The secret to success in Social Media Marketing is performing the right kind of communication with the right kind of people at the perfectly right time. Sounds too complicated, isn’t it? It doesn’t have to be heard and it all boils down to getting a good deal of social media visibility. However, you can only achieve this by performing optimization right at the heart of it all – your social profile.
A common scenario with business owners and new digital marketers making their first stint with social media marketing is the relatively difficult task of getting people – targeted audiences to be specific – to get interested in their social profiles and pages. They are doing the best they can posting the juiciest articles and the most intriguing of pictures, but are getting too far behind in generating social activities and, more importantly, social engagement and interaction.
Few may have realized that the problem may lie not in the lack of effort in posting content but in the quality of their social profile. You should have a fully optimized social profile that is intended to attract your targeted audiences. Contrary to what newbie digital marketers may assume, social profile optimization doesn’t have to be a difficult and tedious task – all you need is to follow these simple tips from Digital Marketing Philippines.
1. Optimize Your Profile Page Name
Your profile page name is very important. It is your social media identity and one that will distinguish you from the rest. Naturally, people would not want to deal with social entities that have vague names from what they purported to market. People will also find it strange to see a profile page name that is completely different or not even related to your company or brand name.
The key here is to have a social media profile name that is consistent with your brand, company or website. Not only will it provide you with social media identity, it will also help ensure that your competitors don’t get credit from all the hard work you are putting into your marketing campaigns. Some social networks like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest make it easy to get a “vanity URL” that acts like a subdomain that is unique for your page.
The following are some important notes and instructions on how you can optimized your profile page name:
- A page needs to have at least 25 subscribers or fans to activate the username/vanity URL function. A vanity URL makes it easy for you to share and promote your page or for your fans to search your page using keywords.
- Only owners or admins of the page are allowed to make some changes with the vanity URL.
- It is very important to note that once you set your vanity URL, you will not be able to revert or change it back. So choose your usernames and page vanity URLs wisely. For Facebook, the format would be like as follows: www.facebook.com/SocialProfileOptimization
- You can make use of capitalization to add emphasis on important keywords with your usernames or vanity URLS. Usually, vanity URLs or usernames are formed by combining two or more words into a single word. You can make each word distinguishable by capitalizing their first letters.
- Only alphanumeric characters like A to Z and 0 to 9 are allowed with to use with usernames.
2. Optimize Your Social Profile Bios
Business owners and digital marketers who are new to this game of social profile optimization make the common mistake of focusing mostly on the aesthetics of their social profile pages. Although visual elements are important, focusing on them only will render poor results in terms of attracting social signals from targeted audiences. What you need to do to complete the circle is to completely fill out all items in the bio or about sections of your social profile.
Filling out your social profile bios with relevant information about your brand, product or service will tell your fans and other social media users what your page is all about and what you can offer them. Make it clear and concise, adding in valuable links to your websites or landing pages. You can also make use of the Milestone section at Facebook, making your social profiles much more interesting.
The following is a table of Best Practices in optimizing your social profile bios, as provided by digital marketer Jordan Clark that you can make use on designated social channels as listed below.
Before you finalize with the optimization process, you should make sure that your social profile bio contains keywords and calls-to-action. These will attract and tell your targeted audiences what your company is all about in just a few words. Best practices also include adding important links to your website or landing pages – where all the conversion and sales may even take place. It would also be a good practice for digital marketers to review and update their social profile and bios every three months at least.
3. Optimize Your Keywords
Just like keywords are important with SEO (Search Engine Optimization} so thus optimizing your keywords for your social profile. Keywords should be relevant to your mission and brand, attracting the right kind of audiences that will generate significant social activities and engagement. Each social media network make use of different methods for optimizing your keywords, as described below:
Facebook – The About section is a primary area for optimizing keywords, telling targeted audiences what you are trying to convey.
Twitter – Use keywords that will identify your brand against others, making sure that the bio sections are completely filled up with relevant information about your products or brand.
Google+ — Although you can optimize keywords at Google+, you still need to be completely extra careful as overdoing as Google may label your profile as spam and may shy away your prospects.
