Optimizing Your Social Media Profiles

Take the Hootsuite Social Marketing course and develop foundational social marketing skills to grow followers, engagement, and business results.

Video Transcript | Intro

Maintaining effective and engaging social media profiles is an essential part of setting your business up for success, in a time when social media is fast becoming the new front door for your business. The steps to set-up and configure your profile differ by network, but there are some generally accepted best practices that can help you better capture traffic, engage visitors, and increase conversions.

Use visuals

Engaging visuals are vital for making a great first impression on visitors to your social properties. Capture attention with bright, vivid, high-resolution images. Your profile picture should be easily recognizable, even at thumbnail size. Your logo is usually the best choice, but if it doesn’t display well as a thumbnail, consider creating an adapted version or using a memorable branded graphic.

On Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, you can upload a cover photo to complement your profile picture. The cover photo has a prominent location in your profile, so you should use this space strategically – for example, it’s a great place to announce new product releases or generate interest in upcoming events. View the cover image on both desktop and mobile devices to ensure it displays correctly on both. 

Bios and descriptions

When optimizing your social media profiles, be sure to provide a consistent business description across all channels. Brainstorm a handful of essential and SEO-friendly keywords that describe your company, and incorporate them into the copy of your about sections. Keep in mind that only the first 140 characters will appear in search engine results, so be sure to convey the most important information first. Done right, these company descriptions will encourage visitors to click through to your social profiles.

Link your website

Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram all allow you to link to a website within your bio section – take advantage of this and link to the most relevant area of your website. Keep in mind that visitors often view social media profiles on mobile devices, so it’s best to ensure the website you link to is optimized for mobile.

Highlight your presence

Finally, consider ways to highlight your company’s social presence to potential new followers. Add social badges to your company’s website, email signatures, and other properties to drive traffic to your social profiles (here are some free ones!). You can find the code for this on each platform’s developer page. If you have a company blog, add social buttons such as Facebook’s Like and Pinterest’s Pin It to each of your posts. When your visitors engage by liking or pinning your posts, your content is shared with their friends and followers, which showcases your page to a new audience. 

Looking for more? Checkout our blog and learn 13 easy ways to enhance your social media profiles!

Or take the free course and learn specific strategies for all the major networks.