Business social profiles

This is probably the biggest mistake I hear out there -- people create a "dummy" personal account (like Holly HubSpot) to create a brand page (like HubSpot). People do this to make sure that employees don't abuse the ability to have a Page connected to a personal Facebook account or simply to ensure that people aren't posting things on the business Page that should have been posted on their personal page. Creating dummy personal accounts goes against Facebook's terms of service, which means that your Facebook business Page could get shutdown at any moment.

Avoid Facebook shutdowns by empowering your employees to connect to your business Page via their personal account and then be sure to give them adequate training so they aren't confused about where they should be hitting publish.

You want a profile picture that's easily recognizable by your potential Fans. That could be anything from a company logo for a big brand to a headshot of yourself if you're a solopreneur or consultant. Being recognizable is important to getting found and liked -- especially through Graph Search. When choosing a photo, make sure it'll look great in a 160 px by 160 px sizing -- though it should be uploaded in a 180 px by 180 pix box.

Next, you need to pick a Cover Photo that'll blow your current and potential Fans out of the water. Since it gets the most space above the fold on your Facebook Page, make sure you're choosing one that'll be pleasing to their eyes -- and maybe even make them stay longer on your Facebook Page.

Depending on your goals with Facebook, you should think about including links to your website in your Profile Picture and Cover Photo. Whether it's to a blog post, a piece of lead-gen content, or just an "about us" page, links are opportunities for interested folks to get to know your company. The descriptions of your Profile Picture and Cover Photo are prime real estate for those links, as they'd be front and center on your page.

You know those four pesky boxes underneath your Cover Photo? Those are thumbnails for the apps on your page. Make sure those are optimized as well. Choose the most engaging apps out of all the ones you've enabled on your page to appear in the top row. Then, try customizing the images to maximize their engagement rate.

Amidst the visual skills you've been honing in the previous steps, don't forget about one of the most important sections of all: your About section. It sits right under your profile picture on the left side -- one of the first places people will look if they're scanning your page.

So be sure to get people's attention with short yet descriptive copy -- by doing so, new Fans will know exactly what your page is about before they like you.

If you want your Facebook Fans to be able to message you directly on your Page, definitely enable the Messages feature -- but make sure you have the bandwidth to monitor your Facebook Page inbox.

We recommend making it as easy as possible for your Fans to reach out to you by enabling Messages -- but only if you have the time dedicated to do so. If you can't dedicate resources to checking your Messages inbox, make it very clear in your "About" snippet the most direct way to get in touch with you ... and then, of course, actually respond to those inquiries from your Fans.

Before you post a single thing to your Facebook page, take a second to think about your posting strategy. When are you going to post? Morning? Afternoon? Night? And how often will you be posting? Once a day? More often?



This is all important to think about because it will affect how successful your Page is in the long run.

Why focus on posting pictures first? Well, there are two reasons: 1) You need to make sure your "photos" app (an automatic app added to your page) actually has a photo in it, and 2) photos have been proven to be more engaging to Fans than the average post.

If you continue to post picture after picture, you may see your reach and engagement go down. Why? While it's the most engaging post format, too much of a good thing is bad for your Facebook Page. So try switching up the post formats to increase the chance your audience sees them.

In other formats, make sure that your content is optimized for that post format. Case in point: Don't post a link that has a poor featured image. Since links now pull in large featured images on Facebook, you've got to make sure that featured image actually works and looks okay. Otherwise, your Fans will see something wonky and, most likely, won't click on it, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of posting that link in the first place. So make sure each post format is correctly formatted for the platform.

Even if your goal is to generate leads from Facebook, you don't want to make every post a photo of an ebook with accompanying copy that says "Download this ebook here: http://link.com" Instead, switch up lead-gen posts and fluffy, engagement-only posts -- you'll get more people interacting with you (and that means you'll have a better chance of being shown in the News Feed later on) and grow your Fan base. That way, when you do have lead-gen content, you'll have a much bigger audience available to click on your links.

