Tips for a Professional Social Media Profile

I’m always asked for tips and tricks form academics or those from industry starting out on Twitter and other social media platforms. So I thought I’d collate my responses into 5 points.

I draw on principles covered in the Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users which is a really good read for anyone thinking of building a profile on social media. In no particular order here are 5 tips:

• Pick a relevant screen name and/or Twitter user handle. I would suggest using your name and including it as your ‘@’ handle e.g., @JohnSmith.

• The overall look of your profile is very important as the users visiting will make a snap judgement with the information you provide, and the image that you portray. I’d say scrap the long paragraphs and communicate key points.

• You need a good profile picture, it has to look professional, and it has to be of your face. Stay away from poor quality pictures and if necessary hire a professional to take a picture. Make the picture the brand and use the same picture across social media platforms.

• If possible, have a blog and/or website unique to yourself that you list across your social media platforms. Produce content relevant to your discipline that can be shared and linked back to you.Examine what is in the media and see if you can draw a link from the work in your discipline either for a tweet or a blog post.

• Follow users within your discipline, and remember to engage with other Twitter users rather than solely post your own content. If you like, retweet, or share another users post then they are likely to reciprocate.

• Produce regular content and produce a content sharing plan. Alternatively, you can use a social media managing platform such as Hootsuite or Buffer. When considering what to share remember that visual posts gain more engagement, and tweets with hashtags will attract a larger number of views and impressions. The time of sharing a post will affect how many impressions and engagements it will gain, so don’t be afraid of sharing similar content throughout the day. Below is a useful table adapted from the Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users:

Table 1 – Recommended number of posts per social media platform

These tricks will certainly increase engagement on your social media accounts.

One of my clients Gary Spence, Managing Director of Hybrid Supply Chain Ltd, was able to increase his social media statistics significantly within a matter of weeks by following this methodology:

Figure 1 – Increases in Gary’s social media statistics within 1 month

Do you want help running a professional social media account? Drop me a message for a quote!

References 

Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Andrew Latchford, from the VP Group Ltd, for inspiring this post.