Social media account inventory: list every account before you connect one

Why the list comes first

Businesses collect accounts the way drawers collect keys. One was opened for a pop-up, one by a former employee, one for a second location that later merged with the first. A scheduler connected to half of them organizes half the problem, and the forgotten half keeps showing customers an out-of-date address.

For a small business the inventory is a short job, and it settles three things: what exists, what it is for and who answers for it. Every later decision about calendars and approvals rests on it.

What to record for each account

Use one row per profile. Seven columns cover it.

• Platform and handle. Exactly as it appears on the profile.
• Purpose. Brand, one location, hiring, customer service or a past campaign.
• Location. The branch it speaks for, if any.
• Owner. One named person who answers for what appears there.
• Access. Who can log in, and which email address the account is registered to.
• Link. Where the profile link currently points.
• Decision. Keep posting, keep but pause, merge or close.

Find the accounts nobody remembers

Search each platform for your business name, old names and common misspellings. Follow the social icons on your website, email footer, menus and receipts, and check that each leads somewhere current. Ask long-serving staff what they once set up. Look through shared inboxes for old sign-up and password emails.

Expect to find at least one profile you cannot log in to. Note it anyway. Recovering or reporting it goes through that platform's own process, and it stays on the list until it is resolved.

Decide what each account is for

Now make the decision column honest. An account with no owner and no purpose should not be fed by a scheduler just because it exists. A few active accounts, each with a clear audience, are easier to keep straight than many half-kept ones.

Go down the list and give every row one of the four decisions. Where two profiles serve the same audience, pick the stronger one and plan to merge or retire the other.

Keep the list alive

The inventory goes stale the day someone joins or leaves. Two habits keep it current. When a person leaves, the owner of each account they could reach checks access that same week. And once a quarter, someone reads the list top to bottom and confirms every row is still true.

Taking the list to a Link AI demo

A demo is only as useful as the list you bring to it, and the product we suggest bringing it to is Link AI by Linkme. On its maker's page, one post leaves a single queue for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube, and each location can have a Linkme page. Nothing there says how many accounts can be connected per platform, which is exactly what your rows will test in practice.

Book a demo to try Link AI, keep the sheet open, and work down the rows in order: can this profile be connected, and how would a post reach it? Rows that pass go into the shared calendar. Rows that do not are your open questions.

Connected entries

Questions & answers