Eric Siu and Neil Patel explain how to get verified on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. They cover the application process, including submitting forms and IDs, and suggest working with platform ad reps to improve your chances. They warn against paying third-party services and note that verification offers little real benefit anyway.
Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.
And I'm Neil Patel.
And today we're going to talk about how you can get the blue checkmark on social media. So first and foremost, Neil, what is the blue checkmark?
Whether you're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, you see that blue checkmark that's like verified profile and everyone looks at it and is like, oh my God, if you got a verified profile, you're an influencer, you're amazing, you're like someone who's supposed to be someone and everyone should pay attention to you.
Right. Yeah. And, you know, my friend likes to compare it to the Infinity Stones in The Avengers. I haven't seen the movie yet. I really want to see it. But it's like collecting each one. It can be like collecting Pokémon, for example. But here's a simple way. Let's look at Twitter. Twitter is very relatively simple. You basically will submit why— they have like a form, and I'm not sure if it's still live today, but they have a form where you can submit your name, who you are exactly, the press pieces, and why you should be verified. The main reason why they have these verifications out there is because there's a lot of celebrities out there that are at risk of personalization, right? Impersonation. So people are basically, like, building fake profiles and let's say they built, like, a fake Neil Patel profile and impersonated them. They're at risk of doing that so having the blue checkmark helps make it show who is the actual real one. Now, the thing to Neil's point earlier is that people want the blue checkmark to make it look like they're an influencer, to make it look like they're a big deal. So you can do that with Twitter. That's easy to do. With YouTube, you have to shoot beyond 100,000 subscribers or so, and then you will get— they don't have a blue checkmark, but they do have a gray checkmark.
Yeah. And when it comes to Twitter and all these places, I found that the easiest way is to get verified, as Eric mentioned, like those impersonators, showing them proof that there's some impersonators out there and uploading your ID and everything, be like, here are the people who are impersonating me. It's not even that they're creating fake Neil Patel or Eric Siu profiles. It's just that they're stealing your content because there's so many scraper sites. And just showing them things like that, it makes it really simple where they just verify you.
Yeah. And Facebook is the same way, I think. I mean, you can submit a form, I believe. What you can do with Facebook, here's the thing. If you are running ads on Facebook, and I actually think this is the same thing with YouTube too, I read this recently on how to get that checkmark. If you're running ads, you can actually talk to your ads manager, whoever is the person that helps you, and then you can talk about why you need a blue checkmark and then What happens is then you need to make your page into like a business or a public profile, whatever. And then you're able to, you know, to Neil's point, have some of that proof, have some press pieces available that show that you're actually out there, and then you can get a blue checkmark.
Yeah. And you don't need to pay people for the service. There's a lot of people that will end up saying like, hey, you can pay me $500 if I get you verified. I've seen it so bad.
One guy was like $8,000 for like, you know, an Instagram checkmark.
It's the stupidest shit ever. And they can't guarantee it. So it's like, Don't pay people, they're just swindling you for money. And if they can, they probably work at one of these social networks and they're paying someone off. So it's like, you can get it done manually. Try to guest post on like Entrepreneur or Forbes or something like that. You show some credibility, you show you've been on the web, you show you have some followers, you show people are scraping you, you upload your ID, they're going to approve you. It's not that hard.
All right, so that's it for today. That's how you can go get your checkmark, go get your Infinity Stones.
But one thing.
Hmm?
Has the blue checkmark done anything for you?
Zero, nothing.
Same with me, hasn't done jack shit. And we both have it on almost all profiles. I think Eric has Instagram. I don't have Instagram, but you have Instagram, right? Has it done anything on Instagram?
Nope, nothing.
Hasn't done anything for me on Facebook. Hasn't done anything for me on Twitter either.
So maybe our recommendation is don't do anything because ultimately, like, I know, look, it might make you look like an influencer, but it doesn't help you. So that's our recommendation. If you want to go do it, have at it. But with that being said, go ahead.
Everyone has one these days, so that's why it doesn't make you look like an influencer anymore. They're not special.
Yeah, there you go. They're not special. Anyway, go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to check out our marketing goodies to grow your business, and we'll see you tomorrow.
