Most business owners and online marketers are too busy crafting the perfect posts that they tend to forget about checking and updating their profiles. You need to keep in mind that your social media profiles are often the first opportunity prospective customers get to interact with your brand.
Your social media profiles are a reflection of your brand or business. They are likely to develop an impression about you based on what they see on them. As such, we recommend that you revisit your social media profiles and make the necessary changes to improve them.
Here are 4 easy ways to improve your social media profile.
Link to your other social media profiles
In addition to having a website field within your profile, some social media channels allow you to link to your other profiles. The opportunities for cross-promotion are there. You just need to take advantage of it.
Pinterest, for instance, allows you connect Twitter and Facebook to your profile. LinkedIn allows you to add your Twitter account to your profile. Facebook, on the other hand, allows users to add multiple links to the website field. Some people, however, would just drop in their website and then move on. Don’t just stop there. Use this field to link to your other social media profiles.
Add relevant keywords to your profiles
If you are running a business, we suggest that you use relevant keywords to make you more searchable in your field. If you are selling curtains, you may want to use the keyword “curtain sales”. If you are a lawyer, you may use the keyword “family law”. Choose keywords that are related to your business.
Some people use the search box on Facebook, not just to find people, but also businesses and specific topics. You want your profile or business page to pop up when people search for these keywords.
Follow proper image sizing
Visually appealing images can capture the attention of your target audience and boost engagement. But there are some things to consider when choosing photos for your social media posts. This includes the orientation, width, and height of the photo. Why? Because they affect how an image appears in the news feeds, timeline or stream.
Avoid using images that are too small or too large as they may appear distorted or blurry. Make sure that the images you use falls within the sizing requirements designated by the social platform.
Standard image sizes for major social networks are as follows:
- Twitter header image: 1,500 X 500 pixels
- Twitter profile photo: 400 X 400 pixels
- Facebook cover photo: 828 X 465 pixels
- Facebook profile picture: 170 X 170 pixels
- Google+ cover photo: 1080 X 608 pixels
- Google+ profile picture: 250 X 250 pixels (minimum)
- LinkedIn cover photo: 974 X 330 pixels
- LinkedIn custom background: 1584 X 396
- LinkedIn profile photo: 400 X 400 pixels (minimum)
- LinkedIn banner image: 646 X 220 pixels
- YouTube cover photo: 2,560 X 1,440 pixels on desktop
- YouTube profile picture: 800 X 800 pixels
- Pinterest profile picture: 150 X 150 pixels
- Instagram profile picture: 110 X 110 pixels
Maintain a consistent look across all social channels
With so many social media platforms today, most businesses try to stay active in different channels in the hopes of reaching their target audience. If you are managing multiple accounts, make sure that you maintain a consistent look across all social channels.
Remember, potential customers are trying to find your company on social media. You want to make sure that you maintain brand consistency across different channels. Use the same iconic badges, fonts, and colors that represent your business so people can easily and readily identify your brand.
4 Tips for Protecting Your Brand on Social Media
Social media provides businesses a great opportunity to engage and connect with fans, customers, and prospects. It is also a great outlet for marketing. But the huge opportunity social media offers to businesses are not without risks. Impostor accounts, phishing attacks and hacking attacks are just some of the risks linked with social media. Make sure that you’re educated about these risks and take steps to protect your brand.
You can stop harmful behavior by making brand protection a priority for your business. Here are 4 tips for protecting your brand on social media.
Have a social media policy in place
Employees make the best brand advocates. They are credible spokespeople and should be encouraged to take an active role in your social media marketing campaign. However, you need to have a policy in place to ensure that the company and the employees are on the same page.
In your policy, there should be rules toward responding to comments and other user-generated content. Clarify how the company will manage its brand presence. Also, describe the type of posts that can be shared, how to respond, when to respond and when not to respond. Most importantly, outline the role of employees or team posting on behalf of the organization.
Be aware of your social presence
Creating a social media account can be done with just a few clicks of a button. That said, it is easy to create a fake account and impersonate the genuine brand. They can reach out to fans and promise to give them special discounts in exchange of their personal information. This can damage the company’s reputation and can lead customers astray. To prevent this from happening, you need to maintain an inventory of your brand’s social media presence. The fake account should be dealt with at the soonest possible time to limit the damage caused to the brand. Don’t let impostors control your identity.
Monitor social activity
Staying vigilant is the key to protecting your reputation on social media. Make sure at least one person stays on top of your social media activity throughout the day. You can use tools such as Hootsuite to keep track of any mention of your company.
Protect your content
Your content, be it articles, images, videos or infographics, are your intellectual property. But since social made it easier to share content, it can be difficult to determine who owns them. Often, the blog posts that took you hours to write are not being attributed to your brand.
If you want to share your blog post with your fans and followers, do so by sharing the link of the said blog post. Even if people start sharing your post, they will still be directed to your website. Also, consider adding your logo to your images. No matter how many people shares these images, people will know they’re yours.
