By Barbara Pfeiffer, The Partner Marketing Group
With many marketers slowing down during November and December due to the holidays, I typically will come up with a year-end blog on things you can do during the slow months. This year, I have decided to focus my year-end advice on ONE topic—cleaning up your online presence. Specifically, all those profiles you have—directories, LinkedIn profiles, partner listings, etc. And this is important ANY time of the year so if you’re not slow right now, add it to your list for later.
Change Happens
Assuming your profiles were created at different times, what are the odds they are unified? More importantly, what are the odds they are even accurate? Are you still the same company you were a year or two ago? Are you marketing the same solutions to the same markets? If not, then those incorrect descriptions can be hurting you. They are certainly not helping your inbound or organic search results.
Reviewing your online profiles is pretty straightforward, but I thought I’d share my four-step process for getting them (and keeping them) updated.
- Do an audit. You know the obvious places where you’re represented (like LinkedIn and Twitter), but do a search for your company name to find all the sites you might have forgotten. Create a simple spreadsheet with each site’s URL, the current description, the required length for that site (words or characters), and any notes or updates needed. This is also a good time to check for any images that might need updated. Even if you haven’t changed your logo, make sure it was uploaded correctly and that it’s sharp and not stretched or pixelated.
- Create your master profile. It’s always easier to edit than create so build a “master” profile (LinkedIn gives you 2000 characters so that’s a good length to start with) that will be the basis for all your other profiles. This should be what you update first when you have any changes in your company that would impact your public profile.
- Edit for different lengths and focus areas. Time to go back to the audit results. You can use your master profile to create the various lengths you need for each of those sites. You may also have versions with a more targeted focus. For example, if you belong to a distribution software blog—but you also serve multiple industries—adjust your profile for that particular site to focus primarily on your value to distribution companies.
- Update and Record. As you’re updating all your profiles, be sure you add the new descriptions back to your audit spreadsheet, as well as any new profiles you create.
From this point on, this should take a lot less time. You can let internal changes trigger a review—so if you add a new solution, go back and update each of those profiles as needed. If you keep on top of it, you shouldn’t need an annual review and, if you don’t, you can always refer back to this blog again next year!
P.S. Need help with your online profiles? The Partner Marketing Group can create compelling profiles to make your organization stand out. Get in touch with us for a quote.
