The Impact of Social Media Profiles on Your Business

Are you a fellow entrepreneur burning the candle at both ends building your business? If you are, you’re like a lot of people in the marketing industry who have grasped the reality of what their business needs to succeed.

From social marketing campaigns to pinpointing an exact audience to professionally written content which extracts the right amount of emotional action, you’ve thought of everything.

But have you possibly made a mistake?

With everything there is to know and understand about how to market your brand online, and you know there’s a lot to it, you may have missed one of the most important parts of your business. Like many entrepreneurs, you are a web-savvy individual who thinks of everything, but a lot of marketers are missing their mark when it comes to the one thing which can build your business effectively along with everything else – your social media profiles.

The social media profiles that you create are just as important as your Facebook advertising strategy or your content marketing campaigns. Your social media profile is the front door to your business, a front liner that simple cannot be forgotten. Here are some important tips on how they can help you improve your business.

Social Media Profiles Can Target Others

One of the most unused marketing strategies is targeting through your social media profiles. While going to a professional photographer is a great idea, having a great profile image is only part of the profile strategy. I’ll discuss this later, but for now it’s what you put on your profile that matters.

One of my favorite social media profiles is one that attracts and appeals to people in your market. That said, Demian Farnworth (one of my favorite writers) has the social profile you should emulate.

Right away, Demian is targeting people who need his services. As you know, this also works well for searching within social networks like LinkedIn, and can bolster your influence by giving as much information about yourself in as little description as possible.

Targeting is done on LinkedIn through the first line. On Google+ you also have a small piece of real estate to use in order to drive them to read about what you’re best at. Each social network has a certain amount of words you can use, so use them wisely to engage and invite them to look for more about you.

Have A Professional Photo

One thing which makes me cringe is when I see someone who has just written something about social influence or how to appeal to people, and the next day I see their social media profiles and they’re in a t-shirt holding a beer.

Not cool bro.

This study revealed how we are attracted to faces psychologically. The more welcoming and friendly you appear, the more people you will attract to that first liner we’ve just talked about.

Even if you can’t afford a professional photoshoot, you can still take advantage of the camera on your mobile phone – these days they’re just as good. Have your significant other take a good looking headshot, and for crying out loud, wear something nice.

As a business owner, you are the face of the brand. You want to instill trust within your community because these people will be seeing your face everyday. It’s one thing to share a professionally written post about Facebook advertising, but it lacks punch when the beer is in front of your face after you’ve shared it.

A professional or otherwise well done photo ensures your audience that you care enough about your appearance to want to look good for them. And if you take care of your social photo, then surely you would take care of them as clients as well. This study done about your appearance proves that while you may not care what others think about you, it’s still important to impress. On a psychological level, the public is grading you.

Buffer has a great overview about your social profile photo and how you should create them from now on. Try Photofeeler to see if your social profile photo cuts the mustard.

Create A Great Username

Having a username related closely to your name or what your brand name establishes your brand and will help your target market search for you down the road. It’s important to get it as close as possible. I understand your name may be John Smith and it could be taken, but get creative here!

Your username can create brand dominance within your community and it will support everything you do on social media. When people retweet you, reshare your post, etc., others will see this username displayed in their stream.

For influencers like Jay Baer, @JayBaer (on Twitter) it can be useful to have an alternate business account. Jay Baer has a Twitter account for his business (@Convince), Convince and Convert. When you choose to go this route, you can be the brand ambassador for your business. Either way, the username is a great asset in your business marketing.

In Conclusion

Before you set up more social media profiles for yourself, your business, or one of your clients, think about what you can say about the person which will emulate everything they are from photo to description to username. These are all keys to great business management and will help drive more targeted people to your door.

Do you have a great tip for our readers on how you have your social profiles set up? Perhaps there was a tip I didn’t mention? I would love to hear about it in the comment section!

Wade Harman is a content writing wizard with an M.A. in Cognitive Psychology. He shares social media psychology and other marketing tips online related to cognitive trigger response. He loves to fish and read comic books for fun, to get the creative juices flowing.