We all know how important social media marketing is to our overall marketing strategy. We invest time, money and resources into creating content – copy, photos, graphics, videos – to engage with our audience. But when was the last time you looked at the profile photos and cover images on your social media channels? (True confession! I need to do this myself!)
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but social media websites are constantly tweaking and changing things. Sometimes the changes are for the better. And sometimes, you find that your perfectly crafted square profile picture has been converted to a cut-off circle! Or perhaps the images that looked great on your old phone look blurry on newer, high-resolution screens. The results can look sloppy and unprofessional.
It’s important to pay attention to your social pages and how they look to a first-time visitor. Are your images sized properly and do they communicate your overall brand?
Time for a social media cleanup
Block off an hour and conduct an audit of your social profiles. Here’s a checklist to get you started:
- Look at your social network profile page as if you were a customer or first-time visitor to that page. Are the profile images the right size and proportion? Are they cut off or hard to read? Bonus question: Do they convey high-level brand messaging that’s easy to understand?
- Do the images look different in the newsfeed versus the page? For example, when you visit your Facebook page, the profile image is a square. But in the newsfeed, it’s a small circle. Make sure you’ve uploaded a photo that will look good in both places.
- Don’t forget about your cover photos. Make sure they look good on mobile and on a desktop. Bonus question: On Facebook, did you know you can upload a video as your cover image?
- Start with high-resolution images. Often when Facebook resizes images they look blurry. That’s especially true if you start with a low-res, grainy photo.
- Once you’ve updated your business pages, take a look at your personal pages too. Even though you may not promote those as part of your business, people can still find your personal profiles. They may be researching you for a potential project or as part of a job interview. Those profile images should also be sized correctly and be a positive and professional representation of you and your business – especially your LinkedIn page.
Sprout Social has a great guide on social media image sizes. Here you’ll find the exact image sizes on all the major social networks. Remember, though, these networks (especially Facebook) periodically make updates and changes to pages’ appearances. Take note and update your profile images and cover photos accordingly.
Are you promoting your social networks?
The next area you’ll want to audit is how you’re driving traffic to your social networks. Most people include icons on their website, in their email signature and often on print materials, such as fliers, posters or banners. These are all excellent ways to let people know you’re active on certain social networks.
Email providers like MailChimp or website platforms like WordPress and Squarespace typically auto populate social media icons and you simply add your link or handle. But if you’re doing a print product or custom design, you’ll need to add those icons yourself.
Things to keep in mind:
- Use the official logo for each social network. Don’t just do a quick Google search and grab the first image that pops up. Plus, using an outdated logo indicates you don’t pay attention to changes in social media. That can indicate to potential customers you don’t pay attention to details. You’ll want to download the official icon from the individual network’s brand resource page.
- Don’t alter the official logo unless you really know what you’re doing. Plus, you’ll want to follow the brand standards laid out by each social network, which may include not cropping or significantly altering the logo.
- Sometimes it’s problematic to use the social icons in their native colors. A good solution is to convert them all to black and white for unity with your brand colors.
Periodically review both your own profile images as well as the places where you’re driving traffic to your social profiles to ensure everything is up to date, easy to read and professional. It’s also a good opportunity to delete any social accounts you’re no longer using. Or at least remove any icons/links to those profiles. You don’t want to send people to your social media profiles if you aren’t actively keeping them updated. Good luck!
Have a great week,