Bonus tip: For all content that has links in it, be sure to place the link before the end of the fifth line of text -- that's where it will truncate and include a "see more" tag. That way, your Fans don't have to click "see more" to access your call-to-action.

Now that you've gotten some content up on your page, promote the heck out of it like it was a product of yours. Make sure you have social profile buttons on your website so your visitors can connect with you that way. Try embedding a Facebook Like Box in your blog sidebar. Also, be sure to alert your email lists that you're on Facebook. Without promotion, it will be much harder for your Page to grow.

Remember back in step 4 when we talked about shortened URLs? This is the step you can measure how they're performing. In your marketing analytics, you can track how many clicks those URLs are getting -- and if you have closed-loop marketing, you'll be able to attribute leads and customers who came from those URLs. Pretty sweet, right?

Besides your bottom-line metrics, you should also dive into Facebook Insights to find Facebook-specific engagement metrics. You'll be able to see the demographics of your Fans and, if you have more than 30 Likes, the demographics of the people who engage with you, among other things.

Use Facebook Insights to check out some cool data that'll help shape your non-lead-gen content.

So you know what works for your lead-gen and non-lead-gen content now -- that means you should put some ammo behind future posts that'll have those characteristics so they can be even more successful.

Putting a little bit of your budget in Facebook ads can go a long way, if you're basing them off of the right insights.

Unless you need to hide your face in the public for personal security reasons, you should always have a professional looking photo represent you. You might be able to get around not having a photo, but as studies show in having photos in Google search results, those with photos might expect a significant increase in CTR (click-through rate) after people find you in LinkedIn search results. Actually, LinkedIn themselves have said that profiles with photos are 7x more likely to be viewed by others. And, besides, if you want to make a deeper connection with someone,shouldn’t you be showing your real face?

LinkedIn is the most trusted social network out there, so you should have a name that is cognizant of that and stay away from gimmicky nicknames. You’ll have plenty of other areas in your profile where you can differentiate yourself.

Speaking of areas to differentiate yourself, look no further than your professional headline, the 110 characters that appear prominently just under your name both on your profile, and more importantly on search results. You don’t need to put here that you are TITLE at COMPANY NAME – viewers can see that in your profile. You need to include information in your Professional Headline that will draw your potential visitor into wanting to find out more about you. Be explicit as to how you can help people – but do it in a professional and well-branded manner. Overtly selling to people in your Professional Headline feels like a slap in the face to many a LinkedIn user. Ouch.

Here’s counter-intuitive one, but it’s important to put yourself in the shoes of your target visitor. I live in Orange County, California, but if I was in charge of a territory that was primarily centered around Los Angeles, I would want to change my location to Los Angeles. It makes me more approachable in my target market because I’m considered “local,” and it also means I get found in more relevant search results because many are using the location feature to filter results.

The concept here is the same as in optimizing your location. What would the type of person you want to find you enter in the “Industry” field? This can be tough because even those that work at the same company as you might list different industries here. One interesting thing is if you have upgraded to a paid LinkedIn account, your complete “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” will also include data as to which industries best represent the visitors to your profile. You might have to do some experimenting here, and not everyone uses the Industry feature to filter search results, but you should put your best foot forward and experiment in seeing how changing your industry might affect your profile views.

LinkedIn provides you with a default URL which you can – and should – customize. Some talk about the SEO benefits of doing so, but I look at it this way: Once you’re invested in LinkedIn as part of your professional infrastructure, you’ll probably want to include your LinkedIn URL in your email signature or even print it on your business card. Wouldn’t you rather have a professional looking – and easy to input – URL like http://www.linkedin.com/in/nealschaffer rather than http://www.linkedin.com/pub/neal-schaffer/4a/z89/145/ ?

