We’ve discussed the importance of Social Media, being on the “big three” (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter), but once you’re there, then what? You’re going to want to stand out from the crowd. What we’re going to talk about over the next couple weeks or so is different ways to personalize your different Social Media accounts – and I’ll be learning some of these at the same time and letting you know what I learn and how to implement it.
Let’s start with Twitter – the one I’ve already learned how to personalize! Once you’ve got your awesome “handle”, or user name, either related to your personal name or your business name (there’s arguments for both sides as to which is better, I’ve gone with a business handle), you’re ready to start “tweeting”. There are different templates you can choose from but they also allow you to personalize the look more, not hugely, but it can have a very big visual impact.
Personalizing your profile is where you should start. Your name can be similar to your handle if you’ve used your personal name as your handle, but if you’ve used your Business name you want to make sure that you put your personal name on your profile. This way people will be able to know who to face behind the name is! When you’re networking in real life you don’t go around saying “hi, I’m @arksquared”, but you would go “hi, I’m Anna Kouwenberg”. People often will remember your name more than your company, so you want to make sure that you have that in there.
You of course want to put your website address in as well; a back-link from twitter is not a bad thing for your SEO ranking! So make sure whatever page you deem most important is the one that you link to. Make sure that you also come up with a catchy, keyword rich, very descriptive bio as well – as much as you can in only 160 characters! There’s been a few times I’ve not followed someone because they had a bad bio and I couldn’t figure out who they were or remember them because they didn’t have a description. Very important!
Finally, you want to make sure that you change the design of your twitter account. You’ve probably noticed that one thing that is lacking on Twitter is ways to enter your contact information or really tell more about you. One way that many people achieve getting this information out is by putting it into their background image. I’ve simply made mine similar to the background of our company webpage, but I’ve seen some that work really well at getting more information out. Here are a couple of examples:
ByzHub shows a bunch of contact information and different ways to connect, Kelly has chosen just to show a bit more about herself by putting up some nice pictures. Whatever way you do it, it’s a great way to not only show more about yourself but to tie together your different marketing efforts. I’ve mentioned before, consistency is key! It’s crucial to have a consistent look across your marketing efforts if you want to be remembered, that’s how big brands get remembered! So either use an image you have already that would work well in the background that you’ve been using consistently or contact a graphic designer to make a personalized background for you, that’s something that we at ARK2 would love to take care of! Stay tuned for more on personalizing LinkedIn and Facebook!