How to Make a Great First Impression on Social Media

 

 

Jeannette Paladino who is a long time friend, colleague and Social Media guru is my guest blogger today.

 As a Social media enthusiast, she helps organizations leverage social media to build brand awareness, increase revenues, and engage employees as brand advocates. Visit her Work With Me page for specific ideas about how she can help you to incorporate social media into your marketing plan to reach your customers, employees and other target audiences.

She is a true pro- GREAT to work with and clearly is the expert. Everyday, I get something in my in box from Jeannette that teaches me something new.

Read what she has to say about making a Good First Impression With Social Media!

 

It’s true that you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. I spend a lot of time on social networks and I’m constantly surprised that so many people haven’t taken the time to include a photo, filled out their profiles or even post to their social media accounts.

It’s sad when you go to someone’s account on Twitter, for example, and see a couple of tweets and then nothing.  Or there is a big fat egg where the person’s image should be.

Here is a checklist to get your social media networks updated so that you make a great first impression.

1.Include a photo of yourself.  It doesn’t need to be taken by a professional, as long as it’s professional looking. Once you pick a photo, go to Gravatar where you can upload your image so that it follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog.

2.Refresh the background of your Twitter page. Instead of using the selections from Twitter’s limited selections, you can go sites like twitrounds or TwitrBackgrounds for dozens of free templates.

3. Fill out your profile. This is especially important on LinkedIn, one of the first stops for employers and prospects.  Make sure it’s complete and update it when there are changes in your life, such as a new job.

Post regularly to your sites. Set a goal: I will tweet, share an update on LinkedIn and post to Facebook at least X times a week. The posts don’t need to be original – you can tweet a newspaper article you like, retweet other people’s tweets and include a link to an article for Facebook. When you post on LinkedIn you’ll see a box to check if you want the update to appear on Twitter. Two for one.

As a professional, you should post content that offers value to your business readers. Don’t tweet anything that you will be embarrassed by later.

Also, no one wants to know what you ate for lunch. And this goes for friends and business associates.

Jeannette Paladino is a business writer and social media enthusiast helping organizations to leverage social media to build brand awareness, increase revenues, and engage employees as brand advocates. Visit her at Write Speak Sell  http://writespeaksell.com/blog