When this feature was rolled out in early 2009, many were asking, “What should I use my LinkedIn status update for?” Since that time, posting updates of our lives has become a common part of our culture, whether it’s through Facebook, Twitter, a photo on Instagram, or even in our enterprise using Salesforce Chatter or Yammer. When someone finally lands on your profile, your activity section will show your latest status update – if you have one. This is the only dynamically updated part of your profile which gives others the ability to see what’s on your mind, so get into the habit of updating your status on a regular basis. Sharing thoughtful, insightful, and relevant news that might interest your target visitor just once a day is a great way to keep your professional profile “fresh” – as well as engage with your own network of connections!

Updating your status update should be part of your daily LinkedIn routine but will undoubtedly be one of the more time-consuming tasks in this checklist. One of the others will be writing a well-crafted and branded professional summary. If your Professional Headline served the role of luring visitors to your profile from people search results, your Professional Summary must expand upon that branding further while also supporting what you say in your headline as well as potentially ending with a good call-to-action. You must “close the deal” by making sure that, after your profile visitors read your Professional Summary, they will be sold on you and want to initiate contact. If you work for a company who is cognizant of their employer branding, you might want to ask your HR or Marketing department if they have a standard paragraph you could use to showcase the company you work for. Either way, if there is one area you want to spend time on crafting a few well-versed paragraphs, it’s here!

Your LinkedIn Profile is about helping you get found: It is an Inbound Marketing tool. That’s why it’s important to connect the dots with your past as much as possible to allow as many people from your past to find you – and for you to be able to find them. Don’t stop at your current employer: Go back in history and fill in every employer you’ve ever worked for and educational institution you’ve attended. I go as far back as high school on my own profile, and even include short-term study abroad programs – which have helped me restore old ties with valued professionals in my network.

Do a search for keywords for which you would like to appear in LinkedIn search results. Look at the profiles of those that appear in the top few results. Examine the location and frequency for which they’ve placed those keywords. Now take that knowledge and apply it to your own profile. The LinkedIn search algorithm is similar to Google: No one knows exactly how it works and it change at any time. So instead of being fixated on the search results, in addition to the exercise I just mentioned, consider adding as niche as possible keywords to your profile to differentiate yourself. Keywords really do matter: One of the case studies in my Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing book was about a gentleman who generated 50% of his annual revenue because he was the only person who came up in a search result living in a certain country working in a certain industry who utilized a certain keyword.

With all of the quid pro quo recommendations you see out there, many ask if LinkedIn recommendations are for real. Yes, they very much are in the context that they help you establish credibility if someone viewing your profile doesn’t know you. When I speak on LinkedIn, I often talk about how I was looking for a realtor on LinkedIn and found three good looking profiles. One had zero recommendations, another had two, and another had about more than 30. Who do you think I first contacted? You don’t need to have 30+ recommendations, but a few real recommendations can go a long way in helping to establish your credibility.

For the purpose of your profile, you should at least be editing your Skills and make sure that those that you want associated with your brand comprise all of the maximum 50 you can display. Some believe that endorsements might also affect how you appear in LinkedIn search results. It’s time to stop ignoring endorsements and embrace them by letting them show off your skill set and providing your profile with a little bit more credibility (although not nearly as credible as having good recommendations, of course).

LinkedIn has given you the opportunity to add visual elements to your profile for some time, but have you leveraged the opportunity? Unless you’ve been living in a cave without the Internet for the last year, we’ve seen the emergence – and importance – of the visual in social media marketing. This primarily includes photos and videos but it applies to memes (like the one I’m using at the top of this post) and all sorts of graphics – and even presentations. LinkedIn gives you the ability to upload contents from a link (presentations from SlideShare or Prezi, videos from YouTube or Vimeo, and documents from Scribd are all supported), or directly from your computer (in addition to images, PDF, Word, and PowerPoint presentations are supported). If you’ve ever been interviewed or had your picture taken at a professional event, this is your chance to promote yourself by adding these visual elements. But don’t stop there: This is the area where you can be as creative as you want to be. If you’re lacking in ideas, ask your creative marketing folks for ways in which you can help promote your company through uploading visuals onto your profile. Even uploading your standard corporate presentation will at least provide something for your viewers to look at – and it might provide you business benefits as well!

