Your Socials are the Face of Your Business. Time for a Makeover!

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• YouTube
• and Snapchat

Optimize Your Social Media Profiles

Facebook Business Page

Tips:

Choose a Profile Pic

• Your profile pic should represent the brand. If that’s a person it should be a professional photo. If that’s a business it should be your logo.

Verify Your Business

• Verification means that Facebook is confirming your page officially represents your business with either a blue or grey check. Blue checks tend to be for celebrities, public figures, media companies or large brands.
• Follow these steps to verify your page.

Choose an @Username

• Make sure your @username matches your brand name.
• You have to have at least 30 page likes before you can set your @username.

Choose a Brand Name

• Make sure your page name matches your brand name on your website and any other communication.

Use the right template:

• Facebook has several templates for their business pages that enable different content tabs and action buttons for page viewers.
• To choose a new template: Settings > Edit Page > Templates > Edit.
• The templates are: standard, services, business, venues, nonprofit, politicians, restaurants & café’s, shopping, & video creator.

Fill Out Your Tabs

• Add a few relevant photos/videos, encourage a few of your customers to leave reviews, add your services and products to the services/shop tabs, link any relevant groups to your page etc.

Craft a Robust About Section

• If you’re a local business, add your address.
• Edit the page info and add as many details as you can. Such as operating hours, contact info, categories, other accounts (where you can plug your other socials) etc. The more info the better.

Create a story

• Cover photo recommended dimensions: 820 x 312 pixels.
• Craft a headline that hooks people and makes them want to read like your tagline or brand promise.
• Give a two paragraph max rundown of your brand story. You can even add pictures!

Post Schedule

• At least 3 posts per week, at most 3 posts per day.

Kick It Up a Notch

• Video Covers! Video covers give you the option to catch your audience’s attention as soon as they land on your page with a short commercial, tutorial, or product/service preview. Plus we already know that video gets the most engagement out of all social content but few people are using video headers for their pages.

Instagram Profile

Tips:

Activate A Business Profile

• Before you do anything to your IG profile, upgrade it to a business account. This requires connecting it to a Facebook page. That gives you access to analytics and special features that make it easier to look professional and impress your followers.

Choose a Profile Pic

• Same as Facebook if possible. This gets some brand recognition going across socials.

Choose A Name

• Pretty simple, it should be your brand name.

Choose A Username

• Also simple, it should match your brand name as well as the handles of your other socials. If the name you want is taken, follow the suggestions in the twitter section below to create a new one.

Create a Compelling Bio

• Instagram bios are a little more fun and funky than other social media bio sections, but they still tend to hold the same principles: signal who you’re for (target market) and what you can do for them (brand promise).
• I’ve noticed a solid trend of brands using a multi-line structure rather than paragraph.
• Add relevant emojis, it makes the bio visual and interesting, the keys to success on IG.
• ***Note*** As of this writing hashtags and usernames in bios are once again clickable, so take advantage of that.

Link Your Website(s)

• Instagram doesn’t allow clickable links in posts so you’ll frequently be directing people to the one clickable link available to you: your profile website link. #linkinbio anyone?
• This means you have two choices: change the link in your bio frequently with important developments, events, landing pages, and new content, or use a service like Linktree which enables hosting multiple links under one short link on your profile.
• Linktree is used by many small business brands on IG for just this purpose. You still direct people to the link in your bio but now when they click on it, they go to a special page with several links. For example to your blog, your other socials, your website home page or shop, your Eventbrite etc.

Add your Contact info

• Your followers need a way to get in touch with you once they’re ready to move further down your sales funnel. So give them as many options as possible!
• Add your business phone number/email and your address if you’re a local business.
• You also have the ability to add special buttons to your profile. This way your followers can book appointments, reserve tickets for events, order food, or make reservations directly from IG.

Post Schedule

• At least 3 posts per week, at most 3 posts per day

Kick It Up a Notch: Highlights!

• Highlights are permanent archived Instagram stories that sit at the top of your profile for followers to view. I’M SUPER EXCITED ABOUT HIGHLIGHTS. There’s so much you can do with them. You can save and highlight stories about your products or services, tutorial videos, blog posts, live shows, customer testimonials, the sky is really the limit with this.
• Pro-Tip: Create highlight covers to give a cohesive visual look. You can create them in Canva. Recommended dimensions: 1080×1980 pixels.

Twitter Profile

Tips:

Choose a Profile Pic

• Same as IG and Facebook if possible. Cohesion kicks all your profiles up a notch.

