Social Media Platforms

If you visit here often or we follow each other on social media, you would have noticed some changes last fall to my photography and branding.

It was just some simple, subtle, yet positive changes that helped to spice things up around here and on my social platforms. Hello, new headshot! 😛

Its like when I re-arrange furniture in my house when the seasons change, it is the simplest thing to do and the BEST feeling when its done. In the social world, you really always have to be changing it up to keep fresh, continue to evolve and be noticed as you and your brand grow and evolve.

The intended change was good because it made me realize how you have to take continued stock or inventory of your digital footprint. Simply put, you have to keep track of all your social profiles. Sounds easy but it isn’t.

Even if you’re not rebranding, having all of your passwords and log-in information in one place is a good place to start. This made things SO much easier for me when I went to do my rebrand and proudly post my new headshot across all my social platforms last fall.

This blog post can serve both individuals or even businesses and social/digital managers that manage their company’s corporate communications and brands. Here are 7 things I learned last fall with my rebrand for how you too, can easily manage your digital footprint at any point in time.

7 Ways to Manage Your Digital Footprint

Create and maintain a locked password document (that requires a password to get into the document). This should contain all of your social media platform passwords. This is an easy way to keep organized, period.
Establish and set your brand guideline. This will ensure you execute your brand with consistent colours, fonts and look/feel across all social platforms you use. It is best to create a mood board and then a brand board to always refer back too. I’ve provided my latest rebrand branding board below for your reference 🙂
Once you’ve set your ‘look and feel’, hire a professional photographer to capture your brand – it’s a wise investment and some of the best money you will spend!
Have a consistent logo/photo/headshot across all of your social platforms.
When/if you decide to change your logo/photo/headshot, take the time to update your bio and descriptions with the same consistent wording and put this across all of your platforms.
Update your website or your blog at the same time to reflect any of these new changes and introduce your new rebrand.
Review your analytics on each of your social platforms and website/blog to determine what platforms are working best for you. When you rebrand, its a perfect time to add new platforms, change the function of existing platforms or decide altogether to stop using certain social platforms if you find you’re not getting the ROI for the value you’re putting in. Your followers on each of your social platforms will tell you a lot about what they consume from your brand.

If you have questions about your own social media profiles, need help in rebranding or want to know more about the analytics behind your social platforms,let’s get in touch!

A few weeks go I asked YOU what you wanted to read about and I appreciate the responses I received from those who emailed or tweeted at me! I am going to be sharing more posts relating to those questions. One of the first questions I received (and this is a question I get often!) is what social media platforms should businesses and individuals be using to keep up with social media standards? I know this is a question that many brands/companies/businesses struggle with as well as professionals who are trying to assert themselves as ‘experts’ in their fields.

The platforms I would consider part of standard practice now are platforms where a customer, who is new to a brand, automatically goes too for more information about that brand/product. These are the platforms that consumers expect brands/companies to be on. I do this often myself – when I hear of a new product, book or expert, I automatically go to certain social media platforms to engage with them or learn more about the product itself.

While some may find it hard to narrow it down to only 4 platforms since there are new platforms being introduced daily, the 4 platforms I recommended are platforms that have ‘stuck’ with the large majority of users so there is now an ‘expectation’ for brands and individuals to be on them. Disclaimer: These platforms may change depending on what industry you work in or audience you are tailoring content for depending on a number of factors, but overall, the social media platforms (or the ‘Big 4’ as I like to call them) that I would recommend include:

Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn / Instagram

There are also ‘Honourable Mentions’ – some are early(er) in their infancy or are dependent on what industry they can be best used for:

Pinterest / Snapchat / YouTube / FlickR / Google+

There are many examples I could use to showcase what platforms most businesses and individuals use for social media so I figured I would share 4 of my favourite websites/brands whose social media accounts I access often. You can see the trend that all four have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and the remaining other platforms depend on the audience they are trying to target (more professional, more business oriented, more visual, etc).

And to practice what I preach, I finally got my new public Instagram account up and going so give me a follow if your on it!