If you’re on LinkedIn looking for business opportunities, you need to make sure that you make yourself easy to contact. If you’re a 3rd degree connection or beyond, many won’t go through the hassle of sending a high-risk introduction or buying an InMail in order to contact you. LinkedIn gives you the ability to include your contact details, such as up to three websites and a Twitter handle, for anyone to see. There is also a “Advice for Contacting [Name]” section where you could include your email address and/or phone number. You also have the option of subscribing to the LinkedIn Personal Plus account plan and for a low price joining the OpenLink Network, giving those not in your network the opportunity to email you without having to pay for it. Don’t make it hard for those who want to get in touch with you to contact you: If they can’t easily contact you, they might just move on to the next person!

Joining the same Group allows others to contact you using the Group messaging feature. Which LinkedIn Groups should you join? You don’t have to join the maximum 50, but at least join a few groups that are related to your industry, discipline, or location – not to mention alumni groups from your university or even previous workplaces. If you haven’t been active in groups before, you might be surprised as to the business opportunities that exist within LinkedIn Groups! Even if you don’t have time to be active, displaying those group logos on your profile increases your contactability.

While this might not apply to everyone, if it applies to you, you should certainly be leveraging this. LinkedIn gives you the ability to add a number of additional items to your profile called “Sections”, including:

Projects
Test Scores
Courses
Patents
Certifications
Volunteering & Causes
If these are important to you or your professional brand, you’ll want to make sure they’re part of your professional profile.

There are many people you need to follow on Twitter for business reasons such as customers, suppliers, neighboring businesses, peers and competitors. As the number of people you follow grows, so does the noise. It gets harder to hear the important messages among all of the others.

So how can you make sure you don’t miss anything important? Use Twitter lists.

Twitter lists are its most powerful and least-used feature. Lists allow you to group the important people you follow so they don’t get lost in the noise of everyone else.

You can create separate lists for:

Customers
People in your industry
Social media teachers
People in professional organizations
By creating and using Twitter lists, you can focus on tweets from groups of people and decide when you want to see them, so tweets from important people don’t get lost.

You can create up to 20 different Twitter lists with up to 500 accounts in each list. You can monitor each list separately using Twitter.com or Twitter tools like HootSuite.

Whom you follow determines your daily experience of Twitter. If you follow people who inspire you, people who say intelligent things and challenge you to think differently, Twitter becomes a joy.

One smart way to focus on the people who inspire you (without ignoring everyone else) is to create a private conversation list.

Include in this list:

People who inspire you in business
People who inspire you personally
People who are fun to talk with
Jump into the list when you are looking for inspiration or encouragement during your workday.

You can make your conversation list public or private. By creating a private list, you are the only person who knows who is on your list and when you make changes to the list. However, everything you say to people on this list is still public, so watch your words.

Your Twitter profile picture appears next to every tweet you send. It’s an opportunity to associate an image with your business in the minds of everyone who follows you.

The challenge is that your Twitter profile picture is very small and square. For most businesses, your logo or personal headshot isn’t the right size or shape to represent you well.
If your profile picture is your logo:

Make sure your logo fits into the square size. Cropped-off logos look unprofessional and give the impression that your business doesn’t care about the details.
Make sure your logo is readable. If your logo contains words that cannot be read, you are wasting the space. Create an image without the words that captures the essence of your logo.
Consider switching to a headshot. People connect with faces, not logos. If you are the driving force of your business, why not use your face to make your business seem more human and approachable?

Twitter allows you to customize the look and colors of your Twitter profile page. This gives you an opportunity to provide additional information about your business to everyone who checks out your profile.

