Wanting to create a brand online and not sure where to start? Here’s our guide to the top 6 places you should create a presence for personal use, clubs/teams, or your business.
1. Website
A website is a great central hub for all things you on the internet. It can be the one place people are sure to turn up your contact information and links to what you do and who you are. You can run free websites off of many sites but for the most customization and security of your information, you can also pay to have your website designed and/or hosted by others.
What it should include:
- Home page – This is the first page people come to. If you only have one page, this should be it.
- About page – Your About can appear on your home page or its own page. The ‘formula’ for an About page: What is your point of view, why should the reader want to be there, a bit about you or the company. Example of a pet dog’s About: “People think dogs don’t understand you, but they do. I can help you understand what they say. I am a 5 yr old Golden Retriever with a passion for blogging.”
- Blog – Personal blogs should be your own point of view. Team or club blogs may include information about events or relevant topics. Company blogs aim to educate your audience about your area of expertise.
- Contact Information – For privacy, many websites provide contact submission forms which obscure your email address from view. For public use, you can include your phone number, email address, and/or physical address here.
- Social Media links – There are 3 kinds of social media links you can add to your website: SHARE – A link that allows the visitor to share your page address on their own social pages, VISIT – a link that sends the visitor to your social media pages, and LIKE – a link that adds a record of the visitor ‘liking’ or ‘+1 ing’ your page.
Optional items:
- Portfolio of your work – This is important especially for visual or audio products like pottery, cake design, music, videos, etc
- Membership and registration [Teams and Clubs] – How do you join? What are the rates? When do seasons or memberships start and end?
- Services [Businesses] – What is being offered? How much does it cost? What are the terms?
- Hours [Businesses] – When are you open or when can you be contacted?
- Events – Depending on circumstances, this can be events that you are hosting or that you are involved in.
- News – Keep your readers up to date on what is new, changing or coming soon.
- Accolades – A great place to post positive articles, testimonials or awards.
Social Networks
There are plenty of Social Networks but the five below get the most traffic today.
Tips for all networks:
- Only provide networks the minimum amount of information needed to sign up. Depending on the network and why you are using it, you can expect to have the option to provide more later as needed.
- Make sure you go through all the privacy settings when creating your account.
- Your profile picture is public no matter what settings you have, so pick something accordingly (examples: professional, fun, approachable).
- [Business or Team/Club pages] Make sure your profile includes your website (if applicable) and contact information
- If posting a link to your blog, be sure to use the link for that specific blog (not your whole blog page) so that your blog image and first few sentences get pulled in to the post
- Posts that have images attached get more clicks
- Use these networks to share information about you and useful/entertaining/enlightening tidbits people can follow in their feeds
2. Facebook
Whether you use Facebook just for personal use or if you want to manage a page, you will need a personal account in your name.
Target: Facebook is still the #1 network for membership. Fastest growing demographic is people over 40.
Tips:
- You should be 13 or older to sign up
- [personal pages] Keep your friend list down to those you actually want to share with since they control distribution of your information. That is, they can copy and distribute a photo you posted without telling you
- Review and check privacy settings. Facebook loves to take and share your info.
Business or Team pages:
- Pages can be private or public so set according to your audience
3. Twitter
Twitter is a way to get out timely information and get people talking about your brand.
Target: It also has the most varied demographics. It appeals to more tech savvy people and audience tends to be under 50.
Tips:
- Unless you specify a private account, Twitter is always public so you never know who may be reading your tweets
- Check out our eBook on setting up a new Twitter account in a safe and effective way
Business or Team profile:
- You can also share (retweet) relevant tweets by other Twitter users
- Due to the nature of Twitter, big news should be tweeted many times. Some suggest every 8 hours over a 24 hour period and several days of that
4. LinkedIn
Often discounted, LinkedIn is a perfect place for your professional brand.
Target: Potential employers, post-secondary schools or customers.
Tips:
- Add enough information about what you do professionally so a recruiter could turn you up on a search
- All posts should be work related and not include jokes, birthday wishes, or items that you wouldn’t share publicly
- Follow these extra tips to make your profile safe and have it stand out
Business pages:
- Set the company page with the right category
- Connect your personal account to the company page so people know what you do
5. Google+
Though similar to Facebook, Google+ is not as popular but has the added bonus of increasing your websites SEO (search engine optimization).
Target: Anyone who uses Google products because of tight tie-ins with YouTube and great media handling.
Tips:
- You should be 13 or older to sign up
Business or Team pages:
- Pages can be private or public so set according to your audience
- Adding the link for your website to the Google+ page increases odds of someone finding it
- Has a great built-in framework for business to solicit comments, ratings and feedback from customers
6. Instagram
This is the ideal place to post visuals of your work or products. You can also share news for yourself, all in photos and videos.
Target: Mostly under 50.
Tips:
- Make sure you are not publicly oversharing by posting things that reveal private information about you
- Even if your product/service is not visual, you can post infographics or memes that may pertain to what you do
- Keep professional and personal accounts separate
Business or Team pages:
- Interact with or follow pages that interest you and then others may also follow you back
- Use hashtags to highlight your content
Need examples? Check us out on each page type:
If you decide to create your brand in one of these places or all six, remember to be authentic. This may be the only chance you have to ‘introduce’ yourself to someone.
Extremely useful and interesting blog!