When it comes to building your business and making a stronger impact in the market world, improving your social media strategy is imperative. The last thing you want potential clients to do is land on your social media profiles and feel like there has been zero activity in the last three years. If your social media feed provides no value, the perception is that neither does your company. Revitalize your business image by utilizing these critical ways to refresh your social media strategy right now.
Keep Your Profile Photos Consistent
Are you currently using multiple random photos that you conveniently were able to upload to the various social media platforms at the time? Bad idea. You need to unify your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram profiles by using the same profile photo . Otherwise, it will appear that each page has a different purpose, or even worse, that these are personal profiles and not business profiles.
If you are not in love with the photos, get yourself a professional picture taken that can be resized to fit the various social media pages. These platforms are serving as advertisements for your company. Separate what looks like a casual “selfie” picture that you took at a restaurant from what you should have – a clean, focused photo from a photographer.
Not every social media platform abides by the same size rules for photos, which is maybe why you used different pictures in the first place. Take your business image seriously and take the time to resize your picture to fit each social media profile. Here are the standard sizes to make your photo cropping experience simple:
- LinkedIn profile photo: 400 X 400 pixels (minimum)
- LinkedIn custom background: 1584 X 396
- LinkedIn cover photo: 974 X 330 pixels
- LinkedIn banner image: 646 X 220 pixels
- Instagram profile picture: 110 X 110 pixels
- Facebook profile picture: 170 X 170 pixels
- Facebook cover photo: 828 X 465 pixels
- Twitter profile photo: 400 X 400 pixels
- Twitter header image: 1,500 X 500 pixels
- YouTube profile picture: 800 X 800 pixels
- YouTube cover photo: 2,560 X 1,440 pixels on desktop
- Google+ profile picture: 250 X 250 pixels (minimum)
- Google+ cover photo: 1080 X 608 pixels
- Pinterest profile picture: 150 X 150 pixels
Troubleshoot for Inappropriate Content
Refresh your social media strategy by removing sloppy photos all together and taking down inappropriate posts. This includes untangling yourself from photos that could compromise your professional image. You can control who can tag your business posts, and you can pre-approve these tags before they appear on your profile.
- Twitter lets you restrict the people that can tag you in photos, and remove tags
- Instagram permits you to approve photos you’re tagged in before they show up on your profile
- Facebook allows you to approve tags on your photos, and un-tag yourself from photos
Fix Broken Links
Are you going to look professional if your social media content has links that go absolutely no where? Don’t waste people’s precious time. Make sure you aren’t hosting broken links on your social media profile. Click on them every so often to ensure that you are maintaining the credibility of your brand.
Link Your Social Media Profiles Together
Instead of the “one and done” approach to just linking to your website – provide links to your other social media pages. Cross-promoting your Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn pages on Facebook helps increase traffic and spread your business – especially when you are providing unique content to each profile. For example, Facebook lets you add multiple links to their websites field, and LinkedIn allows you to connect your Twitter account to your profile.
Rotate Your Instagram Bio Link
Make the most of your Instagram profile by rotating the website link used on your profile over there. Instagram only supports one link for your profile, but there’s no limit as to how often you can update it. You could change the Instagram link to coincide with a new campaign or to link to a new promotional offer for a service.
Bring attention to the rotation of your new Instagram bio links by posting new photos that support that new link. “See our profile for a link to this offer” is a common phrase seen on Instagram – and it takes no more than 30 seconds.
Add Keywords to Your Profile
Decide which keywords best describe what you want to be known for – and own them. Maybe your keywords are “physical therapy” and “physiotherapy.” Make a list of relevant keywords that focus on your business’ niche, and add these keywords to your profile to improve your search engine optimization to be found faster in Google searches.
Search engine optimization can be perfected with the help of a digital marketing agency to target keywords for your industry. Insert these keyword terms so that they appear in your LinkedIn job title, job description, skills, bio copy, in photo names, interests, experience, and other categories. Make sure they aren’t just added randomly and recklessly. Use them in a logical and professional way that reads properly.
Add Client Endorsements and Reviews
While you are refreshing your social media strategy, remember to keep the “social” in social media. You may be posting advertisements and the benefits of your products and services – but people trust family and friends more than they trust you. Positive reviews and testimonials from clients can go a long way in amplifying the power of your business. Earning the trust of people needs to happen organically, not just because you say so.
Be sure to get written approval from any client to post their pictures and endorsements before they go public. Start asking clients you are close with to take a little time to express their satisfaction with your service. There are several ways to add approved reviews and endorsements of your products and services to refresh your social media presence:
- Use LinkedIn’s endorsements section where people can endorse the skills on your profile, or leave unique endorsements.
- Use the visitor post section on Facebook pages for reviews and testimonials.
- Pin positive tweets on the front of your Twitter page so it can be easily read at the top of your Twitter feed.
You can also share your positive reviews as social media content. Taking a few minutes to ask for feedback and posting it can add a ton of social media sizzle to your business’ image.
“Like” relevant Facebook Pages
Make anything that you want associated with your brand to be public knowledge by “liking” them on Facebook. Delete anything that will portray your brand in a negative light. Consider the industries, fields, thought leaders, associations, positive interests, events, conferences, equipment, relevant Facebook groups, and valuable elements that when combined paint the perfect picture of your business. Find them on Facebook – and “like” them on Facebook.
Now that you have these steps to refresh your social media strategy, don’t procrastinate – put them into action today. Social media is constantly changing, and the best way to keep it fresh and new is to stay active and keep your content updated.