A cohesive approach to social media management is your best bet when attempting to strengthen your online reputation management (ORM).
A reliable, combined social media management tactic guarantees stable brand messaging and better engagement with customers across all social media platforms. It may seem evident to make sure you set up social media accounts and profiles correctly, but a shocking number of businesses do not do this.
If you set up your company social media profiles more than six months to a year ago, it is likely time to reexamine them, double-checking for mistakes and information that requires updating. Social media profiles are frequently people’s first impression of your company. So, craft these profiles wisely. Make use of the following checklist with all your social media properties.
Display Name and Username
Social media display names are the names that show up on your profile. If your business is not named after you, then the display name should be your company name.
Usernames aren’t automatically identical to display names. Usernames are what is included in your social media profile URL. Also, the majority of social media platforms do not allow you to change your username after creation, so choose it with care.
Take Twitter, for example, your username in the form of @yourcompany is much better than a username in the form of @youractualname. Whenever possible, keep your usernames the same across all social media platforms. This presents a more consistent brand experience for your customers throughout social media.
Background and Profile Images
Without fail, social media accounts for businesses should have the company logo as the profile image and nothing else. The only reason that you should even consider putting your picture on this page is if you are a “recognizable face” of your company. Much the same as with usernames and display names, you should try to have coherent profile images across all social media platforms. This makes your company easier to identify should there be similarly named companies or companies providing a similar product or service.
Not all, but most social media platforms will permit you to add a larger image as your background for your main profile page. Using a customized background image is generally better for both brand recognition and ORM than any default image that may be available to you upon the creation of the profile.
Personalized background images enable you to incorporate additional brand information and add a distinctive style to your profile page that facilitates setting your business apart. Facebook has recently allowed users to apply a video as their background. If you decide to choose a video as your background on Facebook, make sure the one you select is filmed and edited by a professional production company. Attempting to do this yourself can lead to shoddy work and could drive customers away.
Link to a Social Media-Specific Landing Page
Social media profile pages allow users to include a link on their profile page. This could be a link to your website’s homepage. However, most companies choose to create platform-specific links to separate landing pages. This allows them to track down which social media platforms are providing them with the most traffic to their website. Analytics is everything online, and this can help crunch the numbers.
Another reason for having separate landing pages for each social media platform is to offer specific deals or specials to users of multiple platforms.
Whatever type of link you decide to put on your social media profile pages, confirm it is situated conspicuously so people can find it effortlessly. This improves your chances of click-through rates from your different social media sites.
Complete Your Profile
Most, if not all, social media sites allow you to create a company bio. They range from very short to long. Once you ascertain how long your bio can be, use it to its full potential. Considering what you would you like to say about your business in the allotted space should be job one. A simple brand story and a call to action work quite well.
Some sites permit you to build more fleshed-out profiles, where you can share a lot more about you or your company. If there are any specific reading or information you would like your customers to look at, you can include them here.
Set Privacy Levels
It should go without saying, but keeping things you post on social media for your company private is not the best choice. If you expect your name to get out there, you are going to have to make your posts public.
However, there are some cases for which you should meticulously consider privacy settings. Take, for example, if you are a healthcare provider. You will want to make sure that your clients are protected from third parties looking to exploit your open privacy policy.
Healthcare providers who have personal social media profiles must keep them separate from their business profiles. This is done to maintain tight privacy over their own profiles. Making sure you do this will show your clients that you care about their privacy as much as you care about their business.
Add Social Media Links to Your Website
Promoting your social media profiles promotes followers and engagement, which is excellent for ORM. An easy way to do this is by adding your social media profiles somewhere on your website. Most companies like to put social media on the top and the bottom. That way, they have two chances to drive more traffic to their social media profiles.
Post Regularly and Engage with Others
In order to maximize your social media impact, you will have to post content regularly and engage with the people who take the time to leave a comment. There are social media tools that will aid you in monitoring what is being said on your multiple platforms. We suggest you invest in one of these to make sure you are always keeping in touch with your customers.
Conclusion
Social media is not as tricky as it may appear from the outside. When done correctly, you can maximize your efforts to boost your online reputation.