YouTube – This online video sharing network allows you to optimize your keywords in the Description section as well as the Channel Description.
4. Optimize Your Image Sizes
An article or a post that contains graphics, visual elements as well as text will have 94% more chances of generating page views and social signals. But aside from using pictures and visual elements, you should also make sure that your images are of high quality and correct size. Each social network have specific sizes for main graphics areas like the header cover photo and profile pictures. It will only turn off prospective visitors and targeted audiences if they find your pictures and graphics that are too large or two small for these purposes.
It is important that you images are of the correct size depending on the social network you are using. Images can be very powerful for branding and delivering your message across but it will only be effective if rendered properly. You can make use of the following as a guide for optimizing your image sizes:
- Cover photo: 851 x 315
- Profile picture: 160 x 160 (upload as 180 x 180)
- App icons: 111 x 74
- Timeline: 504 x variable (shared image), 484 x 252 (shared link)
- News feed: 470 x 394 (shared image), 470 x 246 (shared link)
- Header image: 1252 x 626, 1500 x 500 (redesign)
- Profile picture: 250 x 250
- Image in feed: 1024 x 512
- Banner image: 624 x 220
- Logo: 100 x 60
- Link Thumbnail: 100 x 100
Google+
- Cover photo: 1010 x 608 (recommended), 480 x 270 (minimum), 2120 x 1192 (maximum)
- Profile picture: 250 x 250
- Image post: 4:3 aspect ratio (800 x 600 minimum)
- Board cover: 217 x 147
- Preview image: 51 x 51
YouTube
- Banner image: 2560 x 1440 (TV), 2560 x 423 (desktop), 1546 x 423 (mobile)
5. Optimize Your Branding
Your social profile should be optimized to strengthen your branding. Digital marketers should take note that social profiles for businesses are completely different from personal profiles as the pages will represent your company, your brand and your business. You can start good branding by being consistent with all your profile images on different social networks.
Of course, images will be different according to the social network in terms of sizes and layouts, but you should make sure that all branding elements like your logo, brand names, taglines, etc are optimized for use. You social profile headers and images will act like your new giant billboard for marketing, so make sure all the visual elements have taken place.
6. Optimize Your Post Frequency
A study that made use of at least 2 years of data has highlighted that posting frequency of once after every two days is the optimum post frequency for Facebook. For twitter, a rate not less than one (1) and not more than 4 times is the optimum posts that twitter users can make use of. You can also make trial and error to determine the right post frequency that will generate the optimum number of response.
7. Optimize Your Post Times
After setting up your posts frequencies’, the next step is to determine that time of the day that will generate more response from targeted audience. In the study described earlier, best post times determined for Facebook is 7 pm while Twitter is at 5 pm. However, business owners and digital marketers all have different targeted audiences, so the optimum post time will depend on the behavior and preference of your targeted audiences. So it would be very important to make sure you know what time of the day will give better reach by testing it yourself and see which time of the day your audience responds better.
8. Optimize Your Links to Your Other Social Media Profiles
Make sure that your social profile is linked to your other Social Profiles from other social media networks. This will build your brand as you can create traffic and awareness to your social profiles. Most of these social media sites have this feature so make sure you maximize and input the other links in your profile as much as possible. This will provide you with better social connectivity so that when a person checks out your profile he can also see your other connected profiles and visit it.
9. Optimize Website for Social Media Integration
Finally, you should optimize your website so they can be integrated with social buttons, links and other applications. Your website should be interconnected and you can solidify this connection by integrating social elements. These can be done in so many ways like embedding social sharing and follow buttons on every page and posts, or linking your blogs to your Google+ social profile.
Social profile optimization is very important if you want to get concrete results from your social media marketing campaign. It does not have to be very difficult as you can make use of different techniques as described by these tips, brought to you only by Digital Marketing Philippines.
Jomer B. Gregorio is a well-rounded expert when it comes digital marketing. Jomer is also known as a semantic SEO evangelist and practitioner. Check out our Digital Marketing Services today and let us help you in achieving positive and profitable results for your business.