You can create a custom graphic and use it for your Twitter background.

Your Twitter profile bio tells your business story in the length of a text message. That’s a lot of information crammed into just a few words.

The best Twitter profiles include these components:

Tell people what you do
Explain how you help people
Show a little personality
Look at your business Twitter profile with fresh eyes. Then rewrite it so it tells potential customers how you can help them and what benefit they can get from connecting with you. And don’t forget to share a little of your passion!

Mark your calendar to review and update your Twitter bio again in 6 months, because even the best bio gets stale over time.

Are you frustrated by only having 160 characters for your Twitter bio? Then consider creating a special Twitter landing page.

Most people use their Twitter profile web link to drop people off at their website front door or their blog. But you can create a special Twitter landing page and use that page as your Twitter profile web address.
A Twitter landing page is a special page on your website designed to introduce people from Twitter to your business. It’s like having a greeter there to help people get the scoop on your business and how you use Twitter.

Your Twitter landing page could include:

A personal message from you
Details about your business products and services
How to become a customer
What you tweet about
The people behind your Twitter account
Even though you have more space, keep your Twitter landing page short and to-the-point to make a great impression on your visitors.

Many Twitter accounts are not run by real people. They are automated programs called bots. And some of them are spammers.

There are bots that provide useful information. However, most bots are spewing out tweets from other people and other sources that are not on target for your Twitter business goals. They clog up your Twitter stream and don’t provide any business value.

You may not have known you were following a bot. Bots gain an audience by following many people and taking advantage of people who automatically follow back.

In general, it’s better not to follow automatically everyone who follows you if you want to avoid having your Twitter stream fill up with garbage.
So how can you spot a bot or spammer or someone whom you should not follow back?

Here are a few suggestions:

Don’t follow people with an egg picture. If they haven’t bothered to upload a real profile picture, chances are they are not going to say anything worth hearing.
Check their numbers. An account that follows many people but has only a few followers is probably a spammer.
Review their tweets. Are they all retweets or quotes? Did they send the exact tweet to many users over a very short time? It’s probably a bot.
They say it’s a bot in their bio. Yes, some bots will tell you they are bots in their bio.
No favorite tweets or lists. A bot or spammer doesn’t mark tweets as favorites or create lists.

Social media is all about conversations, and conversations mean that you talk and listen.

On Twitter, you can listen by:

Reading tweets. This is the best way to find out what is on the minds of your Twitter community.
Look for replies and mentions. Every time you check Twitter throughout the day, you should first check for direct messages and mentions. Mentions are public messages that include your Twitter handle and direct messages are private messages sent directly to you.
Search for your business name. Sometimes, people talk about your business without using your Twitter username. You should regularly check Twitter for people who mention your business name by creating a search and saving it.
You should follow everyone who talks to you on Twitter. So as you find people talking about your business or talking directly to you, follow them.

Make it easy for people to find your business on Twitter by adding your Twitter username to all of your business materials.
For example, you should give your Twitter username in these locations:
Your website (with a link)
Your email signature (with a link)
Your email newsletter (with a link)
Your business cards
Signs posted in your business
Paperwork you give customers (receipts, invoices, statements, etc.)
Menus and product information sheets.

Twitter is a great place to talk with your customers. However, this means that you have to connect with them.

It’s impossible for you to know which of your customers are on Twitter. For that reason, it’s important for you to advertise your Twitter account to your customers. This way, your customers can find you.

How can you tell who is your customer on Twitter? Here are a few tips:

They talk to you. Some customers may start a conversation with you using your Twitter handle. You should follow everyone who talks to your business.
They mention your business. You should set up a saved search on Twitter so you can find people talking about your business. Always reply to people who mention your business and follow them.

In general, don’t worry about trying to control who follows you. But it’s a good idea to prune out the followers who have stopped using Twitter.

