Creating and using social media accounts: finding community online

Posting pictures, updating statuses, sharing videos — there are so many ways to connect with others through social media.

Reconnect with friends and family, join like-minded communities, and learn more about creating new social media accounts on some of the most popular platforms.

1. Facebook

On Facebook, you can add friends, send messages, join groups, buy and sell items, and more. In order to create a Facebook account, you’ll need to visit facebook.com or download the app and click “create a new account.” You’ll need to input your name, email address or phone number, password, date of birth, and gender. To finish your account creation, you’ll need to verify your email address or phone number.

In order to take full advantage of your account, you may also consider adding photos, “liking” pages that interest you, adding friends, and following large accounts. You can then send messages to people in your friends list, shop or sell on Facebook Marketplace, watch videos on Facebook Watch, scroll through posts on your timeline, or even live stream an event through Facebook Live.

To learn more about taking advantage of what Facebook has to offer, visit this resource.

2. Twitter

Unlike Facebook, Twitter is more specifically about sharing and reading posts. Twitter has a 280-character limit, meaning tweets cannot be any longer than that. This means that posts are short and easy to digest.

To sign up for a Twitter account, go to twitter.com/signup or download the app. Like Facebook, you’ll need to submit your name and email address, as well as what you want your Twitter username to be. Once you verify your email, you can start following other and posting tweets.

Many people use Twitter to keep up with their favorite news sources, athletes, celebrities, and politicians, and comedians, all of which can be searched for in your search bar. If you’re interested in a specific topic, you can even search keywords with hashtags to find relevant groups and accounts (like #hiking or #NorthCarolinabreweries).

You can interact with tweets from anyone who allows it or is not a private account, with actions including “liking” the tweet, “retweeting” it so it appears on your feed, replying to the tweet, and sharing it through a direct message.

If you don’t want just anyone having access to your Twitter account, you can make your page private. That way, people will need to request to follow you in order to see your tweets or send you messages.

3 .Instagram

Owned by Facebook, Instagram is primarily used for photo and video sharing, either through posts or stories. You can create an account by visiting instagram.com or downloading the app. Your account can also be linked to Facebook if you have an active Facebook account.

Once you’ve submitted your name and email address and verified your email, you can start posting. You should assign a picture to your profile, and by importing friends from Facebook or contacts from your phone, you can find people you might know. When you follow someone, you can not only visit their profile anytime, but their photos will also pop up on your news feed.

In order to post your own photo on Instagram, you’ll need to hit the “add post” button on the home screen. You can then select up to 10 photos or videos per post. Once you’ve selected the photos and video you want to post, you’ll then move to the editing phase. Here, you can select a filter for one of all photos. You can also further edit photos by adding color filters, blur, fade, and more. Here’s a quick guide on how to use Instagram’s edit feature.

Once your post has been edited to your liking, you can write a caption and share it with your followers. You can also create a story on Instagram, which is essentially a post that disappears after 24 hours.

For more information on using Instagram, visit this guide.