It Doesn’t Have To Be Hard To Set Up Successful Social Media Profiles

It Doesn’t Have To Be Hard To Set Up Successful Social Media Profiles

Are you struggling to set up a great social media profiles for your business or for your personal brand? Do you even know whether they're set up to optimize your success? I'm going to share four simple tips with you today that I think will help you get on the road to making you feel confident that your social profiles are set up to help your business rather than hinder it. So, hi I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. If you are watching this live, it is the second of July here and we are coming into the Fourth of July weekend in the US. So just want to wish you a happy and healthy Fourth of July weekend and hopefully you can enjoy it with family and friends. So here's the tips. There's four of them. They're pretty simple. This is not overly difficult.

What Type of Photo Should You Use?

But the first thing we want to look at with your social profiles is your photo. So on your personal social profiles, it's obviously going to be kind of that little photo image. It's not your cover image. It's just that initial photo. I think that photo, if it's a personal profile, we certainly don't want any prison shots. We want this to look professional. I think a little bit more formal than needed is never going to hurt. Certainly should be smiling, looking happy. And I think we want to make these recent shots. We don't need glamor shots from 15 years ago. I think we want to portray a current image of us. I also think that if it's for a business page, what I see most people do and I think makes a ton of sense, is your logo. Your company logo should be there. There really shouldn't be any question when people go from your website to your social profiles that they're in the right place. We want to make sure that that branding is consistent from one social channel to the next and back to your website or vice versa. So keeping professional, keeping current should look happy there, ok?

How to Best Set Up Your Cover Image

Cover image is the larger image, right? So on a personal profile, if you're using it for business, personally, I think you want to have consistent imaging from your website. So what we use is the the hero image. That image from the top of our website is across all our social media channels on the cover image with consistent messaging. The messaging is the same from our website to our social channels. If you've got a personal brand that you're building, I think a larger professional image of you because you are your brand makes a ton of sense on your cover image. But the other thing that I see a lot of people doing that I think makes a ton of sense is they're inserting in their cover image some type of what I would consider a transitional call to action. Its people aren't ready to take that next step to buy. What can you offer that is going to help them take that next step, whether it's maybe it's a, you know, a lead man on a checklist of some kind, maybe you've got a free email course or a quiz or a challenge, something like that that people can take advantage of. I see a lot of people starting to put that a link to that and a quick blurb about that in their cover image. And I think that makes a ton of sense because people are seeing that cover image front and center. So if that's something that resonates with you, I would highly recommend that you take advantage of that and use some of that cover image space to put in a transitional call to action that's going to help add value to people and get them to take that next step, ok? 

The Key Ingredients for Your Bio/About Section

So you've got your photo and your cover image. The third one is your bio. So really important if people like what they see on your photo, your cover image, they may start to take a look at what else you've got on the page. Your bio is a really, really important part of that. And I think there are a few questions that you want to answer in your bio, or this could be the about section if it's a company page, but one just who are you? I mean, what are you all about? OK? Two, what do you do? And we need to keep in mind, we need to keep this messaging simple, clear, easy to understand. If we confuse people, we are going to lose them. They're not going to take the time to figure it out if they can't easily understand it. The third part in your bio that should be there is why should we care if we're reading your bio? Why do we care? You know, you might want to insert some type of social proof in there or some type of value proposition. What is in it for me as a prospect or potential client? I need to know that, so I think highlighting that in your bio is really, really important. And four, what do you want people to do next? What is that call to action? What's that next step that you want people to take? And I think on social profiles, because social is really attracting potential new people, I think it makes a lot of sense to use that same call to action that I just mentioned that you might want to put in your cover image, some type of lead magnet, transitional call to action, a checklist, a cheat sheet, something easy that's going to have value to them, that's going to help deliver a specific result for them. So your bio four things you want to answer, who are you? What do you do? Why do I care or why should I care? And what's that next step you want people to take? OK? So that's your bio.

Call to Action

And then the last thing I've touched on this a little bit is that call to action. So with your call to action, I think it's really important to keep it self-service. There shouldn't be a whole lot of interaction that people have to have to do this. We want to make sure that your call to action is as frictionless as possible, right? There's no hurdles. If there are hurdles that people get to jump through with in this case, I don't think a lot of people are going to do it. So we want to make this easy. And it should offer a very specific result, as I mentioned before, and keep the link short. You know, I would not recommend using, like some of the unless you have some people will use link shortener if you're using a link shortener, I just think you want it to look like a legitimate link. If it's a long, long link with odd numbers and letters, people are it's just not instilling confidence. We want this to be very simple and easy. So one of the things you might want to think about is getting a very specific URL for the lead magnet that you're going to offer on social. And that's the lead you use. You can forward that to a very specific page on your website. That's fine. But that's a really easy way to keep this link short, sweet and to the point and have it look legitimate. And people aren't going to wonder whether it's a credible link or not, oK?

Conclusion

So those four things, once again, your photo, right? Keep it professional. Smile, right? No prison shots, your cover image, keep the branding consistent across your channels. Make sure that the messaging on there is consistent and have a clear call to action there. I think your bio should answer, who are you? What do you do? Why should I care? And what's that next step you want people to take? And then your call to action. Keep it simple, keep it easy, and if you can at all possible use a very short and simple link that people can go to. So you get those right I guarantee you your social profiles are going to be set up much better than the vast majority of people and businesses out there. And I think you will be well on your way to taking advantage of social media and helping it take advantage of it to help grow your business and your brand.

So I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. I appreciate you taking the time to listen, to watch. If you want to gain clarity on where to focus your marketing efforts right now, hop on over to our website at Rialto Marketing dot com, that's R-I-A-L-T-O Marketing dot com. Click on the Get a free consult button. Be happy to chat with you and I guarantee you'll get a ton of value from that call and walk away having some clarity on where you should focus right now based on where you're at. Thanks so much for taking the time to tune in next time. Take care.