A great free tool for finding people who haven’t tweeted for a while is unTweeps. After you authorize the app, it allows you to create a list of your followers based on how long since their last tweet. You can use the free account three times each month.
Start with people who haven’t tweeted for 6 months (or even 9 months) and review the list. You can mark individual accounts to unfollow.

Tip: If you have a large number of people who are no longer tweeting, don’t unfollow them all at the same time. This action can signal Twitter to suspend your account for aggressive and spammer-like behavior.

Sometimes, the best way to improve your experience with a tool is to ask more from it. If you’ve been casually using Twitter and allowing the results to unfold, maybe it’s time to give Twitter a real job.

It takes some time using Twitter before you’ll be ready to put it to work on your business goals. But after you understand Twitter and have built a community, it’s time to take your Twitter use to the next level.

Twitter can help you meet your business goals. Think about a challenge you face in your business today. How could Twitter help you solve that problem?
For example:

Offer a Twitter-only special. If your restaurant or store is a ghost town on Tuesday nights, why not promote a Tuesday night event on Twitter? Offer a special deal (free dessert or a special discount) for everyone who knows the secret code you tweet out Tuesday at 5 pm.
Reward people who retweet you. Is your blog a little lonely? Twitter is a great tool to drive traffic to your blog. Set up a contest or a reward for people who retweet your messages about your blog posts. You might give away an ebook, a seat at an upcoming webinar, a free 30-minute consultation or a product discount. Explain the terms of the offer in a blog post or on a special website page and link to that page in your tweet so people understand your offer.
Organize a tweetup at your business. Have you been chatting with local people whom you have not met in real life? Or has it been a long time since they have visited your business? Why not organize an informal tweetup? Set a date and time, offer refreshments and give people something fun to do or learn and they will come.
The best way to make Twitter work for your business is to try something new. Learn from what happens and try it again with improvements.

People love pictures. And this year, social media has really expanded to give people more of what they want.
Statistics show that people are more likely to read your stuff online if you include pictures. This means that just by adding photos to your tweets, you can greatly increase the amount of attention they get.

Did you know that every tweet has its own web address?

You can save important tweets using the Favorites feature. However, many businesses use the Favorites as part of their Twitter strategy, and so they need another way to save tweets.

To get to the web address of any tweet:

Display the tweet on your screen.
Click Expand. Twitter provides more tweet options
Click Details. Twitter displays the tweet on its own page using its unique web address.
Bookmark the tweet using your browser or bookmarking tool.

When most businesses start using Twitter, they experiment for a while. As a result, they often tweet about random topics, or don’t tweet very often because they don’t know what to say.

After mastering the basics of Twitter’s message types and building out your online community, it’s time to get serious about your conversation topics. Or to use marketing terms, it’s time to develop a content strategy.

Every business has a core group of topics around its products and services. These are things that you know because of your business, and things that your customers and online community want to learn from you. Often, you educate your customers about these topics.

Many businesses struggle to find these topics because they take their knowledge for granted. With a little effort, you can start to see your business knowledge through the eyes of your customers and figure out the topics that really spark interest in your community.

These are the topics you should focus on with Twitter and social media in general. In fact, if you have a blog, these should be your blog categories.

Brainstorm a list of 5 to 7 conversation topics, and then create a list of 10 or more specific things within each category. These will help you organize your Twitter conversation and will spark ideas when you can’t think of anything to say.

Pay special attention to tweets that are retweeted, get replies or are marked as favorites. Those tweets hit a nerve, and you should talk more about those topics.

Note: The best Twitter topics for your business are things that provide practical solutions to problems your potential customers face every day.

When you have a great conversation going on Twitter, or you find a topic that people respond to on Twitter, why not expand the conversation to the people who read your blog?

Twitter now makes it easy for you to embed a tweet into a blog post so it looks like a tweet and has the same interactive features it has on Twitter. In other words, you can write a blog post around a tweet and your blog visitors can interact with you on Twitter through your blog.