Image by luc legay

Before I get into more discussion on using social media for businesses purposes I wanted to talk a bit about social media profiles. Because before you start signing up for social media sites, you need to know how to put together an impressive social media profile.

Your profile is one of the most important parts of social media. Your profile is what tells your readers, your friends, your viewers, your fans, your clients, and the members of that particular social media community…. about you. After all, you will be having discussions with people online. Most likely, you will never meet these people in person. So, the only way they will really begin to get to know anything about you is by your profile.

You could let them know as little or as much about you as you would like. Some people feel more at ease not getting too personal, leaving kids’, husbands’, and wives’ names out of it.  Other people love getting personal, and enjoy doing so on their profiles.

But the most important thing is to be honest, sincere, and genuine on your profiles. Community members are smart and will pick up any fakeness. And, once they do, you will never be able to warm up to them, and they won’t trust you.

You only have one chance to make a first impression

I know, cliche, right?  But it’s true. Your profile is your chance to stand out, to be noticed. You want community members to remember you from your profile.

I am going to use examples from StumbleUpon profiles, as StumbleUpon is my favorite social networking site and the one I spend the most time at.

Here is an example of a StumbleUpon profile that uses the default image and barely uses any other information. He is active on there…. you can see he has been on StumbleUpon for nearly a year and has stumbled more than 1300 pages. But, I’m not sure that he is truly benefiting from the StumbleUpon Community as he is hiding behind a default avatar and not sharing a thing about himself.

Note: I have removed his name and Country from the following screenshot:

There is nothing about him in the above profile. Does he work? Don’t know. What are his hobbies? Not sure. What does he enjoy? What does he look like? hmmmm….. I have no clue.

And, the thing about it is – how do you trust this person? In my mind, he is not taking the StumbleUpon community seriously. If he was, he would have a face to his name. If he doesn’t want to take the three minutes to put a photo online, then he doesn’t want to take the time to get to know me as a community member. Or to take the time to use StumbleUpon in the way it should be used. He is truly missing out on the wonderful online conversation called “social media”.

Is this how you want people to get the first impression about you?

No, of course not.

When you interact in a real-life community, if you didn’t show someone your face or look them in the eye, do you think they would welcome you? If you didn’t share anything with your neighbors, would they share with you? Doubtful.

You need to be an active part of the community to which you belong

Get personal. Share a little.  Be honest, be genuine, be real. Here is a snapshot of my “about me” profile page from StumbleUpon.

Already, you see a bit of a difference. Let’s pick it apart a bit, shall we?

• The color – Notice the color difference between the default profile and mine? Mine is purple. Most social networking profiles have color templates to chose from. Choose a color that speaks for you. Purple is fun and sassy, yet professional. I thought that was a good fit for me.
• The picture – Do not use the default avatar. As I said above, it tells me that you are not going to take the community seriously. Choose an avatar that tells me something about you or your company. Try a real picture, or cartoon avatar, maybe your business logo. But, whatever you decide, make it memorable, and keep it the same across the other social networking sites you use. It just makes it easier for people to recognize you.
• Detailed “About Me” Section – Come up with a well thought-out description for your social media profiles. Community members will not take the time to read an entire page about you. But, if you get to the point and be descriptive in a short paragraph, they’ll probably check out the whole thing. And, they will know enough about you to get started. Hopefully, you have made a good impression.
• Links – Use links when possible. People might not take the time to check out your site(s) if they have to copy and paste links. However, if they are clickable, you have a much better chance they will go take a look. Plus, if any of these social media sites have do-follow, your sites will get a bit of link juice. This is good for moving up in the search engines.
• Profile Name - Come up with a memorable profile name. If you are setting up your social media profiles for business purposes, then use your business name. This is perfect for branding purposes. If you use your business name on all the social networking sites, you should rank well for your business name – exactly what you want. Even if you are setting up profiles for personal use, use the same profile name across all social networking sites. This makes it easier for others who frequent all the same communities to recognize you.

Bottom line, your profile is the first impression the online community will have of you. Make a great first impression…. help your profile stand out from the rest, and everything else is a bit easier. Come across like you don’t care about the community in your profile, and you will never enjoy it or get as much out of it as you could have – and what a shame that would be.