Maintaining your social media profile successfully by TranzDigi

When it comes to online personal or business branding, the creation of social media profiles is absolutely essential. Whether you are just trying to get more exposure online, connect with your fans or customers, or working to purify your online reputation, social networking profiles are the way to go as they will rank highly in search engine results when people search for your name

Your name

Its important to use your name while creating your social media profile. Be true to the name you want to be found under.

Your username

So where does the username come into play? Some people who can’t find your social media links may just assume it is something obvious and type it in directly. Think about what people would search you under, and make sure that is your username that is included in the URL. Be sure to think of brand dominance when it comes to this part, otherwise you’ll end up like.

Your Profile Pic

There is great debate when it comes to profile photos / avatars on social networks in terms of whether you should go with your brand logo or the face of a person. My usual thought is that if you are a big enough brand or business with a well-recognized logo, definitely go with the logo. If you’re building a personal brand or you are a public figure like a blogger, politician, musician, artist, etc., go with the personal picture. People are more likely to want to engage with a person than a brand logo. Once decided stick to the same picture as the default profile picture.
Another thing that helps in SEO value is naming your photo file appropriately before uploading it. Be sure you have named it yourname.jpg or yourbusiness.jpg as opposed to uploading IMG0153.jpg

Your Link

This varies from one social media network to the next. But be sure to seek out any opportunity to get your link on the main page of your social profile. For example, many people miss the fact they can add their link on their YouTube channel page, or in the box underneath their profile picture on Facebook. Make sure that your link is front and center so that people can find it quickly and click through to your website. Also, on networks such as LinkedIn, be sure to customize your link’s anchor text by using the Other option instead of just using My Website, My Company, or My Blog

Your Bio

Your main social profile’s bio is usually just a sentence or two about yourself or your business. Think of it as a perfect place to put your elevator pitch and include your main keywords. I don’t mean in a salesy way, but just if someone were to ask you to tell them briefly what you or your business is about, what would you say

Your Interests

Some profiles allow you to have additional extended information about yourself in the form of favorite books, television shows, movies, and so on. A lot of people skip over this, especially when it comes to business profiles, but that is a big mistake. Look at these fields as an additional place to get some great keyword value. I doubt there is a niche out there that doesn’t have at least one or two published books. Find books, documentaries, and profiles of influential people in your industry and add those in these additional fields

Your Background

Background is limited to select networks such as Twitter and Youtube. This is one to invest in for those networks that allow it. A customized background will allow you to share additional information that may not fit in the fields of your profile. It will also share additional links and icons to other networks so people know your brand can be found elsewhere

Your Privacy Settings

So after you have all of your profile filled out, pictures uploaded, and backgrounds and designs. The next thing that you will need to take a look at are your privacy settings. These vary from network to network; but you will want to make sure that the information you would like to be public is viewable

Your Activity

Once your profile setup is complete, your on-going mission will be to maintain a healthy level of activity on your main social networks, which for most will be Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These are three open ended yet important guidelines to follow on any network.

• Don’t just add friends – engage with them!
• Don’t just join groups – participate in them!
• Don’t just post updates to update – think about what your connections want to see and share!

Your Promotion

Finally, there is nothing like a little health promotion of your social network profiles to help more people find and connect with you, giving you more people to engage with! Be sure to add your social networking profile links to:

• • • Your website.
    • Your email signature.
    • Your forum signature.
    • Your business card.

Also, don’t forget to interlink your profiles to each other. If you can share multiple links on a social profile, make sure some of those are to your main social profiles!