How To Have An Epic Social Media Profile.
People spend hours trying to put together the perfect socil bio. Getting it right means delivering a powerful speech in– 30 seconds to two minutes. The goal is to connect and continue the conversation after the doors slide shut.
You have ten to thirty seconds – and 160 characters – to convince someone to engage with you.
Another perfect business opportunity wasted because of no good elevator pitch Are you investing time in your social media profiles? If you’re not, you should be. All I did was buld my social proile up as I becane my career. Now it is over flowing with fantastic wrk not to brag but it is.
I’ll make a set of recommendations for how Silverpop can improve their Twitter, FaceBook and Google+ social bios.
Perfecting Your Social Media Profile Bios
Imagine the sales rep pacing his office rehearsing his elevator pitch, prepping for the moment he finds himself face-to-face with the CEO of his key target. That’s you perfecting your social media bio. It takes work to get it right.
Quick Tips:
- Keep SEO in mind. Many of the search engines are using social media bios in their programs. Create your bios to leverage key wordsat the same time giving eaders to ise them.
- Remember, you’re trying to convince prospects and influencers to engage with you – follow, circle, like and comment on your social media activity. Your bio should tell them what your company does and what benefits you deliver. INfact I crush must of any one that look at my socila achievementdso if anything I have to hold back.
- Keep SEO in mind. Many of the search engines are using social media bios in their algorithms. Craft your bios to leverage key words while still offering prospects a compelling reason to engage.
- Be Visual. The visual richness of social media has increased dramatically—from the massive hero image on Google+ to the new twitter profile pages. Learn about the new visual specs in this post from my LinkedIn
- It’s critical every word in your bio works hard. Common mistakes include informing visitors that they’ve reached “The Official channel of [company name]” and identifying the team of contributors.
- Consider adding a call to action to your bio. Further engage your audience with the offer of a free trial, free taste, free download, etc.
- Include Links and Consider Landing Pages. Be sure to include a link in your bios and you should consider sending them to a landing page with targeted messaging instead of your homepage.
- Be Visual. The visual richness of social media has increased dramatically—from the massive hero image on Google+ to the new twitter profile pages. Learn about the new visual specs in this post from LunaMetrics.
Quick Reference
Keeping track of best practices and specifications can be a challenge. All the channels have made changes in last 12 months. I’ve captured the basics in the reference tool below.
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Stand Out From The Crowd.
Every three months you should review your social bios to ensure they’re in line with your current value proposition.
At the same time, take a look at your competitors’ social media “elevator pitch” and determine if you need to counter their positioning.
You can use a spreadsheet, or a side-by-side comparison like the one below from, Rival IQ.
Check out the Facebook short descriptions from companies in the marketing automation space.
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Quickly you get a sense of each company’s value proposition. For example, Eloqua is claiming acceleration of revenue growth, Hubspot is promoting an “all in one” solution and more leads and Pardo is focused on “no hassle” marketing automation.
History Is Telling
If you track changes to your competitor’s social bios, you’ll be able to extract insights about how the market is evolving and inform your own marketing strategy. Here’s a look at how the marketing automation players changed their Twitter positioning over six months.
9 months ago, Marketo deletes positioning for B2B marketers and expands the breadth of their offering.
8 months ago, Eloqua expands their bio to include “modern marketing strategies.” Likely not a key word addition, but an answer to Marketo’s change.
7 months ago, Pardot adds acquisition messaging, includes more benefits and specifically calls out SMBs.
3 months ago , Pardot expands their market, deleting the previous focus on B2B and SMBs. Also revise their benefits.
Based on this series of bio changes, I’d posit that Marketo kicked off a positioning shift that rippled through the market.
Consistency Counts.
The individuals you reach on social media don’t limit themselves to just one channel. They’re likely to engage with you on Twitter and Facebook, or Linked In and Twitter or maybe on three or four channels at once. When you’re optimizing one social media bio, it’s important to optimize all of them, reinforcing both key messages and key words. Continuing to look at the marketing automation landscape, I’ve created a side-by-side comparison of Twitter, FaceBook and Google+ bios. Take a look and see who gets high marks.
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While all the companies have room for improvement, I’m giving HubSpot the highest grade for consistency and use of best practices. Marketo goes too far by having identical bios across all channels and fails to use links or calls to action. Add to Marketo’s downfall the failure to maximize the length of their bios, and we find Silverpop at the bottom of the class.
Putting Learning Into Practice.
Let’s put our learning to work and suggest ways for Silverpop to improve their social media bios.
Below are the company’s current descriptions:
Best Practices Observations
- Share Your Value Proposition. Silverpop consistently describes what they do, but outside of the long-form Linked In description, fails to explain the benefits they deliver. This makes their bios less compelling to the reader.
- Maximize Your Real Estate. Silverpop can lengthen their bios to be more engaging. They have ~50 more characters available on Twitter alone.
- Include Links. Adding a link to SilverPop’s Facebook description is not only a best practice, it would bring them in line with what their competitors are doing. They’d receive bonus points for directing traffic to a landing page with more targeted messaging.
- Competitive Positioning. Reading through the competitive bios reveals that “unifying” channels may not differentiate Silverpop. HubSpot’s “all in one” positioning is virtually identical.
Recommendations
I look at my current LinkedIn Bio It gets 1,800 views a week.
- “We know marketers because we are marketers.”
- I SHOW THEM every dang thing they would miss of they passed me a “return on relationship” by leveraging
- I build brand loyalty and increase ROI.
- Crete a buzz in the customer behavior to deliver results
- I have servciced ver 16,000 people or compnaies in the wirls.
Key Takeaways
- You should be reviewed and optimized every 3 months
- Stay up to date on your visual bios are working hard for you
- Evaluate the your competitors bios (and those you re going after) great insight and inspiration
- Track changes in positioning to identify subtle shifts that signal market movement
