Five tips for optimizing your social media profiles

Five tips for optimizing your social media profiles - Robyn Roste

00:00 My name is Robyn Roste. I'm a freelance writer, marketing strategist, and funnel builder. I'm also the author of Marketing for Freelance Writers, which was released in October through Panda Moon Publishing. This presentation is an excerpt from one of the chapters in my book, Why Your Social Media Profiles Matter. Now, if You Use Your Social media primarily for Personal Reasons, it's easy to look at it as simply a place where your friends and family connect with you. So there's no reason to talk about your business, right? Because they already know what you do. But I say, what better place to find referrals than your friends and family list, especially when you're just getting started. 

00:45 Also, don't assume that they're aware of what you do and don't assume that if they do know what you do, sort of, that they understand anything about it. Do you know the details of your network? I certainly don't. Even my best friends, I'm not quite sure what they do i know you know where they work, I know maybe a job title, but that's about it. So let's take assumptions out of the picture and optimize our profiles for your business. Lay it out for people so it's easy for them to think of you when they hear about someone looking for a service or product that you offer. 

01:25 Another reason to optimize your social media profile is because your reach is wide on social. A potential client is far more likely to run across your LinkedIn or Instagram before ever seeing your website. You want to ensure you tell potential clients who you are, what you do and why they should hire you. So here are 5 tips for optimizing your social media profiles. Tip number one Choose a professional profile picture and cover photo. 

01:58 Your profile photo should be high quality, square reflect your brand, stand out in news feeds and be a picture view. Your cover photo on applicable platforms should be high quality and represent the core values of your brand. The more consistent your images are across platforms, the better. Tip number two Say who you are and what you do. If you want to capture leads from your social profiles, then use your full name or business name. 

02:33 The problem is with a lot of businesses, you know people on social media want to use maybe their first name, maybe their middle name. But if that's not part of your brand, then you have to use the name that people would associate with your brand. So give it some thought. What what do you want to be known as and then use that name. Don't be cute, don't be vague, don't be confusing. A great social media bio explains who you are and what you do. It shares your personality and it targets your ideal audience with keywords. So in this profile, this is your chance be clear. Think of it as an amped up elevator pitch. 

03:14 And if you've never heard of that term before, the the picture is you're on an elevator with a potential client and you have, you know, the time riding in an elevator to let them know who you are, what you do and why they should hire you. You got to be straight and to the point. And what you're trying to get out of it is a next step, a conversation. So think of it that way. Tip number three link to your website. 

03:44 Now, some people teach that on social media linking should be to like your professional Facebook page, or it could be your YouTube channel or something like that and if that's what you prefer doing, I guess that's fine. I just beg you not to leave that URL section blank. This is a big opportunity to have a potential client take a next step. Think about it this way, where do you want prospects to go? Send them there. So if you want to send them to five different places then use a link in bio type of service. 

04:21 I personally want leads to go to my website so I can show them the best of my work on a property that I own and control. No distractions. Tip number four add keywords about your services. If someone is searching, for example, on X, formerly called Twitter for Someone Like You, what are they searching for? And you can do this little thought exercise for every platform. Make sure those words show up in your profile in a way that's not spammy so you're not just adding keywords as like bullet points. You want it to be conversational and you want it to make sense. You want to indicate that you understand the words that you're using as to build trust with your prospects. 

05:04 In that same thought, in that same vein, avoid buzzwords and use terms that your ideal client would be using so even if they're not maybe 100 % correct, like let's say you're an expert in whatever, not interior design and you know the proper correct word for something and your prospect maybe wouldn't use that word, use the word that your ideal client would use oK, so that they're, you know, they're going to be searching for that so use that word, but you also want to be concise and you want to try and mention the benefits of the work that you do so you don't just want to say I write this, you want to say I help you make connections with your customers by writing this. 

05:47 That kind of thing. Tip number five make it easy to contact you. I cannot even estimate how many times I've gone to a website to try and get in touch with someone about something and couldn't find a way to contact them. Make it easy. If you work from home, yeah, you don't want to put your home address and list it for the world to see on the Internet. I mean, that's just not safe. But maybe it's important for your prospects to know what city or region you're in. List that adding your location. It does help potential clients discover you, and it also helps them to know that you're a real person. 

06:29 And what about your contact details? Make it easy for people to get in touch at the same time, Only share what you're comfortable with. So a phone number might be too much, but could you add a Google phone number? Or what about a work email address instead of your personal email address? Or perhaps you feel better about getting people to DM you. If that's the case, make sure your DMS are open and let people know that's how you prefer them to contact you. If you want people to contact you with potential work, they need to know how to reach you all right, what to do next step number one audit your current profiles. 

07:15 Put yourself in your potential clients shoes and ask if your profiles are making a good first impression and ask if it will prompt them to contact you. Be really honest about it too. Take a look at your images. Ask yourself, are they the right size? Are they on brand? Now look at your description. Is it clear what you do and that you're available to work? Do you link to anything? How does someone get in touch with you? Review your profiles and make notes for where you need to make changes and or improvement. 

07:51 Then move to Step 2. Optimize your profiles. It's time to get to work from your audit. You know what you need to do, so now it's time to do it. If you need consistent images, find a profile photo that works for the majority of platforms and update it everywhere. And yes, I do recommend using the same profile photo from platform to platform. Just think about it from the perspective of there may be someone with your same name and if someone's looking you up, you know they see you on Facebook, but they're like, I'm more comfortable on Instagram where I want to follow them. 

08:26 They look you up and there's a few profiles with the same name. How are they going to know which one is you? Well, if you use the same profile image, it gives them confidence that they're following the right person. If you need new covers, figure out the sizes ahead of time and then create a banner that's really consistent and will work on as many platforms as possible. You're going to have to have a few different sizes, but you can pretty much come up with a design that that's more or less the same for every place. You just need to kind of plan ahead of time. 

08:57 If you need updated descriptions, then figure out the character limit and it's time to get writing. Be brave. Put yourself out there. It is scary telling people that you are available for work you don't want to sound desperate, you don't want to seem pushy i get it, but if people don't know that you're available for work, they're not going to think of you the next time it comes up. Now, if you go into the course that's provided alongside this audio Summit, then you're going to find a couple resources that I think you'll get a lot out of. 

09:31 The course is called your Digital Business card. Make social media work for your freelance biz. And in there you're going to find an overview on how to use AI to help you write profiles, as well as a social media profile tracking workbook, which is a Google Sheet. And in that you'll just keep track of the different URL's to the different platforms that you have a profile on you'll keep a copy of your images, your descriptions, all that kind of stuff, just so you can be really clear on everywhere that you have your profile. 

10:03 I hope this helps and I'd love to stay in touch so if you have questions about the process, you want to review key points, please reach out. You can email dot com. I look forward to hearing from you.