This may seem like common sense, but as Linda Mattacks would say… common sense ain’t so common any more.
Every social media profile you create should start with spending some time checking out other people’s profiles (and learning from them), making friends, and commenting. It’s all about networking.
Follow them first and they’ll get curious and follow you. They’ll also become friends and want to meet you. Oh, and remember to add that all important link to your blog in your profile. Quite often we set up on a social site, are not sure whether we’ll use it or not and never go back to the profile page to add a link.
2. Use Multimedia
Use plenty of images, videos and other types of multimedia such as audio.
Social media sites were created for this – they want to give a multi sensory experience, so much so they make it easy to upload many types of media files. When you use multimedia, you create a much more interesting profile and it helps with branding.
More importantly it enables the customer to view your profile in the medium they prefer.
Let’s take Twitter as our example, your last images tweeted show up on your profile and can be opened as a page. Think how powerful this can be – you can Tweet out and ask for opinions -”Should I put pic A or Pic B as the image on a post about xxx”.
Using the images that your followers suggest means you can happily follow up with a thank you and a link to that post… This all looks interesting to other Twitter followers and more conversations generate… and more people look at your Twitter profile and find your blog…
Add share buttons for your favourite social media sites on each of your blog sites.
These are buttons like Twitter’s Tweet This, LinkedIn share and Pinterest’s Pin It. Integrate everything as much as possible so that you’ve got social traffic going in the direction you want.
Think strategically here – if your ideal customer is only found on LinkedIn, then limiting the sharing options to sharing on LinkedIn or emailing to a friend, means you’ll probably get more LI shares :)
Of course when you find someone who does this on your site you need a way around it… Add some sharing buttons to your browser extension so that if you find something really cool and there are none of your best/ favourite sharing buttons you can still share easily.
4. Consistent Content
You need BufferApp for this. It’s a terrific social tool, yes, I will call it a tool… that allows you to share your blog content at times that your audience is the most active.
You add your links and Buffer distributes them at predetermined times that suit your followers. You train your fans and followers to expect a useful article at certain times of the day.
Handy if you want to promote posts via social channels but keep forgetting. http://bufferapp.com/r/28773 This is my referal link, if you join up, Buffer will allow me to add another space :) .
5. Keyword Optimise
Everything in your social media profile should be keyword optimised, and especially all titles, tags and descriptions. Be careful not to stuff and by stuff we mean shove in so many keywords that a human beings eyes glaze over and they sigh deeply and click on someone else’s link.
You market to people first and foremost. As far as I am aware no search engine spider has ever stopped to buy something from a keyword stuffed social media profile. I’m happy to be wrong, but until them, remember the human beings.
6. Complete Your Profile
The search engines generally ignore half-finished profiles – it doesn’t make useful information for the person searching. It’s also bad for your branding if your profile isn’t complete.
Complete out everything before you start networking. Complete your profile so it speaks to your ideal customer and shows you are a human being as well. It’s tough to get the balance right but worth it when you do.
7. Watch VisitorBehaviour
Use the analytic tools provided by social media sites and pay attention to what people are doing on your page. This will tell you what’s working and what’s not.
If some features aren’t being used, eliminate them to cut down on clutter. Engage with your fans to find out what they’s really like.
Friend some of the more active ones and observe what they are sharing and then create the content that they crave.
On social media sites, it’s all about being real and authentic and that can be hard if you are not naturally sociable. If you consistently provide good content and increase user activity on your profile, the search engines will love you and your followers and fans will grow to love you too.
Your social media optimised profile will brand your business and drive new fans to back to your blog and you’ll be thrilled you spent an afternoon checking this.
