Social Media – How to Build Your Online Presence

Social Media Presence – Why?

If you are like most of the professionals out there, you want to build a personal brand and be found online.
I spent countless hours researching the topic of marketing on social media, including personal branding. Over time, I had the opportunity to implement some of my findings and see great results. I want to share with you what I learned and maybe will inspire you to take action and save you precious time.

If you are contemplating getting serious about your online presence, answering the following three questions will help you to come up with the right strategy.
First question: Why? Understand what you want to accomplish with your online presence. Find a better job, grow your career, find clients, launch a product, introduce a new business? The possibilities are almost endless. Write it down. You will refer to it later while you are looking for answers to the “where” and “how” questions.
When you have your answer to “why”, take the time to define your audience. Yes, you want to know your audience. And you want to know it well. Write down as many descriptive words about your audience as possible. You will come back to these words and review them as you go through the process of setting up your social profiles.

Social Media Presence – Where?

Now that you know WHY you want to build a social media presence, it is time to do some serious thinking and answer the most important question of all: Where? Yes, this is important. There are many platforms out there, and you do not want to spread yourself too thin; handling your social media affairs takes time out of your day, every day. If you want to do it right, start small and see how much time you can afford to commit to it daily.

But before we look into answering the question “where,” I just want to make a point here: from my experience and from what experts are saying, the most important key to success on social media is consistency. So expect that you will want to find your rhythm and stay with it for the long term. It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours to handle just one social media platform, depending on your level of involvement and your goals. I will cover this in more detail later in this article. For now, let’s talk about “where”.

Hopefully, by the time you finish reading this section, you will know what social platform (or a combination of them) is your best option.

LinkedIn. By far the biggest professional networks out there. At the time of writing this piece, according to this article on DMR Stats|Gadgets website, these are some stats on LinkedIn:

• total number of users: 433 million, spread over 200 countries and territories; 126 million of those are in the US;
• two new members every second;
• 45 billion user page views in Q1 2016.

You get the idea. The vast majority of people, or companies you are interested in networking with, are already on LinkedIn. Starting this year, 2016, LinkedIn lowered the minimum age for LinkedIn members to 13. Why? Because all major universities are on LinkedIn already.

What is LinkedIn best suited for? Yes, it has the reputation as best used for recruiting/job search. That is not true anymore. LinkedIn became a great platform for business, business to consumer, consumer to consumer and just people to people. Marketing, sales, recruiting, learning, news, leadership, influencers, and the rest. Why do you think there are so many LinkedIn consultants out there?

And we were used to thinking of LinkedIn as the only professional network out there. Not according to this article from Forbes Magazine. Specialized vertical social networks are emerging. And according to the people who follow these trends, these platforms are here to stay. Expect to see more and more of those.

Twitter. Not necessarily a professional network but a good platform to make the first contact with people you want to connect with. For example, if you find someone you want to connect with on LinkedIn but have no ways to contact that person directly, you can try to find them on Twitter. While LinkedIn does not allow you to directly message people you do not know, Twitter is a very liberal platform. You can send anyone a direct message, providing they have a public profile.

You can use Twitter as a resource to grow your network on LinkedIn, catch emerging trends, engage in small talk, exchanging ideas and opinions. It is a great place to discover your field’s influencers (people and/or companies).

Pinterest. According to the platform itself,

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save creative ideas.

Pinterest is a pool of bookmarks of anything and everything. Yes, recruiters are there, and so are other professionals. Adding a professional board to your Pinterest account can potentially help your career. And yes, according to some, Pinterest is a great place to start searching for a job. Read this interesting article from Mashable.

Facebook. I will not spend time reading about Facebook. I want to mention that it is a great platform for finding groups on specific topics. Chances are you will find one group that is related to your career or is of interest to you because of its members. Another great way to use Facebook is for mastermind groups.

There are other social networks out there which I am not familiar with. My list ends here. I hope that by now you have the answer to “where”. Myself, I use LinkedIn in conjunction with Twitter and Facebook.

Social Media Presence – How?

By now, you know why you want to be known, and discoverable online, who your ideal audience is, and where the social platforms you want to become active on are.

It is time to look at “how”. This is an ongoing activity that you will adjust as you go based on your goals and the results you will get. I want to introduce you to some basic principles and tools just to get you started. I realize that there are many of you out there who are experts in this field. This article will not teach you anything new. But you are already here, hopefully still reading this. Why not leave some comments and share some of your wisdom and tips with the rest of us?

I am dedicating this section to LinkedIn only. The article will get way too long, and I do not want to lose you halfway! Do not be discouraged. Using the same approach, you can research the other platforms yourself.

LinkedIn. The first thing you need to do is make sure your profile is properly set up and complete. A few important points:

• Get the right picture. This article will give you a good indication of what makes a great profile picture.
• Fill in all the profile information. Read this article for some inspiration from 10 great LinkedIn profiles.
• Remember that you can use keywords in your profile to maximize your chances of appearing in searches. This awesome article will explain how to use keywords in your profile and, most importantly, how to figure out what those keywords should be.

Now, with your profile ready for any visitor, let’s look at what you can do to grow your network.

You need to have an activity linked to your profile. It increases your visibility and will most likely generate connection requests. Here are some options to help with adding activity to your profile:

1. Share a profile update. It goes without saying that you share interesting updates, like new jobs, career milestones and achievements, etc.
2. Share an interesting article you read on the web. This is one feature that can get you the most visibility. There are ways to do this without spending a lot of time searching and sharing articles. See this article for a comprehensive list of sites and apps to help you find and share content. I am sure you will find a few you like and start using them. Try to share content that is relevant to your network. You will get an idea of the number of likes, comments, and shares your shared articles generate.
3. Publish your own article on LinkedIn Pulse. Do you have some of your own wisdom and knowledge to share? Write an article about it. Read about the best ways to use LinkedIn Pulse here. Great article!
4. Publish on SlideShare. Here is an excellent article that will give you useful details on publishing on SlideShare.
5. Join groups, share articles, and comment on other people’s articles. Now, not all groups are created equal. If you want to get exposure, you will need to join groups that are active and where you will find your audience. Yes, you also join groups where your peers are, but the majority of groups should be based on your audience. If you want to get in front of recruiters, for example, you will have to join groups where recruiters are active. Do your research. As of 2016, LinkedIn increased the number of groups each individual can subscribe to from 50 to 100. That will give you plenty of options to find what you are looking for. You can send direct messages to all group members in each group, you are also a member. This is huge. You do not need to be connected to someone or know their email address to send them a message. Think of the possibilities here. Of course, you will have to follow the proper etiquette and not become a nuisance. Here is an article on how to make the most use of messages when trying to connect with people you do not know. Great tips!
6. Create your own LinkedIn group. This article will explain the details of why you might want to consider creating your own group.

If you implement these tools and tips, you will see results. Do not be impulsive and expect that things will happen overnight. Give it time and enjoy every victory. And most importantly, be consistent and keep learning.

And I could not end this section without another article I want to share on what successful people do every day on LinkedIn. Read it here.

Wow, you got to the end of this article! I am happy I could inspire you to read it. I hope that you learned something new. Leave your comments below and share your thoughts on the topic.