Ian Golden on Enhancing Your Personal Profiles

​These days, chances are, everyone is going to meet you online before, during, or after you meet them in person. I’ve had the experience of moving 3 times over the last 5 years. And each time to a new city what I noticed was that Facebook became a true representation of my character. I specifically noticed that, after meeting people in person, they’d add me on Facebook to verify my personality.

That being said, here’s a few tips to look as good online as you do offline.

1.     Get an Awesome Profile Picture - This is a no brainer. Your profile picture is the visual representation of your profile. Put a good, face photo of yourself to make sure that you can be taken seriously, and put a picture that you’d like to be judged on. Professional photos are always a bonus.

Pro tip - Make your profile pictures consistent across networks. And try to make it as true to your current appearance as possible. People may meet you offline, but make sure that they can recognize your online.

2.    Have Recent Content - Second tip, always have some recent content. What would you consider recent? A post in the last 10 days. That’s two business weeks or 1.5 weeks total. It makes your profile seem fun, disarming, and more relevant to anyone viewing. If you actually want people to message you, then having recent content will help make you seem more open and accessible on that network.

Pro tip - Post something everyday, and use Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule posts ahead of time.

3.     Respond to Messages Fast - This may seem like a no brainer, but the speed in which you apply to messages really matters. If you take 3-4 days to respond to a message on Facebook, you’ll get zero value from the network. The same applies to LInkedin. You have to be able to move quickly on these networks and responding to messages will make people more likely to message you again in the future.

Pro Tip - Get your phone organized. Have all of your networks on one screen, so you can get a snapshot of your notifications for all your networks. If you don’t have push notifications on, what are you thinking? You want to get all of the notifications from these networks as they happen. Stop running from success.

Get to work grooming your online profile, just like you do your real self. If this helped, tweet me at @1iangolden