I attended a networking event last night and I was surprised by how few people included their social media handles on their business cards. This is such a missed opportunity, and it got me thinking about other missed opportunities to share your social media handles.
Business Cards
Most people will only pay attention to your business card once; the day after they’ve met you. That’s when people usually reach into their pocket, purse, or briefcase, see your card, and do their follow up. If you give people an easy way to connect with you, they’re much more likely to remember you months from now, after your business card has been lost or tossed.
Depending on if you want to focus on personal or business branding, you should point to either your own Twitter handle, or your personal handle. For LinkedIn, it generally makes sense to include your personal profile. For Facebook, it should really be a page, not a personal profile. You might also include Instagram, YouTube, etc. It really depends on your situation.
For LinkedIn, make sure that you’ve created a personalized link for your profile. Mine is:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandi-gould/
Your profile url does not automatically come with your name so follow the LinkedIn instructions to customize your url.
Email Signature
Are you leveraging all of those emails that you send every single day? What are you including in your email signature? Don’t forget to include your social media links!
Since you can create hyperlinks in your email signature, make it easy for your correspondents. All they should have to do is click, and voila! They’ll be taken to your profiles. Our signatures look like this:
Website
It may seem obvious, but do you have your social media icons on your website? How easy are they to find? We highly recommend making these impossible to miss. We prefer to include them at both the top and the bottom of the website.
Other Print Materials, Banners, etc.
The more often that you include your social media information, the more likely people are to remember to follow you. I attended a concert at our local performing arts centre the other night and before the show started, they had a slide show displaying upcoming shows. In the corner they included the standard little social media icons. They took up very little space but were clear and evident. It was a perfect reminder that yes, the venue does use social media, and the natural thought I had while I was sitting in the audience was, “Oh, I’ll definitely have to follow them and tweet about the show!”
That little reminder is often all that you need you prompt your potential customers to follow you on social media. It tells people that you use social media, and that you’d like to connect with them. And people like to connect, especially when it’s easy.
Include your social media handles on everything. The most important three to include are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, since they’re the most interactive, and LinkedIn is the natural fourth. Follow those with YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, etc. When you’re short on space, focus on the top three platforms.
Streamline Your Handles
Speaking of making it easy for people, do your social media names match? Are they easy to remember? It’s important to keep your names as unified as possible. For example, do your Twitter and Instagram names match? Why not? It’s not too late to change one or both of them to streamline the experience for your users.
In our case, @BarkerSocial wasn’t available on one profile. We had to decide: should we use @BarkerSocial for one profile, and then something different for the other one? The answer was definitely NO, they should match! We went with @Barker_Social for both. That way it’s easy for a user on one platform to also contact you on the other.
We have a short version of our name, Barker_Social, and the full version of our name, Barker Social Marketing. That’s all we need. Two versions, one to use in each situation.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, quite the opposite. The goal is to make it as easy and inviting for people as possible. When it’s convenient to connect with you, people will be more likely to do so. And connecting is the goal.
We’d love to connect with YOU!
Have you noticed other missed opportunities for sharing social media icons? Leave us a comment!
