for top blogs/ accounts about xyz, or the best xyz accounts to follow on…you see where this is going. You can find very interesting new accounts this way and look for your interests beyond the recommendations of top bloggers or featured spreads about Social Media in magazines. Not that there is anything wrong with those, either…

4. Collect the information of the accounts in question via browser bookmarks or Feedly etc. This again sounds like a no brainer but it happened to me several times in the past already that I forgot to bookmark something because I was distracted and I never managed to find the accounts, blogs or channels again. Unless you count finding them again by accident?

5. Check out the accounts of brands or magazines you like on Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter etc. and do the same as with personal favorites. Who do they follow? What did they like and share? What recommended videos or pins show up under the video/pin? Start there and enjoy the browsing…

6. Now on to more specific Social Media tips! YouTube tips: Search video titles or accounts by entering titles or keywords in the search mask and limit the search to your liking. You can go by view count or the date when a video was published. Check out your favorite channels for favorites, liked videos and subscriptions and always check the recommended videos that appeal to you.

7.  Instagram tips: Search hashtags and look whose accounts people you like follow. They also have a recommendations feed that is hit and miss, but sometimes it can give you good account suggestions. Again, check who people like and follow. Usually people follow accounts similar to their own taste, so that is why it is a good starting point if you want to follow more people yourself.

8. Twitter tips: Make sure to look for the people you follow on other social media, use the search options and make use of hashtags. It is pretty straight forward when it comes to navigation, in my opinion.

9. Pinterest tips: Pretty much the same strategies apply here too. But you can find people by chosen interests you follow and take note of the similarity suggestions. Under any pin you like you find other pinner’s boards who also liked that pin and you can browse and search for boards for a subject or theme you like and check out the accounts to find that way. Also they give you similar pins under each selected pin that can get you to find other accounts or pins to like. Really a lot of opportunities to shape your Pinterest feeds. And that is not even including the recommend to you – Pins that show up in your feed by default!
10. Be patient. You will find people to follow over time! If you want to keep your feed shorter and  less crowded, be more selective in who you follow to begin with. If you do not mind following many accounts, you might not see every single one of your favorite accounts updates anymore, but you have a bigger variety of updates or recommendations at the same time. It is all up to what you prefer.

Over time, you will find tons of people to follow but you might ask, why does it matter?
Well, it basically comes down to this: you can tailor and shape all of these Social media platforms to your liking and this way you will have a better entertainment value in a sense. Do not forget the most straight forward way to get new ideas for following people: ask your friends who they follow and check also those accounts most frequently that feature the content you love best. There will always be new recommendations coming your way. You can follow one person or thousands.

Use Social Media in the way that best fits you and your interests. Of course these are only recommendations! You can keep your Social media feeds broader, create lists and so on (if there is no feature like that you can always create your own collections and lists via your bookmark manager or blog subscription manager etc. I hope you had a great start in your week yesterday. Happy Tuesday!

Should you have any input or questions, please feel free to leave me a comment below.

Photography by © Simon Hattinga Verschure / Unsplash