If social selling is a part of your 2019 sales strategy, then you should start by creating or revamping your social profile for the best results. Your profile is your modern day business card. It is possibly the first place where your contacts go to learn about you. So, to make that first impression count, you have to present yourself in a way that attracts and appeals to your target group.
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To help you optimize your social profile on common social platforms in less than 20 minutes, we’ve come up with the following checklist.
LinkedIn is the most popular social network among salespeople as it hosts the greatest gathering of professionals and decision makers. LinkedIn boasts of 100 million active users of whom 40 million are in decision-making roles. This means, you can target 40 million potential buyers for prospecting, request referrals, and build a personal brand.
Checklist to optimize your LinkedIn profile:
- Profile picture: Pick a professional picture in which your face takes up at least 60% of the frame. Choose a picture that has a simple background so that you are the focal point.
- Powerful headline: Your headline should include your top skills and specialties. Include strategically picked keywords to get found easily.
- Summary: Use the summary section to brief about your work experience, qualifications, and personality.
- Role description: Don’t limit your role description to your duties. Showcase the challenges you faced and a few of the best results you achieved.
- Education: Don’t stop after listing your formal education. Include relevant online courses and certifications too.
While Twitter’s not primarily a professional network, it has over 300 million active users. This means you can reach out to a ton of potential customers, monitor sales cues, and chime in just at the right moment.
Checklist to optimize your Twitter profile:
- Name and Username: These are your identifiers on Twitter. Use your real name in both places. If the username is already taken, create an alternative by adding relevant suffixes. Eg: @janecalifornia(location), @janec(initial) @janetherealtor(industry).
- Profile Image: Use a professional image in which you’re smiling and have a friendly look.
- Header Image: Show what you sell – products and services. Show a behind-the-scenes look at your offices or employees. Save the image file name with branded keywords to optimize the profile for search engines.
- Bio: Your bio should tell what you do why people should follow you, and what kind of tweets your followers can expect – all these in 160 characters or less. Insert your company’s twitter handle to ensure that when people search for your business they find you too. Use relevant hashtags to optimize for search engine results.
- Location: Add your business location to let your customers know where you’re working.
- Website: Provide a customized trackable link to your website to capture potential visitors and drive traffic.
- Messages: Check the “Receive Direct Messages from anyone.” box in the Privacy and Security tab to allow your profile visitors reach out to you.
- Profile picture: Pick a profile picture that’s easy for your audience to recognize. Big brands mostly use their company logo and freelancers use a headshot of themselves.
- Cover photo: Use a photo that tells something about your business.
- Call to action: Customized the CTA button to drive more traffic to your website.
- About: This is the page your prospects look at when they want to get more information about your page and business. Optimize this section to align with your brand’s vision. Give your company’s overview and share useful information about your products and service. In the contact section, provide your company’s phone number, email address, and a link that redirects to your site.
Facebook doesn’t allow you to use your personal profile for business purposes. So, you have to engage your prospects through the business page.
Checklist to optimize your Facebook page:
If you’re getting started with social selling, the first step is to set up your accounts and profiles correctly. If you’ve already established a social presence, it’s probably time to optimize your profiles for better discoverability and impressions. Since people are increasingly turning to social media for making buying decisions, it’s worth spending some time to optimize your social presence and make your profile compelling and interesting.
What strategies have you used to improve your social media profile? Let us know in the comments below!