Choose a Cover Photo

• Choose a photo that is visually interesting, connects to your brand, and has your brand colors. What do I mean by connects to your brand? If it’s a personal brand, it can be a photo of you or a great quote by you. If it’s professional, it can be a photo of some aspect of the business or your slogan.
• Make sure that any content is centrally located so it doesn’t get cropped out. Recommended dimensions: 1500×500 pixels

Name It & Claim It

• Your Twitter name should match your brand. Plain and simple.

Match Your Handle

• Your handle (the @ name) should match your brand name. Sometimes that isn’t possible because a name might already be in use. If that’s the case, there are a few tricks you can use. Be sure that whatever you choose is still easily recognized as your brand name.
• This could be leaving out some vowels strategically, abbreviating words, adding an underscore between words or after the name, or adding a location such as US, NYC, or FL.

Make Your Bio a Bat Signal

• You don’t get infinite characters for your bio so you need to get a lot across with a little. The most important info: Who you’re for (your target audience) and what they can expect from you (your brand promise). You can also add any highly relevant hashtags for your niche and tag any appropriate associated personal brands.

Link your Website

• This seems like a no brainer, but if I’m saying it, that’s because it has to be said lol.

Add your Location

• If you’re a local business, let people know where they can find you!

Be Strategic with Your Pinned Tweet!

• Your pinned tweet sits at the top of your profile so it’s some pretty choice promotional real estate. Use it wisely and change it regularly! Tweets I recommend you pin are:
  • New content (blog posts, videos, podcasts)
  • live or virtual event announcements
  • product or service launches
  • company updates or announcements that impact customers
  • partner/affiliate content
  • or new commercial-esque/tutorial content.

Theme Color

• This is something people really only see on the web version of Twitter, but if you want you can edit it anyway. If you’ve ever gone to someone’s Twitter profile on the web and noticed accent colors around their profile that match their brand, that’s no accident! You can change that feature when you edit your profile on the web and enter specific hex codes to get the exact color you want.

Post Schedule

• At least 3 tweets per day, at most 10 tweets per day (not including replies and retweets).

Kick It Up a Notch: Twitter Chats!

• Chats are a phenomenal and relatively easy way to quickly increase engagement and reach, and mine your target audience for their thoughts and needs. Basically you organize the chat around a hashtag like #[Company]Chat and give your audience questions (usually with accompanying visuals) that they can discuss for about an hour. This also encourages making your brand look approachable and interactive.

Pinterest Profile

Tips:

Upgrade Your Pinterest to a Business Account

• If you haven’t done that yet, make sure it’s the first thing you do when you create or before you start revamping your Pinterest account. This gives you access to analytics, promotions, and a bunch of special features. Pinterest is A1 for business.

Claim Your Website

• Before you can access certain website data and features, Pinterest needs to be sure that you own your site. So you need to claim it. And this can take a while (they say up to 24 hours) so do this as soon as you set up your profile. This involves accessing your website’s “back end” and adding a short line of code to your header. You may need your web designer to help you.

Choose a Profile Pic

• Follow the same suggestion as everything before. Pro-tip: have the same profile picture across socials so as soon as people see it, they know it’s you.

Create a Brand Board

• Create a board specifically for pins created for or attached to your website/business. Such as blog/video/podcast post pins, service/product pins, infographics, or landing pages.

Set Up Your Profile Cover

• This is a clickable cover collage of pins that you can choose and change. If your brand board has at least 15 pins, choose that. It’s free advertising space. If not, choose your latest pins until it does.

Create an Easy Memorable Username

• Your username is what comes after “Pinterest.com” in the address bar and the direct link to your profile. It needs to be easy to type and remember. Bonus points if it matches the handles of your Twitter, IG, and Facebook.

Add a ‘Keyword Rich’ Business Name

• Pinterest isn’t really a social media platform. Well it is, but it isn’t. It’s actually a search engine. Like a visual Google. As such, keywords are king and SEO methods are your best friend.
• Think of short descriptors for your business or areas of expertise and add them right into your brand name. That way when people search for those terms, you’re profile will pop up in the search bar and increase exposure.

Craft a Strategic “About You”

• Your ‘about you’ should be a one sentence bat signal to your target market. Use the KISS method (Keep It Simple Shawty). Tell people exactly who you’re for and exactly what you can do for them.

Add a Showcase

• A showcase is a rotating carousel of featured boards on the overview page of your profile. Aka another one of the first things people see when they land on your page. Use this strategically. Add your brand board FIRST and then your most active/important boards. You can choose up to 5.

Post Schedule

• At least 10 pins per day, at most 75 pins per day.

Kick It Up a Notch: Board Covers!

• Board Covers! Board covers add a touch of cohesion and a visually interesting look to your board page and showcase. Add your website, logo, brand name, brand colors, and eye-catching imagery.
• You can design these easily in Canva using the social media template. Unlike pins, which should be vertical rectangles, board covers need to be square so none of the content gets cut off.